The Changing Museum: A History of New Walk Museum 0367257866, 9780367257866

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
1 The Changing Museum
Introduction
Researching Museum History
Locating Historical Time
Questions of Change
Museums and Policy
Conclusions
References
2 Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’
Introduction
Analysing New Walk
‘The Establishment of a Public Museum’
Leicester City: A Brief Overview
Meanwhile, Back at the Museum
The Museum and the Public
Assessing Museum Change
Conclusions
References
3 Collections and Practices
Introduction
Making Sense of the Collection
The New Walk Collection
The Collection
The Meaning of the Collection
Conclusions
References
4 The Museum in Society: Social Change and the Museum
Introduction
Which Changes?
The Active, Reactive, and Unreactive Museum
Women in Society and in the Museum
Ethnic Diversity in the City and the Museum
Conclusions
References
5 Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum
Introduction
Funding New Walk
Maintaining the Museum
Financing the Museum
Demands on the Museum
Conclusions
References
6 And Calling the Tune: Local Politics, National Politics, and the Local Museum
Introduction
Museum Change and Party Politics
The Other Politics of Museum Change
Conclusions
References
7 The Professionalised Museum: Changing Museum Managements
Introduction
Organising the Museum
Changing Rationalities, Changing Museums
Professional Strengths and Political Weaknesses?
Conclusions
References
8 The Instrumentalised Museum: Whose Interests Does the Museum Serve?
Introduction
What Is the Museum For?
Museums, Purposes, and People
Choices, Structures, and Agents
Conclusions
References
9 ‘Semper Eadem’?: Stability and Change at New Walk
Introduction
Change, Choice, and Imposition
Stability and Change in the Museum
Conclusions
References
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Changing Museum: A History of New Walk Museum

Using the example of New Walk Museum, Leicester, and its collections, the complexity, multi-causality, and reasons for change in museums are examined and explained. The 170 years history of New Walk provides an original basis and innovative approach to be adopted towards explaining museum change. The book makes use of original interview and archive material to examine how and why social, economic, political, and professional developments affected the work that was undertaken in New Walk. The time-span covered is much longer than is normal for a book on museum history and is longer than for almost all the national museums in the UK, with this allowing for a nuanced understanding of the causes and consequences of museum change over time. The problems and possibilities of undertaking museum history research are also discussed. Detailed examination of the ways in which a variety of societal developments fed into museum change is a key feature of the book. The book is aimed at all those with an interest in understanding how and why change affects museum practice and will be of interest to museum professionals, academics, and students in museum studies, history, politics, and sociology as well to the general museum visitor who would like to discover more about the institutions that they visit. Clive Gray is an Associate Professor of Cultural Policy at the University of Warwick. He has published widely on cultural policy, policymaking in museums, the politics of the arts and of museums, and the relationship of the state with culture. This is his fifth book.

Routledge Research in Museum Studies

This series presents the latest research from right across the field of museum studies. It is not confined to any particular area, or school of thought, and seeks to provide coverage of a broad range of topics, theories and issues from around the world. The following list includes only the most-recent titles to publish within the series. A list of the full catalogue of titles is available at: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Research-in-Museum-Studies/book-series/RRIMS Curating Lively Objects Exhibitions Beyond Disciplines Edited by Lizzie Muller and Caroline Seck Langill Theorizing Equity in the Museum Integrating Perspectives from Research and Practice Edited by Bronwyn Bevan and Bahia Ramos Revisiting the Past in Museums and at Historic Sites Edited by Anca I. Lasc, Andrew McClellan and Änne Söll Museums, Societies and the Creation of Value Edited by Howard Morphy and Robyn McKenzie Human Rights Museums Critical Tensions Between Memory and Justice Jennifer Carter Time and the Museum Literature, Phenomenology, and the Production of Radical Temporality Jen A. Walklate The Changing Museum A History of New Walk Museum Clive Gray

The Changing Museum A History of New Walk Museum

Clive Gray

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Clive Gray The right of Clive Gray to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-367-25786-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-38026-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-29249-1 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780429292491 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This is dedicated to all those who have worked in, for, and with New Walk Museum, and to all those who have visited the Museum over the 174 years of its existence.

Contents

1

List of Tables Acknowledgements

x xi

The Changing Museum

1

Introduction 1 Researching Museum History 1 Locating Historical Time 5 Questions of Change 6 Museums and Policy 8 Conclusions 9 References 11 2

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’

13

Introduction 13 Analysing New Walk 13 ‘The Establishment of a Public Museum’ 15 Leicester City: A Brief Overview 18 Meanwhile, Back at the Museum 22 The Museum and the Public 25 Assessing Museum Change 29 Conclusions 31 References 33 3

Collections and Practices Introduction 37 Making Sense of the Collection 37 The New Walk Collection 42 The Collection 46 The Meaning of the Collection 50

37

viii Contents Conclusions 53 References 55 4

The Museum in Society: Social Change and the Museum

59

Introduction 59 Which Changes? 60 The Active, Reactive, and Unreactive Museum 61 Women in Society and in the Museum 64 Ethnic Diversity in the City and the Museum 70 Conclusions 73 References 78 5

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum

82

Introduction 82 Funding New Walk 83 Maintaining the Museum 86 Financing the Museum 91 Demands on the Museum 95 Conclusions 99 References 103 6

And Calling the Tune: Local Politics, National Politics, and the Local Museum

106

Introduction 106 Museum Change and Party Politics 107 The Other Politics of Museum Change 114 Conclusions 120 References 124 7

The Professionalised Museum: Changing Museum Managements Introduction 127 Organising the Museum 128 Changing Rationalities, Changing Museums 133 Professional Strengths and Political Weaknesses? 139 Conclusions 141 References 145

127

Contents 8

The Instrumentalised Museum: Whose Interests Does the Museum Serve?

ix 149

Introduction 149 What Is the Museum For? 149 Museums, Purposes, and People 156 Choices, Structures, and Agents 160 Conclusions 162 References 166 9

‘Semper Eadem’?: Stability and Change at New Walk

169

Introduction 169 Change, Choice, and Imposition 169 Stability and Change in the Museum 175 Conclusions 177 References 181 Bibliography Index

183 197

Tables

2.1 2.2 2.3 5.1 5.2 5.3

Visitor Numbers at New Walk Museum, 1872–73 to 1940–41 Visitor Numbers at New Walk, 1942–43 to 1981–82 Visitor Numbers at New Walk Museum, 1989–2020 Museum Expenditure, 1848–84 Art Gallery Expenditure, 1893–1912 Museum and Art Gallery Expenditure, 1923–47

26 26 27 84 85 89

Acknowledgements

Firstly, thanks to the staff of Routledge, not only for being willing to put up with continual changes in deadlines as a consequence of Covid but also for patiently answering my occasional questions in such sufficient detail that I did not need to ask them again. The usual thanks go to the staff at Warwick and Leicester University Libraries for helping me find some of the more esoteric items that I was looking for on the shelves and through inter-library loans. Working with two completely different cataloguing systems ensured that my brain continued to function adequately enough to identify where items were to be found, even if they were in places that I had no idea actually existed until I needed to visit them. Thanks also must be extended to the staff at the Leicestershire, Leicester, and Rutland Record Office not only for their service promptitude but also for pointing me to sources that I would otherwise have been unaware of. Having a number of different catalogues (both electronic and hard copy) to deal with was made much easier thanks to the friendly and informative staff at the Office. Further thanks go to the staff at the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, who have answered my questions and discussed matters of museum policy and practice over the past 15 years. Especial thanks go to Heather Southorn, Tony Spittle, and Claire Cooper for helping with data on visitor numbers and access to the Museum’s Annual Reports – the vast majority of which are not available in the Record Office or, apparently, anywhere else in the City. Thanks must also be extended to family and friends for tolerating my wittering on about what I had been finding out and for ensuring that other subjects prevented me from becoming a boring monomaniac. Special thanks are therefore extended to Phil Harvey and Debby Orange, Chris and Nick Thompson, Nikki and Mike Druqueur, and Lauren and Julian Haslam in particular. Chrissie will probably be relieved that the book is finished if only so that the heavy gardening can be got on with. Laurie continues to serve as my guide to the latest films, and he and Caitlin bear up with my bad Dad jokes for which they deserve plaudits for their tolerance. The cats have continued to knead various jumpers and shirts (and bits of my flesh) as well as making appearances at various Skype and Teams meetings to the amusement and delight of colleagues, research students, and friends. Special

xii Acknowledgements thanks to David Wright, Bethany Rex, Maike Ludley, Anne-Sophie Ninino, and Heidi Ashton for appreciating this. Leicester Tigers and the County Cricket team are thanked for many an hours’ enjoyment, frustration, and entertainment, particularly since the former got their mojo back. Leicester City have been visited less frequently than they were when they still played at Filbert Street, but 2015/16 will continue to live long in the memory. Finally, not only thanks but also gratitude to Murree Squires for the Offie: the choice of beers is wonderful, the quality is superb, and the company is always both informative and amusing – long may it continue.

