To thrive or survive? The state and status of research in museums

Museum Management and Curatorship 20 (2005) 297–311 www.elsevier.com/locate/musmancur

To thrive or survive? The state and status of research in museums R.G.W. Anderson * Honey Hill House, Honey Hill, Cambridge CB3 0BG, UK Received 16 May 2005; received in revised form 1 August 2005; accepted 3 October 2005

Abstract This paper, the opening address of the Canadian Museums Association 2005 meeting on research, offers a wide-ranging sweep of its position in today’s museums, largely from a UK perspective. It suggests that many of those working as curators feel that they cannot pay the activity the regard it deserves. There are many factors which now make it difficult for research to be offered adequate priority when it has to co-exist with other museum functions, amongst which are the broadened responsibilities which museums must now shoulder. General studies on such a core subject are surprisingly sparse but a useful investigation of British museums, undertaken fairly recently, is examined. q 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Research; Management; Collections; Strategic planning; History; United Kingdom

Research has been a perennial topic of discussion and concern amongst the curatorial staff who work in museums, though little concerning the subject in general has been published.1 For most of the period of their existence, it was assumed that this activity was one of the core functions of major museums, and that it underpinned much of the work which was carried out in them. When, in the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher’s government sought to detach the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum from the civil service in the early 1980s, a * Tel.: C44 1223 328049. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 Several brief chapters on the nature of museum research in various fields can be found in J.M.A. Thompson (ed.), Manual of Curatorship: A Guide to Museum Practice (Butterworth-Heinemann, London, 1992). A select bibliography on particular aspects of museum research is included in Ann V. Gunn and R.G.W. Prescott, Lifting the Veil: Research and Scholarship in United Kingdom Museums and Galleries (Museums and Galleries Commission, London, 1999) pp. 87–91. The paucity of general works on the subject is indicated in Peter Woodhead and Geoffrey Stansfield (eds.), Keyguide to Information Sources in Museum Studies (Mansell, London, 1989), which lists only two monographs on the subject (out of 422 publications cited).

0260-4779/$ - see front matter q 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.musmancur.2005.10.001

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report was commissioned (‘The Rayner Scrutiny’) which stated categorically, “We are in no doubt that a substantial research effort is needed to sustain the essential purposes of any great museum.” (Burrett, 1982) Yet pressures seem to grow which mitigated against its being undertaken as a priority. This problem caused nagging concerns which were referred to in its 1988 Report by the UK’s Museums and Galleries Commission, which stated that any government-funded museum failing to undertake scholarly research would, “ultimately forfeit its claim to be regarded as a national museum.” If research has reduced in importance over the past few years, this may be by unthinking attrition or changes in priorities, rather than because of hostile attitudes. However, for some younger generation directors, attitudes of traditional scholars may be seen as a hindrance when seeking to communicate with a broad public (Fleming, 2002). Museums are a broad church, covering a range of bodies of many different types. The fact that the word ‘museum’ has been affixed to an institution does not necessarily make it one. On the other hand, some museum-like bodies go out of their way to avoid the term because of its offputting connotations, and new names are invented. Recent museum nomenclature has become a neologists paradise. Definitions of museums abound, especially amongst professional groups which feel anxious to separate what they consider to be the true from the spurious. The words ‘research’ and ‘scholarship’ have no precision, and such activity can be debased when in the hands of those who wish to benefit from misapplication of the terms. It is easy enough to become mired in detailed considerations of definitions, but a little explanation is needed for the purposes of this paper. Institutions which devise and commission their exhibits, such as science centres, visitor centres, most heritage centres, Imax theatres, planetariums, and so on, are not included in the discussion. ‘Research’ is concerned with the production of new knowledge based on the use of artefacts or natural objects as evidence. The output of research laboratories, such as those which analyse the properties of materials from which museum artefacts are made, is not considered here, because the issues which arise in relation to their operation are somewhat different. In the past, some museums have claimed that the compilation and interpretation of visitor statistics or other social studies can be embraced as museum research. These studies are unquestionably important, but they would defocus the arguments which follow if they were included. What will be considered is ‘traditional’ research in ‘traditional’ museums, that activity which leads to the publication of museum monographs or articles in periodicals which deal with fine and applied art, archaeology, numismatics, history of science, ethnography, and so on. Those museums where such research is conducted are classified here as being national, university, regional and civic. Non-publicly funded, independent, museums are not considered. In Europe, such institutions are not generally known for their research activity, though the situation in North America is different, with museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Museum being generally acknowledged as great centres of research. A few remarks are necessary concerning the historical development of museums in relation to research activities which were conducted within them. All early museums, some being described as cabinets of curiosities, were concerned with investigation, even though the research might not today be considered systematic. A curiosity is only a curiosity if it can be differentiated from the commonplace, so that owners of collections and early curators developed background knowledge and keen analytical eyes. Many would consider that the research museum originates in Enlightenment Europe and coincides with the inception of public museums. In fact, there is no reason why a research museum should not be a private one, just as many of the great research libraries have been, and still are. In Great Britain, the Ashmolean Museum (founded in 1683) and the British Museum (1753) might be considered as the prototypes of those university

