Laurie Magnus’ departure as founding chairman of Historic England raises concerns about the direction of heritage under new leadership, says Simon Tait.
Michael Heseltine was no longer environment secretary when the National Heritage Act came into effect in 1983, but he was its godfather, patron of perhaps the most significant cultural change before the National Lottery a decade later.
Before the Act our heritage was imprisoned inside glass boxes or behind ropes, something to be revered from a distance and to be protected from sticky fingers. Our national museums were run by the civil service mostly as part of the Department for Education and Science which approved their budgets. There were no blockbuster exhibitions of the kind we have become familiar with; anything earned by a temporary show, shops or refreshment reverted back to the department which approved, or not, exhibition proposals. Exhibitions largely had to be created from museums’ own collections, an exercise in ingenuity for curators, and there was virtually no commercial promotion with communications operations mostly defensive, not pro-active.
The government’s motive in bringing in this revolutionary Act was financial. The prime minister Margaret Thatcher was in serious pre-election cost-cutting mode, and these institutions were enormously expensive to run through the civil service bureaucracy...Keep reading on Arts Industry.
Michael Heseltine was no longer environment secretary when the National Heritage Act came into effect in 1983, but he was its godfather, patron of perhaps the most significant cultural change before the National Lottery a decade later.
Before the Act our heritage was imprisoned inside glass boxes or behind ropes, something to be revered from a distance and to be protected from sticky fingers. Our national museums were run by the civil service mostly as part of the Department for Education and Science which approved their budgets. There were no blockbuster exhibitions of the kind we have become familiar with; anything earned by a temporary show, shops or refreshment reverted back to the department which approved, or not, exhibition proposals. Exhibitions largely had to be created from museums’ own collections, an exercise in ingenuity for curators, and there was virtually no commercial promotion with communications operations mostly defensive, not pro-active.
The government’s motive in bringing in this revolutionary Act was financial. The prime minister Margaret Thatcher was in serious pre-election cost-cutting mode, and these institutions were enormously expensive to run through the civil service bureaucracy...Keep reading on Arts Industry.