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The Changing Museum

Introduction Museums, as with every other institution (and every person) in society, are always engaged with processes of change. The nature of these processes and the exact effect that they have upon museums is by no means clear, and indeed, they always have a range of both intended and unintended consequences associated with them. The certainty that is contained in these two sentences is, unfortunately, not something that can usually be claimed when discussing the actual mechanics of change within either individual museums or the museums sector as a whole. As MacLeod (2013, 73) pointed out in the context of writing about histories of museum architecture, ‘none of these consider the ongoing history or process of change that has been, and continues to be, the reality for most museums’. The intention of this book is to rectify this relative lack of concern by identifying the relationship between change in museums and changes in the wider societies of which they are a part. The focus for this analysis is on the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery – for many years simply referred to as the New Walk Museum.1 This museum was one of the first three museums in the United Kingdom that were formally established by local authorities (the others were in Sunderland and Warrington: see Burton, 2010, 21) in the aftermath of the passing of the Museums Act of 1845, which gave discretion to local authorities with a population of more than 10,000 people to open and pay for museums. The purpose of this first chapter is to briefly discuss some of the existing perspectives on the changing museum that have been developed over many years and to more fully explain and justify the choice of New Walk as, effectively, a case study for the examination of the processes of change that museums are subject to.

Researching Museum History Before outlining these important concerns however it is worthwhile to start with a general consideration of why the analysis of New Walk is being undertaken in a historical fashion. The approaches to the history of museums that are available are many and varied, ranging from panoptic general histories of the museum field (Alexander & Alexander, 2008); to investigations of specific types of museums DOI: 10.4324/9780429292491-1

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The Changing Museum

that incorporate historical information about them (as with Alberti & Hallam, 2013 on medical museums, or Asma, 2001, on natural history museums); or which deal with them in a linear historical fashion to identify general trends in development (as with McClellan, 2008 and Waterfield, 2015, on art galleries); to analyses that use museum history as a means to illustrate a general argument about other subjects altogether (Bennett, 1995; Conn, 1998; Sherman, 1989); to histories of individual museums (Fink, 2007; Wilson, 2002); to general histories of museums within particular nations (Bourke, 2011; Sheehan, 2000).2 One of the points of commonality between these histories lies in the fact that there is a strong tendency for them to concentrate on national museums, either individually or collectively (Knell, 2016). This tendency is not necessarily a common feature in writings about museums in general, where the local is often used as a mechanism to amplify or explain general trends in either museum practice or museum policy (or, indeed, both). Such writing however rarely deals in depth with the historical underpinnings that root the local museums that are discussed within the societal context that will allow the present to be given effective meaning: general trends do not arise out of nowhere, and explaining that to which they are applied requires an adequate understanding of what it is that they are being applied to. The overwhelming majority of museums in the world today bear far more resemblance to New Walk Museum – a medium-sized, publicly-owned general museum with a clear local and regional community focus with some international concern as well – than they do to national museums – usually large-scale, publicly-owned museums with a focus on international and national communities (and often with a preference for the former of these), and usually organised on a single organising theme (‘national’, science, anthropological, or natural history, for example). All museums, whether public, charitable, or private and whether large, medium or small, are subject to change despite the vast differences that exist between them in other ways (as discussed in Candlin, 2016, in the context of small privately owned museums), and it is this fact of museum life that forms the core of this book: a concern with the processes that determine the nature of change within museum structures, practices, and behaviours. Using New Walk as a case study, a detailed examination of how and why changes in museum practice become established, and how and why continuities in practice are supported, can be examined in detail. New Walk originated in 1841 as a project of a local discussion and debating society, the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society,3 before being handed over to the Leicester Town Council in 1847 and moved from its original location in the town centre to New Walk, a pedestrian-only thoroughfare leading into the town centre4 in 1849. The Museum is thus not only older than almost all the other local authority museums in the country but also older than most of the national museums and galleries that the country has (such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, founded in 1852, and the Wallace Collection, established as a national museum in 1897), and much older than most museums, whether local, regional, or national, in the rest of the world as well. Museums are not only repositories of tangible and intangible collections that can be used to explore the past, the present, and the future – they are also arenas

The Changing Museum

3

where changing ideas, models, conceptions, ideologies, and preferences concerning the role of museums within society are developed and applied to the actual practices that are undertaken within them. Changes in professional standards and practices, the possibilities that are given by changes in collections and buildings, and changing relationships to funders, donors, elected politicians, and local populations all have an effect upon how museums and galleries will function in terms of the displays and exhibitions that they mount and provide, and how they will manage the necessary technical and managerial changes that are generated by these underlying developments. These processes of change are long-term in terms of both their gestation and of how the effects of change are worked through in any given institutional context: the demands of and for change need to be managed, negotiated, and imposed through the interactions between multiple actors who make use of differing strategies and tactics to have an effect on the overall changes in the museum that are created as a consequence of the social, economic, political, and technical changes that take place over time. There are multiple ways in which the history of change within museums can be examined and explained. Social constructivism, for example, will point to the ways in which individuals construct meanings and sense about social roles, feeding from phenomenological approaches to questions of knowledge (Berger & Luckmann, 1967). Narrative approaches, as an alternative, will point towards the ways in which ‘stories’ are constructed about the purposes, roles, and activities that museums can be perceived to undertake within their societal contexts (Alberti, 2009). Approaches adopted from distinct disciplinary positions examine different dimensions of social action to these epistemological approaches – thus political science will concentrate on the interactions of power, ideology, legitimacy, and rationality as they are made use of by individuals, groups, governments, and the members of administrative organisations (in the case of museums, see Gray, 2015a). Sociological approaches, with a different emphasis, will concentrate on the roles of individuals and social groups in the creation of patterns of social interaction within social collectivities. Such generalisations about how change can be investigated inevitably ignore the complexities of any single approach and are not directly related to the specifics of particular contextual factors that could be considered in analysis. Given that the approaches that could be taken are many more than the four that have been mentioned, and given that there are clear ontological, epistemological, and methodological consequences that arise from each of them, then a justification of the approach that will be adopted to the analysis of New Walk is required. In the context of an analysis of the causes of change and the consequences of change in the context of an individual case study, a number of points need to be clarified before analysis begins. Firstly, the use of a case study approach means that any conclusions and generalisations that can be reached will only be applicable to matters of theory and concepts and ‘not to populations and universes’ (Yin, 2009, 15), meaning that while a study of New Walk might point to questions and issues that could then be applied to other museum examples, it cannot be used to make claims about every museum and gallery that exists, or even to another individual example of a museum or gallery. This also means that a clarification