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and public museums which are concerned with research. It has to be admitted that the contemporaneous private research museums of the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London never flourished. The museum movement spread throughout Europe and to North America in the 18th and 19th centuries, though not significantly to Asia, except where colonial authorities imitated what was going on back at home. The Imperial collections in the Forbidden City in Beijing, or Indian princely collections, can never be regarded as forming museums in the Western sense. In the later 19th century, the emphasis of the museums which were being newly established shifted from a taxonomic to an educational function, though there remained plenty of opportunities for curators to delve away at their research, certainly in relation to exhibition and acquisition.2 Art galleries were established more for national, even nationalistic reasons (Wright, 1996), and in some cases, special efforts were made to encourage the working classes to visit them (Prior, 2002). Art history thrived within many of them, given the nature of the personnel. In the 20th century, there was once again a change of emphasis, with the social purposes of museums gradually assuming greater importance, in some instances becoming paramount. Over the course of this last century, there has been increasing conflict in the perception of the museums’ prime purposes, and in the ordering of its priorities. These have been differently perceived by the different constituencies involved with them.3 As these constituencies offer their support to different interest groups, these interests have been difficult to reconcile. The result of all this is the currently uncertain status held by research in museums, and it has been a contributing factor to why the Canadian Museums Association felt it was necessary to hold a special meeting in 2005. The different constituencies referred to above vary from museum to museum. It might include government and state departments which fund national museums, local authorities and university funding councils which support municipal and university museums, boards of trustees and committees which are concerned with museum policies, museum directors and their administrative staffs who implement policies and who are particularly concerned with the public image of the museums they run, educationalists who champion the public use of museums, and curators who, while certainly concerned with the wider issues, concentrate their minds on the collections, their purposes, and the information which can be derived from them. Each of these groups is not exclusively involved with the areas of interest mentioned, and blind to all else, but the model of primary interest is a useful one from which to proceed. The groups can now be considered in turn. Starting with government, it is probably not unfair to suggest that the research output of the museums which they fund is of little interest to them. It is also probably fair to say that museums are not at the top of the agenda of government concerns in most countries: the arts do not win or lose elections. Interest can only be aroused when large capital projects have to be funded and justified, or on those occasions when museums attract national controversy.4 2 The 19th century educational museum par excellence was the South Kensington Museum. Its prodigious output is clearly indicated in Elizabeth James (ed.), Victoria and Albert Museum: A Bibliography and Exhibition Chronology (Fitzroy Dearborn, London, 1998). 3 See, for example, David M. Wilson, The British Museum. Purpose and Politics (British Museum Press, London, 1989) and compare with Fleming (2002). 4 Such occasions might be the case of the exhibition ‘Into the Heart of Africa’ at the Royal Ontario Museum in 1989, or the display of the Enola Gay aeroplane at the Air and Space Museum, Washington DC, in 1994. Government itself created controversy over forcing the relocation of the Stone of Scone in 1996, though it could be argued that neither Westminster Abbey nor Edinburgh Castle is a museum.

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In France the position has been a little different5, and in recent years Berlin’s museums have been of unusual interest.6 In Greece, there has been speculation about building a new museum on the Acropolis which, it has been said, will allow space for the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum if they were ever to be offered to Athens. But by and large, museums do not excite a great deal of news attention. In Britain, arts policy has been devised to line-up with broader government agendas. A report in 2000 went so far as to describe museums as ‘agents of social change’, a passage signed by the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith, reading: Combating social exclusion is one of the Government’s highest priorities, and I believe that museums.have a significant role to play in this. They are often the focal point for cultural activity in the community, interpreting its history and heritage. This gives people a sense of identity, and that of their community. But the evidence is that museums can do more than this, and act as agents of social change in the community, improving people’s lives through their outreach activities.the aim of the policy is to encourage museums.to adopt a strategic approach to social exclusion.7 This may be a perfectly acceptable and desirable statement, but the point is that the British Government has decided to set a firmly defined agenda for its museums, whereas in the past it would have adopted an arms-length principle of non-interference. It would be difficult for nationally funded museums not to respond positively, given the threat of funding squeezes which can, and are, imposed by government. Under these circumstances, museum boards of trustees are scarcely likely to declare that research was going to be their number one priority, given the implied threat. The theme was taken up by The Art Newspaper, whose editorial of December 2003 read: Back in 2001, the Department of Culture came up with the idea of giving UK national people they were supposed to attract. The British Museum, for example, had to aim for 11% of its visitors to be from the nation’s ethnic minorities and 14% from the C2, DCE socially excluded group. In response to our article, Chris Smith rang up our editor, to assure us there would be no financial penalties if this was not achieved. No one was convinced and now we have a spokesman from the Department confirming that institutions may well have their grant withheld if they fail to meet their new target.This blackmail might just about be tolerated if there were the promise of a corresponding rise in funding to reward some outstanding body of research.8 5 In France, museums can be seen as constituting a component of the national gloire; the architectural reordering of the Louvre was a highlight of the bicentenary of the Revolution celebrations in 1989. However, the newsworthiness of any research project would scarcely stand a chance of recognition alongside the consuming interest created by I.M. Pei’s Pyramide. 6 This is because of the political upheavals in Europe around 1990. Being duplicated in East and West Berlin, museums necessarily became a public issue and they remain so today because of the vast cost of rationalisation and building conservation on the Museuminsel. See Carola Wedel (ed.), Die Neue Museumsinsel: Der Mythos, Der Plan, Die Vision (Nicolai, Berlin, 2002). 7 Department of Culture, Media and Sport, Libraries, Galleries and Archives for All: Co-operating Across the Sectors to tackle Social Exclusion (DCMS, London, 2000), p. 1. These themes are taken up with enthusiasm by Richard Sandell in chapter 1 of Museums, Society, Inequality see Fleming, 2002, ‘Museums and the Combating of Social Irresposibility: Roles, Responsibilities, Resistance’, pp. 3–23. 8 The Art Newspaper, No. 142, December 2003, p. 20. The terms C2, D and E refer to a system of social class categorisation used by market researchers and others. In this, A, B and C1 are middle-class, and C2, D and E are lowerclass definitions.

