The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
‘We must never seek to hide the past’
Judith Woods meets V&A director Tristram Hunt
FOR A CHAP HOLDING the front line in the culture wars, Tristram Hunt looks surprisingly chipper. Museums are the new battlefields where the statue-toppling Left and hands-off-our-history Right are slugging it out for control of the narrative. But does Victoria and Albert director Hunt resemble a man under siege?
He most certainly does not, what with the launch of his latest (fabulously unputdownable) book The Radical Potter ,on Josiah Wedgwood, who first benefited from then vigorously set about helping to abolish slavery; a second series of BBC Two’s critically acclaimed Secrets of the Museum under his belt; and a controversial strategy to help his organisation recover financially from the pandemic.
In 2019-20, the South Kensington museum welcomed 3.7 million visitors. There are estimates it will take up to three years for those numbers to recover. Its annual turnover is £80 million, half of which comes from government and grants. The museum makes about £37 million through exhibitions and commercial activities, the rest being covered by donations. In 2020, it saw a drop of almost 70 per cent in its self-generated revenue.
Hunt is upfront about the challenges: ‘The pandemic hasn’t destroyed the arts but it has hit many institutions really, really badly. We’ve got a £10 million structural deficit we need to pay off. We are having to close two days a week until some time in 2022 and we’ve had to make some really painful staff reductions and change our ways of working.’
About 15 per cent – 140 employees – were made redundant. Of these, only six were compulsory redundancies. But some highly vocal critics claimed there was a dumbing-down agenda behind the restructuring that Hunt wanted to do.
‘It was all pandemic-driven,’ he says, matter-of-factly. ‘We had to achieve financial savings. None of us wanted to restructure but we had to make some swift and painful adjustments because we lost 95 per cent of our visitors overnight.’
The controversy lay in Hunt’s suggestion
that the V&A restructure along period lines, rather than material types, such as metalwork or textiles. His championing of chronology led to accusations of an oldfashioned ‘1066 and all that’ approach. Academics called it ‘catastrophic’ and he found himself having to write to the Telegraph letters page to defend the changes, before making an abrupt U-turn.
Now the furore’s died down, he says, ‘We had a staff consultation on restructuring on period lines and no one really liked it. They explained why, and I could see the force of their argument so we came back with plan B, which was a consolidation of material types.’ Hunt smoothly portrays his volte-face as a victory for common sense. ‘People rightly defend their subject matter and their expertise. But it’s not hold-the-front-page stuff.’
Perhaps not for him, but the suspicion persists that cost-cutting will lead to a loss of expertise, thereby undermining the V&A’S world-class reputation and causing it to succumb to the low-brow mediocrity of generalism.
‘The V&A will always be a centre of excellence for the study of material culture, whether that’s Thomas Chippendale, Grinling Gibbons or any of our new acquisitions,’ insists Hunt, vigorously. ‘We are far more self-questioning about the nature of “encyclopedic museums”, but I would say there’s still a really important role for them. The global appetite is growing for them; they are being built in China, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.’
None of these places are particularly associated with liberal enlightenment, but cultural treasures will always attract an audience; even if their provenance is disputed. In these isles, it is the dark side of colonialism that is now casting its shadow far and wide.
‘It’s kind of wonderful we are having these energetic debates about British history and identity, and we have to ensure organisations like the V&A are taking part in these conversations without being partisan,’ Hunt says. ‘It’s not easy, we get it right and we get it wrong; but we will keep trying.’
Here is Hunt, in his slim British-tailored suit and Hermès tie, charming, charismatic and, at 48, still absurdly boyish. Handsome too. Did I not say? He’s living proof of the adage that politics is showbusiness for ugly people: after his gilded progress through academia, a senior history lectureship, bestselling books and TV series, his career as Labour MP for Stokeon-trent Central lasted a mere seven years.
That was 2010-17, before he landed the front-of-house (aka showbizzy) post at one of the UK’S most prestigious cultural institutions. His departure, two years before the red wall turned blue, was a loss for the body politic if not for him personally. Had he stayed on, might he not have doughtily defended the seat against all comers?
‘That’s very generous of you to suggest, but I think there were greater forces at work,’ Hunt chuckles, with eminent reasonableness. A public-school, Cambridge-educated Blairite and centrist, with a likeable air of engagement, to the Right he was the acceptable face of the Left. Unfortunately, to the Left, he was the unacceptable face of the Right.