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The Changing Museum

of which theories and concepts are going to form the centre of the analysis is required to indicate what forms of generalisation and conclusion are possible. Change and continuity will form the main conceptual concerns and the theoretically informed frameworks that will be made use of will be path dependency, multiple streams, punctuated equilibrium, and advocacy coalitions (see Sabatier, 2007; Cairney, 2012). It is something of a truism to claim that all policy sectors are sui generis, each having, apart from their own specific object of concern, their own patterns of organisation, combinations of policy participants, core values and ideologies, and their own relationships to the universe of other policy sectors that they are functioning alongside. While this makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to develop a single overarching theory of policy organisation and process (as is evident in Cairney, 2012) there are a large number of theories, models, arguments, and explanations in existence that can be usefully employed to discuss particular elements of public policy activity. The utility of these in any given case is dependent upon the adequacy of these approaches to the analysis of policy in accounting for the particularities of the individual policy sectors that they are applied to and to the particular policy issue that is under investigation, whether this be concerned with issues of power, legitimacy, and ideology (Gray, 2015a); the processes of implementation (Hill & Hupe, 2009); or the politics of agenda setting (Baumgartner & Jones, 2009) – amongst many others that could be investigated. Changes in specific parts of museum activity, such as conservation practices, education and outreach activities, social engagement, the visitor experience, and the mounting of displays and exhibitions will be investigated in the context of the external social, political, and economic influences that affected the Museum, alongside the internal choices made by members of the museum staff in response to changes in professional standards and practices. Each of these formed important and quite distinct dynamics in affecting change in the Museum. How these factors also served to maintain continuities in museum practice will also be discussed, as while change is endemic, it is not always operational. The focus of the discussion will be on a historically thematic rather than a historically descriptive analysis of change, with these themes being concerned with change processes and how these may be analysed and understood; firstly, through an emphasis on the complexity of change processes in museums and their practices; secondly, the multi-causality of change, where change is the result of a number of distinct internally and externally located factors rather than being a simple, direct response to a single cause; thirdly, that explanations of change demand an historically informed, longitudinal approach to be adopted if effective sense is to be made of individual instances of change, particularly as change is not a one-off event but, rather, something that has a long tail of consequences – some intended but with many being unintended in their nature, and as a result, museums themselves cannot be fully understood without an appreciation of their changing nature over time and the complexity of change itself; fourthly, the importance, when examining change in museums, of how collections are acquired, exhibited, and made use of for a variety of instrumentally functional ends rather than as ends in themselves: while digital, virtual,

The Changing Museum

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and immaterial museums have had an effect on the nature of the museum experience, most museums continue to exist in the form of specific buildings, in specific locations, displaying specific artefacts in specific ways. As a result, making sense of change in museums as specific institutions depends upon engaging with the collections that form the core focus of their activities.

Locating Historical Time A key part of the argument that is developed in this book concerns the ways in which time itself is conceptualised. Much of the existing literature that is concerned with the investigation of the joint issues of policy stability and policy change are generally only concerned with the extremely loose ideas of ‘long-term’ and ‘short-term’ periods in which change either does not or does occur. Apart from lacking any clear picture of what either of these terms means in precise detail, they also tend to assume that everyone knows what they mean anyway. This implicit understanding is largely concerned with the immediacy of the events and activities that are under investigation, with these being tied to narrative structures that provide a descriptive account of their place in the course of what is being investigated and their significance in explaining the ultimate end result to which this course leads. While this can provide the establishment of a clear causal chain (‘event [a] led to argument [b], which led to action [c], which led to outcome [d]’) to tie together the large numbers of actors, organisations, institutions, and activities that are commonly involved in policy processes, it can also, however, lead to a situation where the meaning of these policy processes can become decontextualized to such an extent that analysis simply becomes the story of ‘one damn thing after another’. The history-as-event perspective that this is associated with creates real philosophical difficulties for the analyst (Stanford, 1994, 182–91) and has led historians to develop a number of distinct approaches to the understanding of time as a phenomenon that has correspondent effects on how historical investigation is to take place. Thus, Braudel (1972, 20–1) distinguished not between the vague notions of the long- and the short-term but, instead, between the longue durée of the relationships of humans to their environments where change is slow; a medium-term history ‘of groups and groupings’ concerned with social, economic, and political systems where change is gradual; and l’histoire événementielle, a ‘history of events’, operating at the level of individuals rather than of larger groupings (such as classes) where change can be relatively rapid. These time frames are embedded within each other, and all three are needed to be made sense of before any form of historical explanation can be developed. Each, however, requires different techniques of investigation for this sense to be uncovered, thus casting doubt on the idea that a single framework of analysis is likely to be fully effective for understanding historical events. An alternative conception of the significance of time for historical analysis derives from a directly phenomenological narrative tradition (Carr, 1991), which is concerned with how the roots of history are to be found in individual experience and how this affects the nature of historical understanding

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itself. A conscious reflexivity about this relationship serves to cast doubts on the seemingly objective status of empirical historical analysis, as practised by historians following in the tradition of Ranke (see Warren, 1998; Burrow, 2009), and this means that the seeming certainties about the meaning and nature of time that underpin much of the policy literature also become open to questioning.

Questions of Change The relevance of these concerns for the analysis of change in museums can be found in two analytical features: how much emphasis is placed on the dynamics of policy change as compared to policy stability and whose perspective of change is to be considered. In terms of the former, probably the clearest attempt to discuss the issues involved can be found in the metaphor of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ (True et al., 2007), which has been used to explain why seeming policy stasis built on incremental forms of policy development can give way to large-scale changes in policy meaning, processes, organisations, and practices over a relatively short timescale. This argument is drawn from a particular reading of explanations of species change in evolutionary theory5 and has some real problems associated with it. Depending upon the perspective that is adopted, policy change can be seen as being either exceptional in the long run or to be simply the everyday reality of policy activity. The difference is found in the determination of how big a policy change is considered to be necessary to shift from a position of ‘equilibrium’ to a new, if changed, position of ‘equilibrium’ and how the underlying processes of policy activity that generate change are understood. To extend the metaphorical landscape that is involved in this, much of the punctuated equilibrium literature is based on something similar to the metaphor of a paradigm shift6 in policy terms: the idea that is perceived that there needs to be new ways of doing ‘things’, with either new sets of actors with new policy ideas becoming involved, or old sets of actors behaving in new ways, with new understandings of policy issues and concerns becoming common currency, creating new conditions that generate the landscape for effective change in old policy equilibria to take place. Unfortunately, there is no independent means by which the extent of such change can be effectively identified as there are no means to determine how big a policy change needs to be before it can be labelled a policy ‘punctuation’. The old rational/incremental policy arguments (see Parsons, 1995) effectively dodged this by pointing out that a large number of successive incremental changes can end up with major/radical shifts in policy, and it does not require ‘rational’ processes (in the sense of ‘pure’ rationality based on perfect knowledge of policy options and their consequences) to lead to such shifts: policy change is not, in this view, about the size of changes but much more about the directionality of change over time – and even this leaves open the question of how long this time-period is, or should be considered to be – a few months? A few years? A few decades? This difficulty becomes even more evident when the issue of whose perspective on change is considered, rather than the questions of the size of change or the precise processes by which change is generated. In the case of perspectives,

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the historiographical distinction between emic and etic understandings becomes important, with the former being concerned with ‘the internal meanings of things in the past’, and the latter being concerned with ‘their representation in the present’ (Gaskill, 2006, 10). In public policy terms, for example, the passing of race relations and gay rights legislation in the United Kingdom in the 1960s could be seen as being significant moments in human rights and societal terms, but their effects on the lived experiences of members of ethnic minority and gay communities took many years before they acquired any real meaning, and even then these effects have not been fully played out within society as a whole. The passing of legislation in these cases was the culmination of years of effort, but changes in actual practice have been taking place over a very much longer period and have still not been completed. In these cases, there is a clear distinction to be drawn between the policy perspectives that drove the passing of the legislation in the past and those of the people who have been directly affected by both the policy intentions of the past and how these are made sense of in the present.7 Thus, whose understanding of change is to be considered has important implications for understanding the meanings that are attached to the processes that are involved in change and can lead to wildly different understandings of precisely what the nature of change has been and is. Thus, a clear perspective is required on not only the people directly concerned with immediate questions of policy change but also on the people who are affected by these changes over a long period of time. Establishing New Walk in the 1840s as a free public museum still has a series of consequential effects today on how it is perceived within the City and what functions it is expected to undertake – as the (rather fake) row about introducing entrance charges in the early 2010s8 demonstrated: the idea was floated in the local press by the Labourrun local authority, and the almost entirely negative public reaction provided the justification not to introduce such charges – and also undercut the arguments of the non-Labour Party groups on the Council, who were much more open to charging than the Labour group ever was. In this respect, the idea of policy legacies deserves attention as well. Mention has already been made of the difference between intended and unintended policy consequences; both of which can be understood as being dependent upon how ‘change’ itself is being understood. The academic literature has always had a tendency to view change as being of most importance when it is concerned with oneoff events – such as revolutions (Skocpol, 1994) – when large-scale radical social, economic, and political change is driven either: by the making of rational choices to resolve new problems or to deal better with existing ones; or as a rational response to evidence about policy effectiveness (Cairney, 2015); or as a directly political response to changes in policy environments (especially when these are ideological changes, as shown by many of the chapters in Knell et al., 2011); or as being driven by political conflict between competing interests, divergent ideologies, or policy preferences that arise at a particular time, a particular place, and over a particular issue (as is shown in many of the chapters in Knell et al., 2007), which open ‘windows’ of opportunity that allow for the introduction of new ideas and approaches to questions of policy (Kingdon, 1995).

