Tiffany Jenkins warns against efforts to make art more socially inclusive

We live in philistine times when the beauty of a Renaissance painting cannot be celebrated. To win the funding necessary to keep Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks, the National Gallery recently justified its role in terms of social inclusion.

Funders had eyes and ears for arguments that spoke of political function and stayed silent on the language of aesthetics. Campaigners, desperate to keep the work of art, stopped talking of beauty, technique and genius, and shipped in impoverished teenage mothers to stand in front of the Madonna, with babes in their arms cooing with empathy.

The role of museums and galleries has changed dramatically over the last 10-15 years. A report published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, “Centres for social change: Museums, galleries and archives for all”, spells this out. It instructs curators to take on board the task of “combating social exclusion”. It tells them that they have a duty to “increase individuals’ self-worth, value and motivation” and to raise “self-esteem”.

While this edict was issued by Labour politicians, unfortunately officials in museums and galleries have been quick to embrace their new role, chastising others who are critical.

The focus on the collection has been jettisoned. The study and display of artifacts put to one side. In their place, museum professionals have become campaigners for social issues, missionaries for inclusion who are getting involved in building communities, improving mental health, dealing with disaffected teenagers and educating children. Museums are asked to massage our egos – not stimulate our minds.

Whilst museum directors and curators have many talents, they cannot directly solve the problems of exclusion, raise material standards (which, incidentally, might help address some of these problems), deal with the crisis in education or regenerate communities. A specialist in Egyptian antiquities is probably the wrong person to tackle teenage pregnancies. Dealing with these very real problems is the job of government.

Art and history does not and should not aim to make people feel good about themselves. Trying to make sense of complex ideas and art forms can be a contradictory and dispiriting experience. They sometimes deal with the worst aspects of humanity. If we ask that the role of museums and galleries is to act in one way and to make us feel good, we will constrain them and distort the past. We will turn the work they do, and that artists do, into propaganda.

With the minds of museum and gallery professionals on social issues, the real role of these establishments has been neglected. There is money and plaudits for therapeutic projects but not for the acquisitions, the lifeblood of these institutions, or solid support for intellectual research into the collection. As a result, our museums and galleries are struggling, burdened with a role they cannot fulfill, that detracts from the search for knowledge and truth.

Curators of antiquities would better serve the public by studying their speciality. Museums and galleries need to remain faithful to what they do best: Understanding more about past human cultures and showing and discussing that with us.

Politicians and museum officials need to stop underestimating the public. People want interesting, beautiful and rare artifacts and works of art to look at. People want the experts to share what they know and discover.

Some say the days of social inclusion are over. Culture secretary Tessa Jowell issued a paper, “Government and the value of culture”, in May of this year which some claim shows things are changing. In it she observed, “Too often politicians have been forced to debate culture in terms only of its instrumental benefits to other agendas – education, the reduction of crime, improvements in wellbeing.”

Her criticism of this trend is right and welcome but it quickly falls down. After pointing out the need to celebrate what culture does in and of itself, she turns to a new social mission for culture. Jowell argues that culture has a part to play “in defining and preserving our cultural identity – of the individual, of communities, and of the nation as a whole”.

Is wondering what a Raphael says about our identity or how it makes us feel the most interesting reaction we could have? Of course not. Art and artifacts from the past are not about us. As the remnants of another society, with a worldview and way of life different from our own, they can force us to step outside of everyday practical concerns and think about another time and place.
Museums and galleries cannot change the world, but they can tell us about other worlds, and that is all we should ask of them.

Tiffany Jenkins is director of the arts and society programme at the Institute of Ideas.

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