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Though this example comes from the United Kingdom, it would not come as a surprise to hear that this phenomenon is known in other countries and plays a part in positioning museum culture at the present time. To what extent museum-funding bodies might actually wish to promote research is not easy to ascertain because it is rarely mentioned by them.9 The Department of Culture, Media and Sport, in establishing funding agreements with national museums at the end of the 1990s, set up a series of 22 performance indicators which museums had to sign up to, and research and publication could be included amongst them. These have now been narrowed down to six, research playing no part amongst them.10 A very significant change in the relationship between government and museums in the United Kingdom has been the changing nature of the advice which the government has commissioned over the years. From 1927 this was provided by the Royal Commission on National Museums and Galleries, from 1931 the Standing Commission, an independent and somewhat aristocratic body which could at times be openly critical (Esme, Countess of Carlisle, 1987). It acted as champion for the sector and inspired many beneficial changes. This was replaced by the Museums and Galleries Commission in 1981, still fairly independent, but more down-to-earth in its recommendations of what was likely to be possible. It also provided professional advice and was a grant-giving body. Post-2000, this in turn was replaced by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (also known as Re:Source and MLAC), which has had a closer relationship to government. Regarding research in museums, the Museums and Galleries Commission published a valuable report on museum research in 1999 as one of its final acts before it was dissolved. This report will be considered later in this paper. In Great Britain, the majority of museums are supported by local government. The topics with which they deal are frequently local archaeology and antiquities, natural history and social history, and mostly they have been considered in relation to the local population and tourism. In the past, many employed curators made significant contributions to their subject of interest.11 Local authority policy on the arts is now strongly guided by central government, so there are pressures for the same strictures regarding social inclusion, educational purpose and ethnic minorities to be applied to their museums. If the composition of museum committees and boards of trustees in the United Kingdom is considered, these have significantly changed over the past 30 years. There has been a significant influx of businessmen and bankers on to the committees and boards, and a concomitant reduction in the number of scholarly figures. In part, this is to do with the wish to inject a more managerial and fundraising culture. It is probably correct to say that the chairmen of public museums have less say in appointments than in the past; government departments now require at least two 9

Other sources of funding, public and private, are available for museum research. Until recently, most research councils and boards in the UK did not receive applications from national museums, though the situation has recently eased somewhat. 10 See, for example, Three Year Funding Agreement (2003–06) between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Victoria and Albert Museum, p. 6. The six indicators are numbers of: total visits, children’s visits, loans to English venues, C2 D E visitors (an 8% increase on 2002–03 figures is required by 2005–06), website hits, and children in educational programmes. 11 G. Brown Goode, Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was particularly influential in his spreading of a museum philosophy at the end of the 19th century. In 1895, his paper ‘Principles of Museum Administration’ was read at the Museums Association sixth annual meeting at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Under a section ‘The Specific Responsibilities of the Museum’, Goode said, “The Museum should be held responsible for special services, chiefly as follows: a. For the advancement of learning. To aid learned men in the work of extending the boundaries of knowledge.”, see H.M. Platnauer and E. Howarth (eds.), Museums Association. Report of Proceedings with the Papers read at the Sixth Annual General Meeting. (Dulau and Co., London, 1895), pp. 69–148.

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proposals for each vacancy, some of whom are likely to be their own nominees. Some museum boards seem to possess few figures who have any depth of knowledge about what the museum stands for in terms of its academic discipline. Some might argue that this is the right position: subject specialisation should lie with the staff, not the trustees, who would find it a strain not to interfere in professional matters. On the other hand, it is difficult for a board fully to fulfil its responsibilities if it is not in a position to question its employees on those matters which are of core concern; trustees are responsible for policy and a balance of activity can only be achieved if all aspects of the museum’s work, including its curatorial aspects, can be considered in a balanced manner by its members. My own experience is that expertise in scholarly matters on boards is a wholly good thing, given the right choice of senior academic figures as trustees, and I knew only support, never unwanted interference, when it came to promoting research interests.12 Turning to the directorship of museums, it is an undeniable fact that the background of those who hold these positions today has been changing; many emerge not from the scholarly world, but from other spheres. This is a response to the changing nature of museums, and the director’s role. It would have been unlikely in the past that the director of a major national museum would not have produced an authoritative book at some point in his or her earlier career. For many museums today, an MBA degree is seen as a more appropriate qualification. There are several reasons for this change in what is seen as the most appropriate background, shifting from an emphasis on scholarly background to the possession of administrative skills. One is the increasing culture of managerialism which is now expected within the public sector. Another is the increasingly broad range of responsibilities which a museum director must now bear. When I joined my first museum, the Royal Scottish Museum, in 1970, many aspects of running the institution lay elsewhere than on the director’s shoulders. The building was maintained by the government and a professional body of estate managers did what was necessary to keep the museum in a sound state of health. All staff were civil servants and their terms of employment were determined elsewhere, so that pay negotiations, conditions of service, employment legislation, retirement policy, pensions, and so on were not things which the director had to be concerned directly with.13 Issues surrounding health and safety largely lay with the Property Services Agency. This all changed through the 1980s, with a transfer of responsibility from government agencies to museums, the latter having to shoulder the burden of many of these nonmuseum specific tasks for the first time. Necessarily, the centre of gravity of the director’s work has now moved away from the scholarly side of a museum, towards the more general administrative tasks of a complex organisation. Issues of funding also became more absorbing in the role played by the director. In the golden age (if golden age there ever was14), nearly all income came from public sources. In the past two or three decades, strong pressures have been placed on museums to supplement public money with that from private sources, and this is common throughout most countries in the world. Funds might be sought from commercial organisations, foundations and trusts, or from wealthy 12

In June 1974 a Scholarship Committee of British Museum trustees was established, at the time of the directorship of John Pope-Hennessy; it continued to function until 2002. See Wilson (ref.7), pp.70-73 for remarks about the British Museum Board. 13 At this time in the UK, only the Victoria and Albert, Science, and Royal Scottish Museums were a part of government. However, for the purpose of employment, the staff of all other national museums were treated as though they were civil servants. 14 There is plenty of evidence that museums have, throughout their history, lurched from one financial crisis to another. Ambitions of boards, staff and, indeed government itself, often outrun the funds available. The valuable proceeds from the national lottery, established in the UK in 1994, could be used to finance capital projects but not their continuing running costs and, as a result, a number of newly constructed cultural projects have failed.