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Revolution, however this may be defined, is a rather rare event, although it is not hard to understand why the opposite – policy stability – is generally seen as being politically uninteresting and generally based on either: the adequacy of existing policies to fulfil existing policy objectives; arguments from ideas of ‘path dependency’ (Mahoney, 2000), where there is simply little room for policy participants to manoeuvre within as the past provides a policy straitjacket that inhibits change, particularly radical change, often as a result of the dominance of certain interests within the policy arena (such as farmers’ groups in the field of agricultural politics: see Winter, 1996); or the acceptance of the status quo as a means to avoid political conflict (which can also lead to the creation of deliberately ambiguous policies – see Gray, 2015b). The alternative to these two sets of ideas is to see change as a continuous process with policy being made and re-made through the everyday undertaking of policy activity. Change can be generated through either marginal forms of adjustment arising from the earlier implementation of policies, which lead to changes in operational outputs or outcomes or processes, or short-term responses to ‘events’ that are perceived to need reacting to through modifications of existing practices,9 or simple forms of experimentation with existing administrative processes and practices leading to minor reforms of the established order of things. Which of these may be prevalent will also depend upon what sort of change is being considered, whether it be concerned with changes in policy intentions, desired outcomes, policy outputs, policy processes, the organisations that have responsibility for policy and its implementation, the policy actors engaged in the arena, or everything (or, at least, all of these at the same time).

Museums and Policy In the specific case of the museums sector, there is little doubt that there are policy differences that indicate sizeable divisions between this sector and many other policy arenas, some of which arise from the internal organisation of the sector and others from the policy contexts within which it functions. The dominant actors within the sector are generally10 museum professionals, but these actors do not operate in a policy vacuum and are subject to a variety of external controls, expectations, demands, and pressures that they can neither ignore nor completely evade (Gray, 2011, 2014, 2016; Gray & McCall, 2018; McCall & Gray, 2014). The combined effect of these is that general policy about museums is largely reactive rather than proactive, while policy inside museums is often proactive rather than reactive; policy is often, sometimes, or can be perceived to be, instrumentalised from the top-down (Gray, 2008), but it can also be ‘attached’ (Gray, 2002) to other concerns from the bottom-up. It is also the case that museum policies (whether internally or externally derived) are difficult to evaluate effectively in anything other than a qualitative fashion, and even then the results of evaluation are often ambiguous and capable of multiple explanations (Gray & McCall, 2020). More generally, there are differences between the consequences of policy in the museum world. Short-term policies, for example (such as changes in the

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9

allocation of financial resources from one year to the next), can have relatively immediate effects on what museums are able to do, but changes in internal management arrangements are likely to take much longer to have an effect and even then may have only a marginal effect on some aspects of museum operations (Janes, 2013). Attempts to have an effect on the outcomes of museum work often lie behind changes in policy and evaluating the success or failure of such changes can only really be evaluated in the long-term – and this has major problems in terms of both causality and attribution to deal with (Gray, 2009). To add to the problems of dealing with policy consequences is the fact that what is actually meant by ‘long-’ and ‘short-term’ will differ between individuals and between different groups of actors, particularly when taken in conjunction with their own sets of interests.

Conclusions The picture that emerges from these considerations of time, change, and policy is one of great complexity. Not only are museums subject to the demands and expectations of multiple actors, all of whom are operating in terms of their own policy logics and making use of their own underlying forms of rationality (Gray, 2015a), but they are also subject to the pressures that are generated by a host of external factors. These externalities, in practice, cover everything from that day’s weather (which can affect the number of visitors to the museum that day); to changing labour patterns within local, national, and international economies (which can affect working hours, giving increased or lessened possibility for people to visit the museum); to changes of political control at the local and national levels;11 and do not stop at these rather superficial examples. At a synoptic level, the relationship between New Walk Museum and the wider world has been limited to the broad categories of social, economic, and political change, as well as changes in professional standards and practices rather than being concerned with every possible dimension by which change can be effected. Some of this will be dealt with by examining the collections that the Museum has accumulated (and disposed of) over the past 170 years, and some of it by reference to the ways in which the collection has been exhibited, displayed, and stored. The overall conclusions that are drawn from this examination of the changing museum are not simply concerned with the obvious ones, that change is complicated and that it is extremely difficult to identify mono-causal explanations for multi-causal processes. The final chapter will also answer questions about the choice and imposition of museum practices over time, the internal and external sources of change, and the relationship between stability and change in museums. The consequences of these for a consideration of how change in the museum can be both understood and managed will be discussed, and what these consequences imply for museums in the future will be identified. On the way to reaching these final conclusions, this history of the New Walk Museum will inevitably be selective about what is included for, and excluded from, consideration. Alternative readings of the material that is dealt with are certainly possible, and it would be

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The Changing Museum

rather arrogant to claim that the conclusions that are drawn are the only valid ones that are available. The most straightforward way to deal with the fact that options are available is to rely on the case that is actually advanced and the validity of the conclusions that are reached, and if readers are dissatisfied with those that are made in this book, then they can always do the research for themselves and develop their own.

Notes  1 Despite the recent decision of Leicester City Council to re-label the museum as the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery – reverting to the title that it bore in the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth century – most people in the city still refer to it as New Walk museum. This may indicate a certain conservatism in the city’s population, or it might be, more likely, that the name change has yet to catch on. For convenience, the title ‘New Walk’ or, more simply, ‘the Museum’ will be used throughout the book to avoid chopping and changing the label over the course of its history.  2 There are many more museum histories than this brief listing allows for.  3 Hereafter simply referred to as the Lit and Phil, which is how it is commonly titled today.  4 Leicester was granted city status in 1919, and all references to it before that date should, for the sake of historical accuracy, refer to it as a town. New Walk itself has been solely for pedestrian traffic since 1785 – although quite a few bicycle riders seem to be unaware of this fact.  5 This form of cross-disciplinarity is commonly used in both the social sciences and the humanities, where ‘evolution’ has assumed the status of a dominant trope in analytical terms. There is not necessarily a problem with this as long as the analysts never forget that they are dealing with metaphor rather than anything else.  6 Itself drawn from the work of Kuhn (1962) in the history of science. The laxity with which the term was used by Kuhn has been long recognised leaving it with far more of a metaphorical status than anything more definitive.  7 Similar concerns can be expressed about climate change: governments may feel pleased with themselves about their actions (or inactions) in terms of this (the emic dimension), but the future may well have rather different views on the matter (the etic dimension).  8 This was not the first time that this was discussed, but the end result was the same as for every other discussion of the subject: see, for example, DE 7971/35, 7/3/1980, Appendix C, where the arguments about charging were rehearsed, and a resolution opposing the introduction of entry charges was carried.  9 The Covid pandemic demonstrates this fairly accurately, where short-term responses were built on existing practices and where longer-term responses were based on exactly the same things. 10 There is a large-scale differentiation to be drawn between relatively affluent museum systems and those with few resources available to them: the former usually have high levels of professional organisation within them, and the latter generally do not, and this has a significant impact on what occurs within individual museums. There is also a ‘size’ element in this as bigger (and better-funded) individual museums generally have a higher degree of professional expertise available to them than do smaller (and lesswell-funded) individual museums. 11 In the case of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, this would also include changes in political control of regional governments. Given the experience of federal political systems when dealing with matters of cultural policy (see Paquette, 2019), this could be significant for museums within those countries.

