Implementing Public Value in the National Gallery of London: Prospects and Perspectives (original) (raw)

On Saturday, 28 March 2009 a protest called Bevar Nasjonalgalleriet (translated, Save the National Gallery) took place outside the Nasjonalgalleriet, Norway’s National Museum of Fine art. As a response to the government decision to move the museum to a new building in another part of Oslo hundreds of demonstrators gathered and demonstrated that “national museums are emphatically performing spaces” (Knell et al., 2011, p. 225). The protest consisted in a choreographed action formed by people holding hands outside the walls of the Nasjonalgalleriet as if they were the frame of it. Burch remarks, “A protest such as this refutes a still widespread suspicion that national museums are, at best, solid and unchangeable and, at worst, dull and irrelevant” (Knell et al., 2011, p. 225). By starting with this representation, I aim to juxtapose the active power of the public within the definition of the National Gallery of London’s programmes. Today museums are exposed to diverse demands to demonstrate their roles in news worlds (Carbonell, 2012). Furthermore, in a period of pragmatic change museums’ value is no-longer taken for granted and are requested to justify their existence, “in hard economic terms” (Carbonell, 2012: 558). Moreover, museums (especially National Galleries) are not only feeling the pressure of their changing role in the society but are also trying to democratise Art while pursuing prestige (Knell et al., 2011). The large literature about the changing role of the museums and its audience developed different visions on what a museum might become (Hooper-Greenhill, 2001). Furthermore, the cuts on funding and ‘coercive’ power of the government in the UK context resonate in the approach museums adopt with their public. Indeed, Museums and public institutions in Britain have recently been a strategic and political tool for political soft-power. The interest in particular in museums, as proved by the increase in studies, is indeed also a consequence of “the politicisation of the uses of culture” (Hooper-Greenhill, 2011: 363) convicted these institutions to be educational organisation and meet quantitative parameters to get funds. This paper starts with an introduction to the National Gallery’s context. Therefore, it explores the unclear definition of public in proximity of the audience. For my research sake, I will evaluate the overall approach to the public through the lens of Public value. Hence some interrogation around its concepts, the National Gallery’s programme from 2015 until 2018 is examined though ‘the Revised Public Framework’, recently developed by the Treasury (Gov.uk, 2019).