‘I don’t think I’ll go back to politics; I haven’t got much more door-knocking left in me,’ he says with wry honesty. ‘I was always in opposition and I vividly remember that Saturday-morning feeling of putting on my canvassing clothes and ringing doorbells only to be told, “I don’t vote,” or get the blame for policies that had nothing to do with Labour. I really enjoyed my time at Stoke, but I can’t see myself starting out again anywhere else.’
Hunt had been tipped as a future leader and insiders say he would have eventually succeeded had David Milito band, whom he backed, risen power. Instead, Miliband’s brother Ed was anointed as party leader and brought down by (among other things) a bacon sandwich. When Jeremy Corbyn was unexpectedly installed, Hunt, having
‘It’s exciting that so much energy is being directed towards our cultural life from Left and Right’
served as Shadow Education Secretary, was frozen out in backbench Siberia. His talent may have been wasted but not his time; he wrote books on Friedrich Engels and Ten Cities that Made an Empire. With his cultural résumé, the V&A was the perfect fit – unlike the rather more esoteric choice of ex-chancellor of the Exchequer and former investment banker George Osborne to chair the British Museum.
‘I was an historian so I think that lets me off the hook,’ he murmurs diplomatically of that appointment. Speaking of the British Museum, I muse, it’s hard not to feel fuzzily nostalgic about those blissfully uncomplicated years when the single biggest issue was the ongoing spat over the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece. ‘Oh we definitely don’t call them that these days,’ Hunt corrects me with a broad, apologetic smile, just in case I’m teasing (which I am). ‘They are very much the Parthenon Marbles.’
They are also very much not his problem. He has his own fiefdom to worry about amid the cacophony of competing opinions on how – or even whether – we should portray Britain’s colonial past and the spoils of Empire. ‘We’ve not been cancelled yet, to my knowledge,’ he says affably. ‘But it’s exciting that so much energy is being directed towards our cultural life from both Left and Right, whether that’s about the BBC or the Proms. Some of the arguments can be quite narrow and limited but it’s up to institutions like the V&A to achieve the right balance.’
The museum’s £2 million ceramic-tiled Sackler Courtyard has attracted
controversy on the grounds of the Sackler family’s role in the US opioid drugs crisis. But wisely, Hunt shut the argument down early on with a crisp statement that no more donations would be made or accepted and the courtyard would not be renamed.
The only other outstanding issue at present is the fate of the so-called Maqdala gold crown, an exquisitely crafted, hugely important symbol of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, taken, along with a host of other objects, by the British Army during the 1868 Abyssinian Expedition. Hunt is unequivocal about the calls for the haul to be repatriated.
‘Our trustees are bound not to “deaccession” items; once something enters the collection, it can’t leave,’ he says, which takes the heat from the debate, while sounding like the ultimate administrative cop-out. ‘That doesn’t mean they can’t be in Ethiopia in the years to come; the political challenge is to work out a way of sharing the collections.’
Unsurprisingly, Hunt subscribes to Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden’s philosophy of ‘retain and explain’: the past must not be erased. For example, Hunt would have preferred Edward Colston’s statue to have been removed to the Bristol Museum before it ended up in the drink, but is phlegmatic about its new position, laid on its back, still daubed in paint and without dignity, in the city’s M Shed museum, alongside placards from the protest and a timeline of events.
Must arch-colonialist and white supremacist Rhodes fall from his pediment on Oriel College in Oxford, I wonder? ‘I rather like Antony Gormley’s suggestion that his statue be turned to face the wall,’ responds Hunt. ‘It doesn’t deny his existence but it conveys our sense of shame about him.’
It’s this degree of nuance that is often lost in the strident argy-bargy over ownership of the past and the objects that represent it, particularly those that have been looted. Meanwhile, the majority of visitors simply come to enjoy and learn and be inspired in this world-class museum of art, design and fashion; a full 40 per cent of visitors work in the creative industries. As does Hunt’s wife Juliet Thornback, who runs the quirky homeware company Thornback & Peel with her business partner Delia Peel.
He confesses that during lockdown, which the family spent at home in north London, the bulk of their ‘standard catastrophic’ homeschooling of their three children, aged 10 to 13, fell to his spouse.