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individuals, an activity which can be very time-consuming. The sort of charismatic individual who would be best at heading an organisation where chatting up the wealthy was necessary for its success might not be the same person who had developed a worldwide reputation (within a somewhat limited world) for reading Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets. Other means of income generation come from the commercial efforts of the museum itself—restaurants and shops are now an aspect of practically every museum, adding further to the repertoire of understanding required of a director. These changes do not simply involve the organisation’s head, of course. New kinds of staff have had to be added to the payroll to deal with buildings, conditions of employment, development offices, commercial entrepreneurship and so on. In terms of overall staff structure, this has meant that there has been a shift away from the museum-specific activities of curation, conservation and exhibition. Museum directors have rapidly been turning into CEOs (some are in fact called that), and they tend to spend much more of their working day with administrators. All this has had an effect on the positioning of research in a museum and in the relationship between the heads of museums and the scholarly curatorial staff, between whom there has been a distancing. In many museums, the heads of curatorial departments no longer report to their directors as they used to. In some cases, a senior curator has been appointed to represent the scholarly side of the institution, though this person is often heavily outnumbered in senior management meetings by heads of administration, development and commercial directors, estate managers and human resources chiefs; it is unlikely that research and publication will be on the agenda of their meetings. Unlike the curators, these professionals will not be working in museums for the rest of their careers, their qualities not being museumspecific. Indeed, some of them are likely to be spending their senior management meetings wondering what their next job will hold for them. A little light relief can be offered by considering what life as a museum director might have been in the past. Thomas Kendrick was a scholarly director of the British Museum from 1950 to 1959, having specialised in Druids, Vikings and the Dark Ages in general. After retirement, his interest in the Museum continued and in 1967, when his successor was nearing retirement, he wrote to the eminent archaeologist Stuart Piggott, tempting him to apply for the job. Kendrick wrote: The post is a precious prize. Practically no responsibilities. Just occasionally signing a letter or two that someone, who can write better letters than you can, has written for you. Honey-sweet relations with the dear, friendly Trustees, and turtle-cooing with the dear, friendly Trustees, and turtle-cooing with the Staff Side at Whitley Councils. Above all, abundant opportunity to get on with your own work and no need to hide it under the blotting paper when you have callers. You can even have the Rosetta Stone wheeled in. And, of course, a reasonable expectation of a life-peerage and the Garter. It’s worth it, Stuart.15 Obviously much of this is tongue-in-cheek, but there is also truth within the humour. The fact is that Kendrick did continue to publish during his spell as director. His successor-butone was not Piggott, but Sir John Wolfenden, a distinguished public figure but one who had no experience at all of museums (and none of whose books dealt with museum-related topics). He stayed in post for only four years and the verdict has been that he was not entirely a success. 15

Rupert Bruce-Mitford, ‘Thomas Downing Kendrick 1895–1979’, Proceedings of the British Academy 76 445–471 (1990). ‘Whitley Council’ is a joint committee between management and trade unions which operates (operated, in some cases) locally. ‘Garter’ refers to the Order of the Garter, the highest order of knighthood conferred by the British monarch.

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Directors, even if they have scholarly attitudes, sometimes cannot champion scholarship today even if instinctively they wish to. They have to face the reality of declining budgets and governmental pressures, and have to take all categories of museum-user, current and potential, into account. Salaries of the increasing proportion of non-curatorial staff have to be paid. It might be considered that there are two polarised positions which directors find themselves in: those of them who are agonised because they cannot find resources to support the research programmes they ideally would wish to, and those, who while they may have been scholars themselves in the past, turn their face against serious research and relentlessly pursue a populist line. The realities of underfunding hit the natural History Museum in London in the late-1980s, when for several years the increase in government grant was significantly less than the increase in annual wage costs, over which the museum had little control. The action which the museum took, to shed some areas of research and to realign others, caused one of the most vociferous outcries of its kind. The 1991–1995 corporate plan proposed that 100 of the 800 jobs at the museum should be shed (Gee, 1990). Most of these were curatorial; for example, 17 were in entomology, nine in mineralogy and seven in botany and zoology. Some research topics would disappear altogether, including fossil birds and fossil mammals, other than primates. The New Scientist headed its report of the affair ‘Will Taxonomy go the Way of the Dinosaurs?’ The periodical published a letter from Edwin Colbert, the distinguished vertebrate palaeontologist of the American Museum of Natural History, which included the remarks: “The draconian measures that are being contemplated, added to the many cuts in staff and programmes already made, will, I feel, reduce the museum to an institution of minor rank, quite unsuitable to the status it has had in the past and should now and in the future, as the primary museum of its kind in the British Commonwealth.” The professor of geology at Bristol University objected to the mode of presentation of the plan, with the comment: “Its sales brochure approach is destined to hasten the demise of the museum as a scientific research centre and replace it with a new Disneyworld.How the trustees could accept it surpasses my understanding.” The reference to Disneyworld was particularly incisive, as journalists had discovered that 16 members of the museum’s management staff had just paid an official visit to assess the attraction. So much heat was generated by the museum’s proposal that it triggered an investigation in 1992 by the Parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology chaired by Lord Dainton, one of the most admired public scientists of his time in the United Kingdom (he was also Chairman of the Museums and Galleries Commission). The investigation turned out to be the first of what have now become three parliamentary reports on Systematic Biology Research. One important aspect of the first report was the effort it made to quantify the evidence, as so much of the gloom expressed by museum staff about the decline of research is anecdotal and imprecise. The report showed that expenditure on systematics over the decade 1980 to 1990 had declined by 6% in real terms, and Dainton later wrote of this “the curation of collections in museums left something to be desired.” The Committee recommended that special funds should be set aside by the government body in charge of museums for the curation of collections.16 The report provided a 16 House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, Systematic Biology Research, First Report from the Select Committee on Science and Technology, Volume 1—Report; Volume 2—Oral Evidence and Written Evidence Received after 21 May 1991 (HMSO, London, 1992). Comments on his own findings are found in Lord Dainton, ‘Systematic Biology Research: an Outsider’s Visit to the Secret Garden’, in C.L. Rose, S.L. Williams and J. Gisbert (eds.), Current Issues, Initiatives, and Future Directions for the Preservation and Conservation of Natural History Collections, First World Conference on the Preservation and Conservation of Natural History Collections, Volume 3 (Direccion General de Bellas Artes y Archivos, Ministerio de Cultura, Madrid, 1993), pp. 345–361.