The Changing Museum

11

References Archive Material DE 7971/35 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes 8th September 1978 to 24th April 1981.

Other Sources Alberti, S (2009), Nature and Culture: Objects, Disciplines and the Manchester Museum (Manchester, Manchester University Press). Alberti, S and E Hallam (2013), Medical Museums: Past, Present, Future (London, Royal College of Surgeons). Alexander, E and M Alexander (2008), Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums (Lanham, MD, AltaMira Press). Asma, S (2001), Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums (New York, Oxford University Press). Baumgartner, F & B Jones (2009), Agendas and Instability in American Politics (2nd Ed, Chicago, Chicago University Press). Bennett, T (1995), The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London, Routledge). Berger, P & T Luckmann (1967), The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Harmondsworth, Penguin). Bourke, M (2011), The Story of Irish Museums 1790–2000: Culture, Identity and Education (Cork, Cork University Press). Braudel, F (1972), The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London, Collins). Burrow, J (2009), A History of Histories (London, Penguin). Burton, A (2010), The Development of Museums in Victorian Britain and the Contribution of the Society of Arts (Northwood, William Shipley Group). Cairney, P (2012), Understanding Public Policy: Theories and Issues (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan). Cairney, P (2015), The Politics of Evidence-Based Policy-Making (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan). Candlin, F (2016), Micromuseology: An Analysis of Small Independent Museums (London, Bloomsbury). Carr, D (1991), Time, Narrative and History (Bloomington, Indiana University Press). Conn, S (1998), Museums and American Intellectual Life 1876–1926 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Fink, L (2007), A History of the Smithsonian American Art Museum: The Intersection of Art, Science and Bureaucracy (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press). Gaskill, M (2006), Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, Oxford university Press). Gray, C (2002), ‘Local Government and the Arts’, Local Government Studies, 28/1, 77–90 (DoI: 10.1080/714004133). Gray, C (2008), ‘Instrumental Policies: Causes, Consequences, Museum and Galleries’, Cultural Trends, 17, 209–22 (DoI: 10.1080//09548960802615349). Gray, C (2009), ‘Managing Cultural Policy: Pitfalls and Prospects’, Public Administration, 87, 574–85 (DoI: 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2008:01748.X). Gray, C (2011), ‘Museums, Galleries, Politics and Management’, Public Policy and Administration, 26, 45–61 (DoI: 10.1077/0952076710365436).

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Gray, C (2014), ‘“Cabined, Cribbed, Confined, Bound In” or “We are not a Government Poodle”: Structure and Agency in Museums and Galleries’, Public Policy and Administration, 29, 185–203 (DoI: 10.1177/0952076713506450). Gray, C (2015a), The Politics of Museums (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan). Gray, C (2015b), ‘Ambiguity and Cultural Policy’, Nordic Journal of Cultural Policy, 18/1, 61–75. Gray, C (2016), ‘Structure, Agency and Museum Policies’, Museum and Society, 14/1, 116–30 (DoI: 10.29311/mas.v14i1.629). Gray, C & V McCall (2018), ‘Analysing the Adjectival Museum’, Museum and Society, 16/2, 124–37 (DoI: 10.29311/mas.v16i2.2809). Gray, C & V McCall (2020), The Role of Today’s Museum (Abingdon, Routledge). Hill, M & P Hupe (2009), Implementing Public Policy (2nd Ed, London, Sage). Janes, R (2013), Museums and the Paradox of Change: A Case-Study of Urgent Adaptation (3rd Ed, Abingdon, Routledge). Kingdon, J (1995), Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies (2nd Ed, New York, HarperCollins). Knell, S (2016), National Galleries: The Art of Making Nations (Abingdon, Routledge). Knell, S, PAronsson, AAmundsen, A Barnes, S Burch, J Carter, S Hughes & A Kirwan (Eds) (2011), National Museums: New Studies from Around the World (Abingdon, Routledge) Knell, S, S MacLeod & S Watson (Eds) (2007), Museum Revolutions: How Museums Change and are Changed (Abingdon, Routledge). Kuhn, T (1962), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). MacLeod, S (2013), Museum Architecture: A New Biography (Abingdon, Routledge). Mahoney, J (2000), ‘Path Dependence in Historical Sociology’, Theory and Society, 29, 507–48 (DoI: 10.1023/A:1007113830879). McCall, V & C Gray (2014), ‘Museums Policies and the New Museology: Theory, Practice and Organisational Change’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 29, 19–35 (DoI: 10.1080/09647775.2013.869852). McClellan, A (2008), The Art Museum: From Boullée to Bilbao (Berkeley, University of California Press). Paquette, J (2019), Cultural Policy and Federalism (London, Springer). Parsons, W (1995), Public Policy: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Policy Analysis (Aldershot, Edward Elgar). Sabatier, P (Ed) (2007), Theories of the Policy Process 2 (2nd Ed, Cambridge, Westview). Sheehan, J (2000), Museums in the German Art World: From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism (New York, Oxford University Press). Sherman, D (1989), Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). Skocpol, T (1994), Social Revolutions in the Modern World (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Stanford, M (1994), A Companion to the Study of History (Oxford, Blackwell). True, J, B Jones & F Baumgartner (2007), ‘Punctuated-Equilibrium Theory: Explaining Stability and Change in Public Policymaking’, 155–87 in P. Sabatier (Ed), Theories of the Policy Process 2 (Cambridge, Westview). Warren, J (1998), The Past and its Presenters: An Introduction to Issues in Historiography (Abingdon, Hodder & Stoughton). Waterfield, G (2015), The People’s Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions in Britain, 1800–1914 (New Haven, Yale University Press). Wilson, D (2002), The British Museum: A History (London, British Museum). Winter, M (1996), Rural Politics: Policies for Agriculture, Forestry and the Environment (London, Routledge). Yin, R (2009), Case Study Research: Design and Methods (4th Ed, Los Angeles, Sage)

2

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’

Introduction Developing from the broad arguments of Chapter 1 concerning change, time, and policy, this chapter consists of a general, largely descriptive history of New Walk Museum from its creation in the 1840s, with this descriptive history serving to provide a series of markers of what are generally considered to be the major developments in the Museum’s history – at least as far as the officially recognised version of the story is told (as contained in Archives Department, 1949; Brown, 2002)1 – as well as identifying the long periods when ‘significant’ changes did not take place. The commonly accepted evolutionary model of museum development – based on ideas of punctuated equilibrium – that forms a major part of most museum histories (see, for example, Conlin, 2006; Fortey, 2008; Stearn, 1981; Wilson, 2002) will be applied to this history, and alternatives to this model (based on ideas of path dependence, multiple streams, and advocacy coalitions) will be introduced to provide a framework for understanding and explaining changes in the structures and processes that have underpinned the functioning of the Museum and which extend beyond narrative to analysis. The importance of local social, economic, and political contexts for making sense of this descriptive history will be emphasised through a parallel discussion of the City environment within which the Museum is located and functions, and how this environment has changed over time. It will be seen that while it is impossible to draw simple causal links between changes in these general environmental conditions and changes in museum policies and practices, there are some clear relationships, operating over relatively long spans of time, between the two. Teasing out the nature of these relationships then sets the basis for later chapters to identify and flesh out their role in affecting change in the Museum.

