Museums at Risk Register
In last November’s Museums Journal, Stuart Davis suggested the creation of a ‘Museums at Risk Register’ which would “mirror English Heritage”. What Professor Davis fails to take account of is that English Heritage’s Register is the second part of a two part process. The first stage undertakes an assessment of what is actually worth saving thought its myriad lists and schedules. It is only from these qualitative lists that it decides what is at risk and needs saving. English Heritage makes no attempt to intervene in every building that is at risk of destruction, but focuses its efforts in saving what it considers worth saving.
Surely this is the approach that needs be taken for museums: before rushing in to save a museum it needs to be understood whether the museum should or could be saved. There may be instances where a museum has little community value and a collection that, for the greater part, adds little to the region. Also, a museum simply may not be sustainable (using the widest definition of the term) no matter what resources are directed towards it due to some inherent weakness.
I would not advocate that there should be a wholesale closure of unpopular museums or the winding up of museums that are dealing with short term governance difficulties, but if we are going to make the sector as a whole stronger we needed to know what we want to save and why. The propping up of unsustainable institutions may give short term victories but could weaken the sector in the long term as they suck in resources that could be better used elsewhere.
Could a better approach be to firstly identify what can and should be saved? And if an institution as a whole is not sustainable, or not worth saving, should we be developing alternative solutions – developing strategies to help institutions wind up ethically whist preserving the significant parts of the collection and maintaining public confidence in the sector as a whole?
I admit that things are never this black and white and maybe I am being deliberately controversial. But what do you think?
