The museum’s sprawling collections should be consolidated, with items sold to fund much-needed developments, says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins
that questioned whether “effective collections management can be truly effective and efficient without some disposals”.
The answer has to be that, within appropriate boundaries, grownup trustees should be trusted to edit their collections, either to improve them or to meet a crisis. As the museum has found with its Parthenon marbles, a kneejerk refusal even to discuss such issues just makes enemies. Other, newer museums around the world are being told by the museum they can never, ever hope to display items from long-defunct empires, and that such items must forever remain in a Bloomsbury vault. It will not wash.
A more immediate source of funds is surely beyond argument. Free entry to the museum, except for special exhibitions, is not a moral issue but rather a device to keep its grant as a top visitor attraction. The New York Met now charges $30, the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum €22.50 and the Louvre €17. Are they immoral? Deals can be done for children and students, but free museum entry is simply a generous donation by British taxpayers, mostly to foreign tourists.
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