Analysing New Walk The wide-ranging approach that is adopted in this chapter to the analysis of New Walk Museum aims to move beyond the largely descriptive approaches that have tended to be the common way to discuss ‘change’ in a general or specific sense in museum histories (Alexander & Alexander, 2008) (leading, as argued in Chapter 1, DOI: 10.4324/9780429292491-2

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to something of a ‘one damn thing after another’ approach to the topic, where one ‘significant’ event is followed at a later date by another ‘significant’ event). By organising the analysis of change around key sets of functional and behavioural structures and processes that exist in all museums (see Gray & McCall, 2020), the relationships between individual instances of change and larger-scale contextual factors can be organised to demonstrate the interrelationships between the micro-, meso-, and macro-effects that are generated by change, or which affect change processes, as a particular phenomenon within museums. The longitudinal approach that is to be adopted will also allow for the identification of the relative effects of the various variables over time: rather than seeing these effects as simply one-off events, the longer-term consequences of them are demonstrable through the identification of how change feeds through to different dimensions of the Museum’s organisation and working practices. This also provides a basis to evaluate the claims that are made in various frameworks for understanding change and its consequences: is ‘punctuated equilibrium’, for example, anything more than a generalisation that ignores the specific nature of changes and assumes that to be meaningful ‘change’ must be ‘significant’? Are ‘windows of opportunity’ reliant on specific effects to be opened, or are they always actually open and just not made use of? Are policy networks of actors, ideas, and processes effective for explaining change, or are they nothing more than metaphors? For all these concerns with making sense of change and the nature of change processes, the use of New Walk as an analytical focus is important. New Walk is useful for this analysis given that it is older than nearly all the national museums and galleries in not only the United Kingdom but also the rest of the world and older than almost every single local museum in the United Kingdom. This longevity provides a common basis for the development of the larger arguments concerning change that are the focus here: rather than shifting between one set of organisational structures and processes to another, the working out of patterns of change within a single organisation allows for the identification of the interrelationships of factors that more general discussions of change across organisations (such as in Alexander & Alexander, 2008; Waterfield, 2015) cannot provide, while a focus on the wider environmental context within which New Walk is located also means that a focus on the internal dynamics of museum change – as commonly seen in single-museum discussions, such as in Alberti, 2009, on the Manchester Museum, and Wilson, 2002, on the British Museum – can be replaced by a more holistic understanding of how and why change is driven within museums. Of particular note is the fact that the overwhelming majority of museums in the world are not the ‘major’ and/or national museums and galleries that form the focus of most historical discussions of the subject. The concentration on these museums and galleries has led to the position that local and regional examples are simply seen as being either unimportant – all the important developments happen only in the ‘major’ cases (as seems to be assumed to be the case in Schubert, 2009, for example) – or too parochial to be of real interest; both of which are rather patronising and ignore the importance of the sub-national level(s) of museum organisation for the overall process of change within the sector: after all, change

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’ 15 in the nationals and ‘majors’ only becomes meaningful (and actually important) when it is disseminated (or not2) into the wider museum field, and as New Walk demonstrates, not every museum change stems from the nationals anyway, with many important developments in museum practice originating in local, not national museums. The implementation gap between the national and local levels can also be used as a means to identify the precise processes by which information and practices become engaged with and are adopted and adapted over time, within the sector, as well as allowing for the identification of directionality in change processes. This raises analytical questions in their own right in terms of whether the focus of analysis is to be top-down or bottom-up. While analysis is rarely entirely one thing or the other, the focus in museum studies on the ‘major’/ national dimension for investigation leads to a tendency to see things in a top-down fashion: a concentration on New Walk will thus serve as a corrective by allowing for the detailed analysis of an organisation that is certainly never considered to be either ‘major’ or national in the usual senses.3 Now that the background to how the history of New Walk will be dealt with has been discussed, it is time to move on to the descriptive dimension itself.

‘The Establishment of a Public Museum’ The quote is drawn from the Common-Hall book of the Borough of Leicester4 and marks the occasion on which the reformist movements in the town of Leicester sought to develop the range of services that could be made available to the public by the Borough beyond those which were a statutory duty. The full quotation reads as follows: To receive and consider Memorials from different Societies and Inhabitants as to The Establishment of a Public Museum in pursuance of the Act of 8 & 9 Vict, Chap 43 (CM 1/4, 277). This discretionary legislation gave local authorities5 the power to not only establish local museums but also to fund them from local taxation,6 thus shifting responsibility for maintaining museums from the hands of the most affluent to the town as a whole. The reference to ‘Societies and Inhabitants’ refers to the driving force for the establishment of the Museum, which lay with the combined efforts of three town organisations. These organisations were the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society (which had been founded in September 1835 [Lott, 1935, 5]), the Leicester Mechanics’ Institute (established in 1833 [Simmons, 1974a, 152]), and the Leicester Atheneum (founded in 1845 [McKinley & Smith, 1958, 274]). The main mover towards the establishment of the town museum was undoubtedly the Lit and Phil, which had first discussed the topic in 1837, made arrangements for the creation of a Society Museum in 1838, and opened it in 1841 (in a room in the Mechanics’ Institute building) (DE 6345/34/1). This endeavour was part of the development

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of an actively engaged public sphere in British society that had commenced in the later eighteenth century and continued for much of the nineteenth century and which covered not only the creation of debating and educational facilities for the burgeoning middle-classes and the increasingly literate working-classes but also the establishment of a range of reforming activities that were intended to be of benefit for the entire public. While the decidedly paternalistic streak that underlay much of what was created in the nineteenth century is evident in this, it was also indicative of a much more democratic view of the value of reform in providing people with the tools and knowledge that could be used for self-enlightenment and social progress on their own terms (as could be seen in Arnold, 1960, [1869]7). These tendencies can be seen in the justifications for the establishment of a town museum that the Lit and Phil put forward: The formation of a Public Town Museum is highly desirable, it being an important means of reforming the public taste, of yielding amusement and instruction to all orders of society and especially of inducing habits of thought and study amongst the working classes. (CM 1/4, 280) The Lit and Phil had opened its own museum to the public in 1842 (Lott, 1935, 34) and clearly intended that the perceived benefits of having done so should be made more widely available than the society was able to. The first moves towards the formal establishment of a town museum came in 1843, when the Museum Committee of the Lit and Phil considered the idea of presenting their collection to the Town and County, followed by the creation of a trust in June 1846, in which the collection was invested (Lott, 1935, 34). The Borough meeting in September 1846 was offered the Lit and Phil collection of ‘objects of natural history, of objects of national, historical and local interest, of specimens of art, and of geological remains’ (CM, 1/4, 282) if the Borough would house them in a suitable building, the present location of the collection – originally in a cupboard in the Mechanics’ Institute building and then leading a peripatetic life between different town centre buildings (Lott, 1935, 33–4) – being too small for the purpose of adequate display. This has proved to be something that has continued to be a problem for the Museum, with extensions being opened in 1877, 1892, 1912, with a double opening in 1930 and 1932 of part, and then all, of a further addition to the New Walk building (Archives Department, 1949), and with continuing demands for the erection of a separate building to house the Art Gallery being made from the 1890s (CM 27/3, 260) until the 2010s. Not surprisingly, the Borough accepted the offer of the collection and established a Joint Committee of Council members and representatives of the three organisations who had proposed the establishment of the Museum – not surprisingly, as there were overlapping networks of connection between the memberships of all four organisations, particularly through the dissenting and non-conformist religious orientation of many members, and an almost complete dominance of the Liberal Party on the Borough Council (holding 38 out of 42 elected seats on the

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’ 17 Council and an overwhelming majority on the Council as a whole), and with 40 out of 56 councillors being dissenters (McKinley & Smith, 1958, 251), meaning that there was effectively no opposition to the proposal. This Liberal and dissenting dominance continued for most of the rest of the nineteenth century – between 1835 and 1885 ‘out of the 822 elections that were held for seats on the Town Council, the Conservatives were successful in only 190’ (Simmons, 1974a, 149) – leading to a continuing, if rather passive, support for the Museum on behalf of the Council. The location for the new Museum took some arranging, but after examining several possible sites, the newly established (as detailed in CM 1/4; 9/11/1846) Museum Committee of the Town Council proposed that a recently closed proprietary school building8 located on New Walk be purchased as it ‘would tend greatly to promote the cultivation of art and science and to raise the standard of taste and intellectual gratification amongst all classes of the community’ (CM 1/4, 475). Finding the building proved to be easier than funding not only its purchase but also making the necessary alterations to house the collection of some 10,000 items (Lott, 1935, 39): the Treasury only permitted the Council to borrow £2,500 (equivalent to £2,675,000 in 2014 prices) instead of the £3,500 (equivalent to £3,745,000 in 2014 prices) it initially asked for (CM 1/5, 126; CM 1/4, 476), and the rest of the money came from the sale fund of the Borough and loans from individuals.9 Eventually the total cost of the building and alterations came to £4,211 6s10 (CM 1/5, 264) (equivalent to £4,775,274 in 2014 prices). The cost of running the Museum for the Council was limited by law to the product of a half-penny rate, which in 1849 amounted to £239 a year (CM 1/5, 264) (equivalent to £27,077 in 2014 prices), a level demanded only some years later. The close links between the Council and the Lit and Phil extended beyond the Museum collection, which was formally handed over to the City on the 19th of June 1849, the day when the Museum was formally opened – even though it legally remained in the ownership of a trust that had been created in 1846 and ran until 1904, when the last of the original trustees died, when the Council became absolute owners of the collection (see DE 6435/34/1) – as it took responsibility not only for paying the salary of the full-time curator, Nathaniel Plant, which continued until 1872, and also for overseeing his work through the appointment of five Honorary Curators. These Honorary Curators dealt with the Museum collections in the fields of geology, zoology, botany, archaeology, and fine arts (DE 6435/34/1) and continued to function in this capacity until 1890 (Archives Department, 1949, 8), even though their actual nomination to their positions was passed to the Council in 1872 as a result of a renegotiation of the relationship between the Lit and Phil and the Council in that year as a consequence of the development of increasing tensions over how the Museum was being run and who was in charge of questions of policy, exhibition, and display (Lott, 1935, 49–50). By the time of this renegotiation, New Walk had become firmly established in the town. This early period in the history of the Museum demonstrates that the continuing problems of accommodation, finance, and control are not new creations but have been in place almost from the time that the Museum was first mooted. Additionally, it serves to signal that the lack of political turmoil that was associated