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jolt to the system. A UK Systematics Forum was established by the Office of Science and Technology, based at the Natural History Museum, which then produced a Directory of Current UK Systematic Expertise and Research, and an Action Plan was published (Davis, 1996). The use of most of the annual grant allocated to national museums by government in the UK is not ring-fenced for particular subheadings of expenditure. This means that when funding is inadequate for all of a museum’s ambitions, hard decisions have to be made to support some areas, close down others and put some activities on hold. This is a particularly difficult task for museums because of the diverse nature of their activities and, at the same time, their interdependence. Another problem is that some activities are investments for the distant future, far beyond the lifetime of governments or the careers of museum staff. Decision-taking has to be made, knowing that government has its own agenda of prioritisation. A particularly problematic situation arose in 2004 concerning the library of London’s Science Museum. This is housed in a building owned by Imperial College, and a facility fee is payable by the Museum. The College announced its decision to increase its charge to four times its previous level, and the Museum then said that it could not afford the enhanced charge. The Director at the time made it clear that the new level was unaffordable and two solutions were offered: the book stock could be transferred to the Museum’s site at Wroughton in Wiltshire, a somewhat inaccessible place, or that the books could be largely dispersed to the British Library and Imperial College, the Museum retaining some of the stock. Both options were unpalatable to curators and public, who have had access to this unique collection since 1857. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport stepped in with a special grant for one year to allow further discussion to take place. The question which might have been discussed, ‘What other activity might be abandoned if the Library were considered to be of central importance to the functioning of this major national museum?’ does not seem to have been raised, at least publicly. The assumption has to be made that research which is facilitated by the adjacent collections of books, manuscripts and archives is not a high priority.17 Consideration of the problems which beset directors leads to those who promote one of the prime functions of all museums, education. There can be no doubt that museums now pay much more thought to the needs and wishes of the public who visit them than in the past, even though education has been a major consideration of most museums since their inception. The primacy given to this activity can be charted by considering the rise of education departments and the relatively powerful position they and their staff now occupy in museum hierarchies. That is not to say that intellectual challenges to the public have been maintained; here, we might consider the exhibit labels of extraordinary length and complexity which were common in the past. Were they ever read and digested, one might ask? There is plenty of evidence that at least part of the uninformed public was willing to 17

I make the not unreasonable assumption that in order to conduct research a library must be close at hand for curatorial staff, and that this library must be under the control of the museum; practically every major museum, since the date of its foundation, has possessed a library. This issue has been covered to some extent in the British press. See, for example, Deyan Sudjic, ‘Who Will Now Save Our Museums?’, The Observer, Culture Section, 13 February 2005, p. 5. See also a speech to the House of Lords by the chairman of the Science Museum Board of Trustees, Lord Waldegrave, in Hansard, 9 June 2005, column 1018. Today, although e-journals efficiently provide many of the secondary sources needed for curatorial research purposes, there can be no alternative to the great collections of primary sources (including pamphlets and ephemera) which are provided by libraries such as the Science Museum’s.

