Taking control at the British Museum
On March 1 Richard Brooks, writing in the Observer, revealed that the government had declined to approve an appointment that the British Museum wished to make to its board of trustees. That might sound innocuous (after all, if the government has to approve candidates, surely it can say no, too?). But the process, in which the museum is trusted to choose wisely and is rarely questioned, has become almost a formality. It is very difficult to see how the government could have thought the candidate was not up to the job. It then looks like political or ideological interference, a serious matter, whether it’s a one-off or a harbinger of more to come.
The candidate was Dame Mary Beard. She is professor of classics at the University of Cambridge, professor of ancient literature at the Royal Academy, author, broadcaster, blogger (for the Times Literary Supplement) and tweeter (with more than a quarter of a million followers), and a popular public figure. One’s immediate response to the news that the bmhad selected her as a trustee was, what took it so long?
She is also a charismatic feminist, bright, sceptical and ready to engage with topical issues that might seem to touch only tangentially on her academic field – further qualities, surely, appropriate for a trustee of an institution whose values and actions are being publicly questioned. But given the impossibility that the former achievements could have been reason for the government's concern, it can only have been the latter that caused it to block her appointment. Brooks quotes “Whitehall sources” as saying, specifically, that she had been turned down “because of her pro-European views”. This is new territory for politics and culture in modern Britain.
It also looks like a witless move by the government (made last year under the premiership of Theresa May), when it has a significant control over the choice of trustees on the one hand, and when the bmcan easily ignore its rebuttal of Beard on the other. Since 1963 the board has had up to 25 members, of which more than half – 15 – are actually appointed by the prime minister. Others are the gift of the Queen (one), and the secretary of state for digital, culture, media & sport (four), the latter on the nominations of academic societies: Beard’s proposal seems to have come from the British Academy, of which she is a fellow (at the time, the dcms secretary was Jeremy Wright). But there are five more positions, and these are appointed by the trustees themselves. Turned away by the dcms, Beard can be brought back by the trustees whenever a suitable vacancy occurs. When that happens – assuming no further interference – the board will not become an overnight gang of anti-Brexit crusaders (“we are hardly a bunch of punks or revolutionaries,” one trustee told me). It includes nine – ten, with Beard – who probably hold “pro-European views”, among them Chris Gosden (My archaeology Jul/Aug 2006/89), Grayson Perry (My archaeology Jan/Feb 2012/ 122) and Sir Paul Nurse (Brexit “is sleepwalking into a disaster”). But there are at least six trustees who equally probably support the government’s Brexit policy, and a further six whose Brexit views are hard to discern.
So might the objection to Beard have been more of a warning than a plan expected to succeed? If the prime minister can appoint 15 of 25 of the
bm’s trustees, this pales when set beside the boards of other public London institutions. The National Gallery, Tate, the v&a, the National Portrait Gallery and the Wallace Collection have boards for which they can pick at most one trustee: all the rest are appointed by the prime minister. Is the ultimate goal control of the British Museum?
If that sounds far-fetched, consider the times. In January someone in government told the media that if the
bbc appointed a new director general it didn’t like, it would find a chairperson who would remove them. When the prime minster selected his new cabinet in February, his chancellor, Sajid Javid, resigned: Boris Johnson wanted too much control – and got it with Javid’s replacement (“an enthusiastic Brexiteer” according to the Economist). On March 8 Charlotte Edwardes reported in the Sunday Times that Sarah Healey, the current dcmssecretary, had written “an astonishing letter” to “all publicly funded arts organisations”. This looked forward to “increased interest from No 10 and [the] Cabinet Office in all future appointments”, including those “where
dcmsdoes not have a role formalised by statute”.
The British Museum receives around £50m a year from the dcms, approaching half its total income. A slap on the wrist over Mary Beard’s appointment may be no more than an opening shot.