‘None of the children listened to a word I said,’ he shrugs, relatably. ‘But their mother had them making amazing dioramas and they planted a sunflower – just the one but it lasted a very long time so was quite good value. There were photocopies sent home from school but they did the bulk of their learning themselves. We didn’t do the lockdown puppy thing – I stood firm on that – but after the cat “passed” we did get two kittens.’
Hunt’s time was spent on endless Zoom calls as he scrambled to shore up the V&A’S financial position and oversee construction of V&A East, two sites being built in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as part of the Mayor of London’s £1.1 billion Olympic legacy project, due to open in 2024 and 2025 respectively.
There is no question about introducing an entrance fee. ‘Free museums and galleries are part of British culture,’ he says. ‘But I would argue strongly for the imposition of an hotel tax to support the cultural industry. They have it in cities like New York, Venice and Dubai and it seems only right that tourists should contribute when they come here.’
Hunt also spent the past year finishing The Radical Potter. The subject matter might appear rather niche. Yet the dust jacket extravagantly avers that Josiah Wedgwood, a son of Staffordshire, was the Steve Jobs of his age. Headline-grabbing hyperbole? Not a bit of it. In parts it reads like a thriller.
Two chapters in and I’m a paid-up proselyte, explaining to my teenagers that no, Zoella was not the first influencer, actually. In fact it was Queen Charlotte, wife of ‘mad’ George III, who was the arbiter of taste, whom Wedgwood assiduously, wisely, courted.
Nor were brand ambassadors invented by the likes of Aston Martin ferrying James Bond or Omega providing the watch on his wrist. In Regency Europe, Wedgwood was handpicking members of the beau monde to show off covetable new wares in their parlours.
‘Wedgwood had a brilliant design mentality,’ says Hunt. ‘He was able to pivot as soon as the market changed; there was no sentimentality, he understood his customers.’ Like Jobs, Wedgwood was hooked on innovation. Like Jobs, he created a need – let’s make no bones about it, a greed – for newness and acquisition.
‘The Georgian economy was interested in luxury and design,’ he says. ‘As tastes turned to the neoclassical, there was a stampede for Wedgwood vases and portrait cameos.’
His legacy is testament to the need for nuance when examining the figures who shaped our past. For with the popularity of tea came demand for sugar from the plantations of the colonies. ‘Wedgwood’s early business empire prospered from the triangular trade that rested on slave capture and labour that fed global commerce,’ says Hunt. ‘But I don’t believe he made that connection, strange as that may seem to us today. Later, when he threw himself into the abolitionist cause, it wasn’t so much to achieve racial harmony or equality; he felt it tawdry that Britain should be involved in such a cruel trade.’
To raise funds for the campaign, Wedgwood produced, at his own expense, a medallion featuring a kneeling slave in chains and the inscription, ‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother?’ It became an emblem of the movement and was worn by abolitionists worldwide. ‘It was quite literally what we would mock as “virtue signalling”,’ says Hunt. ‘But the sheer numbers who displayed their disgust at the slave trade had a major impact and slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1807, 12 years after Wedgwood’s death.’ His statue, erected in 1862, still stands, undisputed, in Stoke-on-trent.
If Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic economy is to build back better, would it do well to channel Wedgwood and how he drove the industrial revolution? Is it time for a similar post-pandemic renaissance of the arts? ‘I think that sense of regional and national partnership that the Victorians had is something to be inspired by. Wedgwood made his products in Stoke but he only sold them in London, so London fashion and regional design and industry came together, and as London grew, Stoke grew. It’s not a zero sum.’
There is scarcely room – much less appetite – for a new Albertopolis, the name coined in the 1850s for the cultural and educational boom that took place around South Kensington. Instead, the focus is on reaching out far beyond the confines of Exhibition Road. ‘We’re doing something similar with Designlab Nation, which is a V&A initiative supporting design-technology teaching in schools in Sunderland, Stoke, Blackburn and Coventry,’ offers Hunt.
So Hunt remains an optimist and, despite the criticisms laid at his door, declares himself to be ‘excited and privileged’ by the prospect of taking the V&A forward. ‘The key to all this is being really transparent about the history of each object. We must never seek to hide the past.’
‘I would argue strongly for the imposition of an hotel tax to support the cultural industry’