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make strenuous efforts to understand what was being thrust at them. In the early days of the educational museums, the level of public lectures, some of which were published, was significantly high, and major public figures were secured to offer them.18 Many seem to have been packed with earnest artisans.19 It is now taken for granted that today museums must provide adequate provision for education, especially for school parties, and education departments have thrived. However, their existence has tended to distance curators from the interface with the public, especially in the larger museums. In the past, it was common for curators to devise exhibitions, writing the necessary texts, and even designing the layouts. Now, most of this is the domain of those employed as specialists, with the curators perhaps being left to compile the catalogues and to exercise some sort of overall co-ordination. This might have led to the distancing of the public from those responsible for museum research, and the results of that research, but it is not necessary to be over-pessimistic about this. Research conducted by curators sometimes reaches the public domain surprisingly quickly, and being incorporated in exhibitions shortly after its publication, in digestible form. In some cases, recently conducted research actually seems to have stimulated the wish to mount certain kinds of exhibition. Here is one example: ‘Ancient Faces’ was an exhibition mounted by the British Museum in 1997, which later toured internationally (Walker & Bierbrier, 1997). It dealt with Romano-Egyptian painted portraits incorporated into late mummies, in place of the earlier traditional three-dimensional cartonnage forms. The question curators posed was, ‘Are these portraits true representations of the mummified individuals, or are they symbolic likenesses?’ This led to further questions such as: ‘If true likenesses, when were they painted? Was it during the healthy life of the subject (most seem to represent youthful, vigorous faces), or was it when death seemed likely, or were the portraits posthumously produced?’ In some of the assemblages, both the portrait and skull were present. By using scanning X-ray techniques to build up a likely form of the subject’s physiognomy, it was possible to judge whether matches were probable or not. The results of the research were presented to the public through the exhibition very shortly after the results were obtained. This added great interest, and it could be used beneficially by the public relations and press departments to generate interest both in the exhibition and in the nature of behind-the-scenes museum research. The image of the museum curator as an unworldly, unapproachable boffin can be confounded by presenting comprehendible results such as these. Moving now to the curators themselves, their understanding of a wide range of museum processes is necessary, even if there are specialists available to carry out the actual tasks. No longer can they enjoy the luxury of conforming to the popular image of being elderly, unworldly and as begrimed as their artefacts. They are deeply aware of the need for the museum to live within its means, to raise funds, to take account of the needs of visitors from all backgrounds, and to develop a positive public image. At the same time, they appreciate the core responsibility of attending to the advancement of knowledge in their various fields, and this can only too easily lead to conflicts in how they manage their time at work. All productive curators take their 18

One example, of many which could be cited, is: South Kensington Museum, Free Evening Lectures (Chapman and Hall, London, 1876). See also Thomas Greenwood, Museums and Galleries (Simkin, Marshall and Co., London, 1888), Chapter 12, ‘Museum Lectures’, pp. 210–215, where Greenwood argues for the endowment of lecturers’ posts and research. 19 A particularly graphic description of a lecture in a museum (Museum of Practical Geology) by Thomas Huxley is given in Bernard H. Becker, Scientific London (Appleton & Co., New York, 1875), pp. 186–188.

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research home with them at night and at the weekend. The situation is getting worse rather than better, with external bodies expecting to have greater influence on what activities museums should be pursuing, and none of these is likely to tie-in with curatorial research programmes.20 Another serious factor which needs proper evaluation is the decline in numbers of the ‘pure curator’. With the broadening of museum programmes and responsibilities, the balance of staffing has moved towards generalist administrators and away from specialist curators. There are simply fewer curators than there once were and of those who remain, not only do many of them have to cover much broader disciplinary areas, but they are also required to spend much more of their time dealing with general administrative tasks. Some museums have seen very sharp declines. In one UK national museum, for example, there are now only 15 curators compared with a strength of about 60 some 30 years ago. Current managements might dispute the actual figures, but there are certainly fewer scholarly curators in many museums than there once were.21 It has to be agreed that there is a problem in deciding what the ‘right’ level of curation should be, and what is the ‘right’ quantity and quality of research which might be expected from a museum. It might be possible to judge this in a broader academic context. As all public servants have to expect, demands made on them from the outside world need to be met. Those made of curators from universities and research institutes can only be met if the level of discourse between them is at a comparable scholarly level. In other words, curators need to be part of the wider academic world and to be respected by it. They must participate in specialist conferences, present papers and publish their work in well-regarded journals. Thus, they are likely to find themselves leading a dual existence, one being academic and the other being the visitor-friendly, ‘edutainment’-abounding, commercially achieving museum of today. As well as being responsive to the outside scholar, curators need to be proactive in developing and promoting their own research programmes. Curators invariably have large quantities of primary resource material in their care, and much of it, if not most, is unknown to the outside world. Its potential as evidence in research has in most cases been severely undervalued, maybe because of difficulty of access, lack of documentation or timidity of promotion. There may even be an accountability issue, if museums hide their lights under bushels, with resources which could have been valuable languishing unpublished and unconcealed in remote storage units. The under-use of collections may also be for additional, external reasons. There is the question of research fashionability to be considered, as research fashions change with time. The concerns showed by Lord Dainton and his committee, that museums were moving away from work in systematic biology, is reflected by a general shift in research interests in a number of fields at the time. (One of the Natural History Museum’s reasons for reducing its strengths in certain areas where it had held curatorial expertise was that it wanted to take on non-taxonomically based areas of research for which external funding sources had 20

That the nature of the job of some curators has changed in recent years is revealed by many comments in Sir John Pope-Hennessy’s autobiography, Learning to Look (Heinemann, London, 1991). As a Keeper in the Victoria and Albert Museum he spent a significant part of his time conducting research or working up named lectures. For example, p. 215: “I spent summer after summer in Italy while I was working on the catalogue. Sculptures cannot be looked at rapidly; they must be recorded slowly and seen repeatedly.” 21 The author of a history of the Victoria and Albert Museum claims that the proportion of curatorial to total staff increased between 1978 (24.8%) and 1992 (31.8%), see Anthony Burton, Vision & Accident. The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A Publications, London, 1999), p. 238. Whatever the actual change, these figures seem very high. For a contrary view on the adequacy of curatorial numbers, see Anna Somers-Cocks contribution to the discussion in the Royal Society of Arts meeting on Scholarship in Museums, ref. 36, p. 388.

