Culture clash: Cutbacks will paint arts out of society

CULLING quangos is the new bonfire of the vanities.

Onto the pyre are to be thrown the National Gallery, the Irish Museum of Modern art (IMMA), and the Crawford Gallery in Cork.

Lest you be in anyway concerned, fret not. The merged entities will “retain separate identities”. The National Archives and the Irish Manuscripts Commission are to be merged into the National Library while retaining “separate identities”.

The savings from these mergers are so significant that on Mar 13 Arts Minister Jimmy Deenihan told the Dáil “it is not yet possible to properly assess the issue of projected savings”. Nonetheless, plans are so advanced that “heads of a bill” have been drafted to give legislative effect to dismantling part of the public patrimony.

The melting pot for the national cultural institutions is being put on the fire just as there is also a major question over the future of Culture Ireland. The national body for the promotion of Irish arts worldwide is threatened with abolition and its functions being subsumed into the Department of Arts, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht.

Just as Ireland is regaining its international standing, the one part of our reputation that remained undimmed is having its institutional architecture pulled asunder. We are rightly told that culture is Ireland’s calling card. It is a key part of our identity abroad and of our quality of life at home.

Yet, for no apparent purpose and no quantifiable savings, its key institutions are being put on death row. Culture is an instrument of diplomacy. If a crude reduction of culture to tourism promotion misses the point, the arts can multiply Ireland’s reach far beyond the efforts of all our other agencies combined.

Major theatre companies, such as the Abbey and Druid, might well make their own way in the world. But Culture Ireland has succeeded in deepening and contextualising the sense of modern Ireland abroad.

Neil Watkins’ edgy, funny and brilliant The Year of Magical Wanking won rave reviews in Sydney and Melbourne. In Copenhagen, the Mártín O’Connor Band provided an Irish presence at the prestigious World Music Expo after a national absence of 11 years. A 20-minute showcase in the city’s main concert hall resulted in bookings for two years.

Culture Ireland is putting Ireland in different contexts as well as opening doors on Broadway and in the West End. Our culture comes from a context. An important part of that context is our national cultural institutions. Their collections are ours. Every book, every painting, is a chance to open minds and to leave an impression.

The planned amalgamations will undermine their separate vocations, and result in a loss of focus and capability. An overarching board, with a single director general, for the three galleries cannot apply to radically different genres the same expertise or sense of direction.

The loss of intellectual energy and institutional focus will, over time, result in a dumbing down of their mission. Their international status will be undermined, securing major exhibitions will be made more difficult, and the fundraising inevitably focus on one at the expense of the others.

These things matter. Museums, galleries, and libraries are important educational institutions. They impact on our wider cultural life. The point is not a sentimental attachment to their past. It is an appreciation of their potential in our future.

Our cultural institutions, like every other state organisation, have scope for change. It is reasonable that they should be asked to come up with radical plans to reduce overheads by sharing services. Marketing, advertising, security, storage, accounting, and human resources are areas that are readily identifiable. It is within their capacity, and that of their parent department, to be smarter. Savings can be made without resorting to mass cultural vandalism, which, in the end, will achieve less than an overhaul of existing arrangements.

Mr Deenihan inherited much of this plan from the previous government, the Fianna Fáil/Green coalition. Its survival is connected to the current Government’s political commitment to proceed with the rationalisation of 48 bodies by the end of this year, and the nomination of another 46 bodies for critical review by the end of June.

Our cultural institutions are now part of a political body count, the cull of the quangos. It is up to Mr Deenihan to find a way of contributing savings more intelligently and to make a principle out of preserving the integrity, and the potential, of our cultural infrastructure.

There is an important role for Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore in this. As minister for foreign affairs, he has the responsibility for charting Ireland’s course in the world. The functions of Culture Ireland were previously vested in his department and it remains an important stakeholder in its operation.

In a year when he holds the chair of the OSCE and is about to lead an Irish presidency of the EU, in 2013, the lunacy of the wreckage being proposed must be obvious. His department was an important leader in the development of culture as a key diplomatic instrument.

He now has a responsibility to renew that leadership. Amid the national strutting and stumbling of recent years, our artists have served us well. They have held up a mirror to our achievements and to our folly. Our cultural institutions have been a place of repose, of public education, and a repository of collections that have challenged and excited us. None of this will change overnight. But it will slowly shrivel and become less than it might have been.

At the inauguration of President Michael D Higgins, Taoiseach Enda Kenny spoke of how our new President would oversee the commemoration of the lock-out, the Easter Rising, the First World War, and the Battle of the Somme.

It is an irony that the first minister for the arts in cabinet, who did so much to energise our cultural potential, may take the salute outside the GPO on Easter Monday 2016 as President of a republic which has seen its cultural capacity denuded.

There is still time and there is clearly a necessity to stop that.

* Gerard Howlin is a public affairs consultant and was a government adviser from 1997 to 2007