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with the creation of the Museum has also been a continuing feature of its existence, particularly in comparison with other concerns that existed in the town, and this has also continued ever since. Indeed, the day when the Museum was formally opened was the same one when the Welford Road Cemetery was formally opened. Better known today as the final resting place for Thomas Cook (effectively the founder of the modern tourism trade and industry) and Alice Hawkins (a notable suffragette and stalwart Trades Unionist), both of whom also have statues in the City, it was, at the time, a source of intense political debate – far more than the Museum had proved to be – between the Anglican and dissenting wings of the Town, with the former insisting on access to burial space in a cemetery that was explicitly intended to be for religious dissenters, and finally achieving their aim. The importance of the new cemetery is not only to be found in the religious and political debates that it became a part of but also can be found in the cost of establishing it: while the Museum cost a little over £4,200 (£4,775,274 in 2014 prices) the cemetery cost ‘nearly £12,500’ (Simmons, 1974b, 172)11 (£14,175,000 in 2014 prices), or almost three times as much. To place New Walk more firmly in the location where it is to be found, so that the significance of not only nineteenth-century religious disputes but a range of other social, economic, and political factors affecting the life of the City can be identified, a brief shift away from the explicit history of the museum is necessary.

Leicester City: A Brief Overview The City of Leicester has a long history – it is almost impossible to dig anywhere in the City centre without coming across Roman remains, as well as those of the Angles, Vikings, Normans, and from the medieval and Victorian periods, most famously including the remains of King Richard III recovered from a City centre car park in 2012. Firmly established as a key Roman settlement in the midlands – the Fosse Road from Exeter to Lincoln runs through the City – it has consistently been an important location both regionally and nationally. It was, for example, ‘the largest and wealthiest town between the Trent and the Thames in the sixteenth century, and approximately the thirtieth wealthiest in the country as a whole in 1576 (Hoskins, 1955, 39, 41), although there was a major decline in its economic prosperity over time, not helped by the sacking of the town by Royalist forces led by Prince Rupert in 1645, which had seriously adverse effects on the local economy that lasted into the early eighteenth century, when the revival of the local economy began (Simmons, 1974a, 89–126). In the first part of the nineteenth century, the Leicester economy was in a state of both growth and depression: the major employer in the town was the hosiery industry – in 1833 employing about 70% of the entire population of the town and subject to serious economic difficulties on a periodic basis until the 1860s, when prosperity became more the standard for the town. Hosiery was supplemented later on by the footwear and elastic web industries (McKinley & Smith, 1958, 259), as well as with the development of the light engineering industries that continued to provide much employment in the City well into the twentieth

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’ 19 century. The diversity of Leicester’s economic basis meant that the City was less susceptible to the depths of depression that affected much of the British economy during the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indeed the League of Nations in 1936 – while the global depression that had commenced in 1929 was still in full sway – stated that Leicester was the ‘second most prosperous city in Europe’ (after Lille) (Rodger, 2016, 50). Of particular significance for the City was the long-standing tradition of female employment in manufacturing industries. In 1911, for example, 54% of women between the ages of 13 and 64 were in employment, compared with a national average for England of 37%, something described as ‘exceptional involvement’ in the local economy (Rodger, 2016, 21), with this figure showing some increase since 1891, when 48% of women in the town were in paid employment, compared with a national figure of 34% (Nash, 1993, 168–9). Changing patterns of employment in the wider economy meant that there was a major decline in employment in the footwear industry for both men and women between 1861 and 1950, but employment in textiles (including hosiery) remained stable for men and grew for women in the same period (Rodger, 2016, 52). The period since 1945 has, not surprisingly, seen significant changes in the economy of Leicester, often in line with changes in the national economy – as with the growth of service sector employment, as, for example, in tertiary education – and a decline in employment in manufacturing and textiles (see Reeder & Harrison, 1993). While both of these sectors still remain locally important, patterns of ownership and precise details of what this employment entails have changed considerably, noticeably in an increasing specialisation in both and a fall in the size of employing companies. At the same time the importance of women in the local labour market has continued, with female activity rates being far higher than those in the rest of the country up to the early 1990s (Reeder & Harrison, 1993, 84–5), and with little change since then. The shifting of the economic landscape has not occurred overnight but has been a relatively slow development, the full consequences of which are still being worked out locally.12 Politically Leicester has always liked to represent itself since 1835 as being a centre of radicalism (Patterson, 1954; Lancaster, 1987), and certainly, in comparison with its predecessor’s unreformed local authority and the wider Leicestershire County Council, there is an element of truth in this claim, as a comparison of general election outcomes in the nineteenth century makes clear, with the County constituencies being almost permanently Conservative and the Town constituencies being almost permanently Liberal (Plumb, 1954; Evans, 1958). The entrenched position of these two parties before 1900 was as much to do with the lack of viable electoral alternatives during almost the entirety of that century as it was to do with significant differences between them. Both the Liberals and Conservatives operated on a spirit of limited public service benefit and a strong intention to limit taxation demands, despite the demands of individual members of both parties (Elliott, 1979, 131–5, 160). The, occasionally, benevolent paternalism that underlay both parties should not be taken to mean that there were not significant differences concerning particular issues in local politics, particularly in terms of managing the systems for relieving poverty in the town as well as with implementation of the

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Education Act of 1870, where the elections for the local school board were fought on party lines and involved ‘enlisting militant dissent in the cause of radicalism’ (Evans, 1958, 224). Parliamentary representation in the town was based on one constituency returning two MPs until 1918 and was managed by the Liberal Party providing two nominees who effectively represented the interests of the owners of local businesses and the lower middle-classes and skilled workers respectively. The dominance of the Liberal Party in both parliamentary and local authority terms came to an end after 1900, with the Conservatives winning a parliamentary seat in that year after the intervention of the new Independent Labour Party taking votes away from the Liberals, and the Conservatives then losing this seat in 1906 to the Labour candidate Ramsay MacDonald.13 The Council ceased to be a Liberal stronghold in 1909 entirely as a result of Labour Party gains, although it took until 1945 (despite holding a fragile majority in 1928) that an effective Labour majority on the Council was achieved (Elliott, 1979, 164). The number of MPs returned from Leicester grew to three in 1918, increasingly split between Labour and the Conservatives, to four MPs after 1948, split three to one in favour of Labour, and back to three MPs in 1974, usually with all three being Labour with the exceptions of 1983, when the Conservatives won two seats (one by seven votes and the other as a result of a split in the Labour vote between Labour and the recently founded and soon to merge with the Liberal Party, Social Democratic Party) (see Evans, 1958; Jones, 1993), and a Liberal gain in a byelection in 2001, when turn-out was remarkably low, and which was over-turned at the next general election (Kavanagh & Butler, 2005, 234). Local government in England and Wales was re-organised in 1974, when the City lost many of its powers, including over the museums service, to the County Council. While the City continued to function – running what were generally perceived to be specifically local services, such as housing – control of many large functions, such as education and strategic planning, were lost and not regained until 1997, when a further re-organisation took place enabling the City to regain control of many services, including the museums service. With the exception of 1977, where there was a Conservative landslide victory in the County elections, the County was a classic ‘hung’ authority, with no single party able to muster a majority, largely as a consequence of Labour dominance in the City seats.14 The City Council itself remained entirely in Labour hands, with the exception of 2003–07, when internal factionalism and a high degree of complacency led to the election of a ‘hung’ council. Since 2007 the City has increasingly resembled a single-party state with Labour taking 90%+ of the available council seats,15 and with the elected mayorship being held by Labour ever since its introduction. The final aspect of the City that will be examined concerns its social structure. Of necessity, this entails brevity to highlight the main features of social change in the City rather than providing a fully-fledged social history of the City, with the consequences of these changes forming part of the analysis of their impact on New Walk being dealt with in a later chapter.