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become available.) Similar changes had taken place in other disciplines: archaeology, fine art and the history of science. There is no reason why fashions should not change, or why material culture or natural object studies should always retain a central position in scholarship when there are other routes to pursue. Connoisseurship, as an approach in art historical studies, has declined in significance; sociological interests have become important in archaeology. Bundles of drawings and boxes of flint hand-axes do not dominate the centre stage as they once did. On the other hand, the decline might partly be blamed on curators, who have failed to exploit material culture studies themselves. In the history of science, some curators have been able to show the strength of instrumental studies, and how these can complement textual approaches (Fox, 1990). If the situation is to improve, curators must take care not to form themselves into impervious clusters, excluding the outside world. Neither should they join the other side, and associate themselves with research fashions of some university scholars and fail to utilise (and, indeed, proselytise) the benefits of the particular resources for which they care. As the Director-General of the Staatliche Museen Preussicher Kulturbesitz stated in straightforward terms at a conference held in London in October 1990: “Museum research means, above all, object research” (Dube, 1990). There is a slightly different issue concerning fashionability, which is not about how objects are being used in scholarly research, but in the status of the scholar in society. In his persuasive British Academy Lecture of 2001, Sir Keith Thomas made the point that scholarship is regarded in different ways at different times: “four hundred years ago, scholars enjoyed much higher esteem than they do now” (Thomas, 2002). It is not necessary to go back so far into the past to be aware of the decline in the status of the scholar. Frank Furedi believes that the process is one which continues today when he writes: “Individual scholars pursuing their passionate interests increasingly risk labels such as ‘irrelevant’, ‘elitist’, ‘out-of-touch’ and ‘marginal’. Scholarship, the pursuit of excellence and truth, is frequently represented as a bizarre, self-indulgent and irrelevant pursuit” (Furedi, 2004). Museum curators may have the desire to pursue research, but they may not have the necessary institutional backing, or they may lack resources, such as time or money. Universities can deal with these problems by providing sabbatical leave. This concept is rarely available to curators, though it could be extended to those who would use such time valuably away from their museums. Some museums offer curators a ‘research day’ off each week, allowing them to absent themselves from their desks and the demands made by colleagues, visitors, telephones and e-mails. This can be extremely beneficial, though it may provide a rather too staccato basis for conducting certain kinds of research, where thoughts and ideas need to be developed in a continuous way over long periods. At the British Museum, it was made known that if important work could be brought to a conclusion (usually the refinement of a manuscript into a state which could be passed to a publisher), up to three months leave of absence could be requested. The effect was to put more pressure on colleagues who had to deal with extra work, but there seemed to be no resentment. A different approach has been the formation of research departments (the Victoria and Albert Museum created one in the early 1990s (Smith, 1993)), to which curators and outside scholars can be seconded for periods of time. Concerns have been expressed that this kind of division splits up institutions, with a privileged class of scholars on the one hand, and drudges who are left behind to do the routine work on the other. The system does seem to work, however, and it does not deter the large majority of curators

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who remain in their departments from following the traditional technique of hiding away from their departmental heads by day, or from burning the midnight oil. The point was earlier made that rather little has been published on the general issue of museum research. In 1990, an international conference, ‘Scholarship in Museums’, was sponsored by the Royal Society of Arts in London. Major figures from the UK, Italy, Germany, France and the USA read papers, largely about the position of scholarship in their museums. Most of the presentations, along with some revealing discussion, were published either in Journal of the Society of Arts22 or Museum Management and Curatorship.23 The meeting may be recalled by some who attended it as being a rather badtempered one—polarised between Old School Scholar-Directors and The New Museum Administrator-Directors. An editorial comment in the latter journal stated that although transcripts of all papers had been made available from recordings by the organisers, three of the speakers did not wish for their contributions to be published, though they eventually appeared in non-verbatim form. The one recent, very thorough, investigation into museum research was commissioned by the Museums and Galleries Commission and published in 1999. Fieldwork for Lifting the Veil was conducted in a number of ways, including the circulation of a questionnaire in which respondents were required to offer quantified answers to questions (Gunn & Prescott, 1999). A total of 215 museums and related organisations sent in replies, out of the 341 which had been circulated. Additionally, 30 indepth face-to-face interviews were conducted. The project methodology is clearly described in the report. This is a valuable assessment of the state of research, although some of the results appear to be oddly contradictory. It is clear that what constitutes research varied from one institution to another, and one curator to another. To summarise the summary, about 90% of respondents felt that scholarly, collections-based research should occupy a significant role in a museum, though 44% of museums did not include provision for research in their mission statements or forward plans. Of those individuals who replied, 80% felt that they were not as active in research as they would like to be; 71% of these said that the reason was lack of time and 61% said there were financial constraints. Only 30% of museums made provision for research and publication in their budgets. Respondents generally felt that research should be project-based and rooted in the collections; 62% of them undertook research for exhibitions and 54% for collections catalogues. (This last figure seems remarkably high, given the actual published output.) Replies to the questionnaire indicated that in many areas in the past decade, research activity based on collections research and responses to enquiries was increasing. (This, too, is a surprising result—it possibly reflects increasing correspondence by letter and other means with members of the public.) The exercise which produced Lifting the Veil was certainly a very worthwhile one, but its main value will be if it is followed up by similar investigations in the future, so that changes can be tracked over time. Asking curators about how they were operating a decade 22

‘Scholarship in Museums’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 139, 1990–91, pp. 176–202. ‘Scholarship in Museums’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 9, 1990, pp. 341–409. An editorial note, which preceded the transcriptions, stated, ‘.pre-conference media coverage in the United Kingdom ought to exploit what was perceived to be a major difference of opinion within the United Kingdom museums. Some may have been disappointed, but in the event the conference provided the forum for a wide range of contributions and the exploration of different approaches.’ This series of papers includes, as Appendix III (pp. 406–409), the research policy of the Canadian Museum of Civilisation, submitted by its then director, George Macdonald. 23

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ago, as was requested by the investigators, does not provide data about which there can be much confidence; it is difficult enough to be objective about how one spent one’s time last week. It would be useful to know about the standing of museum-based research in relation to research conducted elsewhere, for example, in the universities. More data gathering is needed. For the British Museum, two research registers were published, covering the output over the years 1991 to 1996.24 These may be found to be useful from the point of view of statistics and areas of research activity, though no attempt is made to determine its quality. To deal with this kind of lacuna, the Museum started to conduct a form of peer group review of a number of key activities, inviting eminent outside experts to judge performance and point out achievements and weaknesses (no external body tried to persuade the Museum to act in this way, it was an entirely voluntary action). The third of these exercises, which took place from March 1999, considered research activity. A team of six external figures, four from British universities and two from museums (one of whom was from the Netherlands), was invited to conduct its ‘fieldwork’ amongst the staff. Questionnaires were sent out, individuals were interviewed, published work was assessed, and finally a day’s seminar was held to which staff, trustees, other outside scholars and government officials were invited. Each member of the peer group made a formal presentation and transcripts became available in 2001, on the museum’s website and in printed form (Williams, 2001). Research policy was addressed at the meeting to a greater extent than quality of output. The result was that the museum was able to become more closely aware of its relationship with external scholarship than it had been before in the past. Looking to the future, it is likely that pressures, largely financial ones, will continue to affect museums’ ability to give research its necessary high priority. There will continue to be conflicts and these may become public issues. In July 2003, a headline appeared in the Daily Telegraph saying: “Museums are Being ‘Dumbed Down’”. The piece started: “Professor Christopher Smout, an author, academic and Historiographer Royal, said the National Museums of Scotland were failing to match the standards of world-class institutions. His remarks followed a policy statement which put historical research at the end of a list of 11 priorities.Prof. Smout complained ‘It is unimaginable to me that a great museum would not have research and scholarship very high on its list of priorities.’ He was supported by Professor Ted Cowan, professor of history at Glasgow University, who said that museums were being run by ‘bean counters’.”25 The fact that this dispute was covered by serious newspapers, and would be seen by large numbers of readers, was a healthy development, not necessarily for the views which were being expressed, but because the question of research in museums was being a public airing. Scholarship, or the lack of it, needs to be noticed and discussed. Museums have been all too 24 The British Museum Research Register 1991–1993 (The British Museum, London, 1994); British Museum Research Register 1994–1996 (The British Museum, London, 1997). Introductory essays are included in each of the volumes which consider aspects of collections-based research in the British Museum. 25 The Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2003. See also ‘Scotland Ignored’, letter to The Scotsman, 17 July 2003, and the response from the director of the National Museums of Scotland, ‘Broadening the Appeal of Scotland’s Museums’, in The Scotsman, 23 July 2003. Also, see ‘Museums Face the Wrath of Queen’s Historian’, in Scotland on Sunday, 20 July 2003. The furore arose from a list of priorities published in, National Museums of Scotland, Into the Future. Corporate Plan 2003–2007 [2003], where the eleventh and last-listed priority was, “Closing the gaps in knowledge about the collections, for specialists and non-specialists, through our research programme.”

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effective at failing to market their research activity to a wider public, missing the opportunities to get new discoveries noticed in newspapers and failing to ensure that reviews of their books are published in journals. Public interest in scholarly achievement needs to be promoted more vigorously. Only when demands and criticisms are heard from an external public will it be possible to take decisions on resource activity more objectively. The greatest risk to research in museums is when no one realises that it is being carried out.

References Burrett, F.G. (1982). Rayner scrutiny of the departmental museums: Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum: Report, London. Davis, P. (1996). Museums and the natural environment. The role of natural history museums in biological conservation (pp. 146–170). London: Leicester University Press. Dube, W-D. (1990). The state museums in Berlin and their tradition in scholarship. Museum Management and Curatorship, 9, 346–351. Esme (1987). A history of the commission. Standing commission on museums and galleries 1931–1981. Museums and galleries commission 1981–1986. London: Museums and Galleries Commission. Fleming, D. (2002). Positioning the museum for social inclusion. In R. Sandell (Ed.), Museums, society, inequality. London: Routledge. Fox, R. (1990). Research and curatorship in the national science museums: A reflexion on threats and opportunities. Impact of Science and Society, 40, 263–271. Furedi, F. (2004). Where have all the intellectuals gone? Confronting 21st century philistinism. London: Verso. Gee, H. (1990). One in six jobs to go. Nature, 26 April 1990, 805. Gunn, A. V., & Prescott, R. G. W. (1999). Lifting the veil. Research and scholarship in United Kingdom museums and galleries. London: Museums and Galleries Commission. Smith, C. S. (1993). The practice of research at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Museum Management and Curatorship, 12, 349–359. Thomas, K. (2002). Life of learning. Proceedings of the British Academy, 117, 201–235. Walker, S., & Bierbrier, M. (1997). Ancient faces: Mummy portraits from ancient Egypt. London: British Museum Press. Williams, J. (ed.) (2001). Research and the British Museum. Proceedings of a peer review held on 15 March 1999. With contributions from David Cannadine, Craig Clunas, Michael Crawford, Barry Cunliffe, Jan Piet Filedt Kok, Deborah Swallow. With an introduction by John Mack and Jonathan Williams. London: British Museum. Wright, G. (ed.) (1996) The formation of national collections of art and archaeology. Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Studies in the History of Art 47, Symposium Papers XXVII. Washington: National Gallery of Art.

Robert Anderson has held senior positions in UK museums: as Director of the Royal Scottish Museum, National Museums of Scotland and British Museum. He has been involved in recent building projects, notably the Museum of Scotland, and the BM’s Great Court. Earlier in his career he worked as a curator in Edinburgh and London, specialising in the history of science. Currently he serves on the boards of four British museums, museum foundations in Seoul and Madrid, and is working on a book dealing with museums and the working classes. He is an honorary fellow of St John’s College, Oxford.