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’ 21 It is noticeable that while in the mid-nineteenth century it was the case that ‘one notable characteristic of the town’s inhabitants was a marked readiness to resort to violence’ and that ‘the poorer parts of the borough were characterised by widespread drunkenness and disorder’ (McKinley & Smith, 1958, 269, 270), the current City is hard to identify with such instances of social strife, even if both have not entirely vanished from local homes and streets. In many respects, the underlying social conditions of the mid-nineteenth century in Leicester were no different to those to be found in many equivalent towns and cities in the country: widespread disparities in housing and general living conditions, clear class distinctions between citizens, and by modern standards, appalling health care facilities – with access to the Royal Infirmary, founded in 1771 (Simmons, 1974a, 124), for example, being limited to those who were supported by ‘subscribers’, who were normally voluntary, charitable, and Trade Union organisations (Reeder, 1993, 134), until the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948 – and few educational opportunities except for the relatively privileged. The reliance on forms of community self-help, as seen in the thriving associational life of the town in the nineteenth century – with the establishment of the Museum and free public libraries being the children of the Lit and Phil and other local organisations – provided limited means to make good the generally poor living conditions for many of those within the town. Despite this, in many ways social conditions in Leicester were better than those to be found in many other places: the death rate in 1874, for example, was ‘the lowest of all manufacturing towns in England’ (Rodger, 2016, 9), and from 1840 until 1900, ‘Leicester had changed from being one of the unhealthiest towns in England to become one of the healthiest’ (Simmons, 1974a, 20). The influence of the ‘civic gospel’ espoused in Birmingham by George Dawson in the 1840s (Begley, 2013, 136) helped to encourage active participation in local affairs in what was a largely paternalistic fashion, and this certainly chimed with the political beliefs of the more radical wing of the local Liberal Party in Leicester. While the town continued to grow in population terms during the nineteenth century, helped by sizeable job relocations from Northampton and Coventry in the 1860s and the expansion of the town’s boundaries in 1891, there was little change in other ways, as the continuation of the religious divisions between Anglicans and dissenters and the political divisions between Liberals and Conservatives remained entrenched as defining features of the town. Gaining Borough and City status in 1888 and 1919 equally had little impact on the broad social structure of the town, and this state of consistent growth and little social change – regardless of changes in the economic and political landscape – remained the same until after the Second World War. Post-1945 saw significant changes in the City with major increases in inward migration from overseas helping to shift traditional patterns of who lived there to a new landscape. While there had always been a minority population in the City of foreign-born inhabitants, this mushroomed after 1945, firstly with Eastern European, followed by Caribbean, and later, South Asian populations becoming part of the established City community (Herbert, 2016). While this has had obvious effects in religious terms – ranging, for example, not only from the

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establishment of mosques, gurdwaras, and temples but also Serbian, Ukrainian, Greek, and Polish churches in the City – it has also shifted the identity of those who live and work within the City and who serve as representatives for the City in Westminster and on the City Council. While the consequences of the growth of the South Asian population for New Walk and the wider set of museums in the county were recognised relatively early on, it was the case that the Leicester museums had little in their collections that was of direct relevance to these communities (DE7971/33, 9/5/1975, Appendix D). Although, as will be seen in the next chapter, this has started to change, particularly in terms of the exhibitions that are mounted.

Meanwhile, Back at the Museum This necessarily brief picture of the social, economic, and political features of Leicester obviously does not take into account the many specific factors that they have contributed to New Walk, these forming the core of the following chapters. Having left the general descriptive history of the Museum at the end of the nineteenth century, a return to this discussion is appropriate to bring things up to date before considering what models exist to make sense of the changes that the Museum has either contributed to or which have, directly or indirectly, affected the Museum itself. The switch in control of the Museum, what it displayed, how it was managed, and what it was held to be for, away from the Lit and Phil and towards the Town Council at the end of the nineteenth century, marked the beginning of a long process of professionalisation, both of the Museum itself and the organisation of which it now formed a part. It also took place in the context of both the formal establishment of a separate Art Gallery at New Walk in 1885, the growing extension of both the powers of the local authority as a result of gaining county borough status in 1888, and as a result of successive legislative acts,16 the number of local authority museums in existence across the United Kingdom (Miers, 1928; Mason, 2007; Bourke, 2011). A significant development that formed a part of the shift in power from the Lit and Phil to the town came with the latter accepting all the financial costs associated with running the museum. Previously, the Lit and Phil had paid the salary of the official curator and contributed funds towards the purchase of new items for the museum collections, although ‘the institution itself was run on a shoe-string, and it was both dingy and over-crowded with an incoherent display of exhibits’ (Simmons, 1974b, 28–9). This last started to change with the appointments of William Harrison (curator, 1873–80) and Montague Browne (curator, 1880–1907) as successive curators of the Museum and went much further following the appointment of Ernest Lowe (curator/director, 1907–40), even if the lack of financial resources did not significantly alter for a number of years. While Montague Browne was responsible for a marked improvement in the display of the collection, where his taxidermy skills were evident, for supervising the developing move towards improving the managerial and technical demands of running the museum, and for taking the first moves towards making New Walk a general, rather than a local, museum (Archives

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’ 23 Department, 1949, 8), it was Ernest Lowe who had the most significant impact on the operational practices of the museum and helped to make it one of the biggest and best local authority museums in the country during the 1920s and 1930s. Browne resigned in 1906, ‘being unwilling to be associated with what must be a lamentable failure and a moribund institution’, although the specific reason was to do with his proposals for ‘pupil training’ not being accepted by the Council’s Museum Committee (CM 27/6, 122). Lowe came to Leicester from Plymouth in June 1907 and presented a ‘report on the Leicester Museum and Gallery, with suggestions for its future development’ in the December of that same year. This report drew heavily on Lowe’s thinking about the role and purposes of a museum that he had formed in his previous position and was still seen as being ‘a very important document’ by the later Museum director, Trevor Walden, in 1955 (DE 3220/6). This report is discussed in some detail in a later chapter and is simply signposted here as a central element in the development of New Walk. Alongside this report, Lowe was also responsible for introducing a number of important initiatives in the museum world, including the appointment of the first guide-lecturer in a British museum in 1924 (CM 27/9, 13) (influenced indirectly by the development in America of museum docents after 1907: see Giltinan, 2008), and the development of a school’s museum service in 1931 (Leicester Museums Service, nd, 2) – influenced directly by American museum activities and practices following Lowe’s visit to North America in 1927 on the behalf of the Carnegie Trust (Lowe, 1928a, 1928b) to examine and report on the museum and library systems ‘in vogue there’ (CM 27/9, 269). Through his close engagement with the Museums Association (on which see Lewis, 1989), Lowe was also centrally active in the development of the first formal professional qualifications in the museums field in the United Kingdom, starting in 1934 (Markham, 1938, 57), with many of the early courses taking place at New Walk.17 In financial terms, the growth of demands for local authority services was a direct consequence of the introduction of a large number of statutory services that they had to provide – unlike museums, which were, and continue to be, discretionary services that local authorities could provide if they wanted to and could equally stop providing if they chose to.18 The new service demands were funded from a combination of local taxes, government grants, and service charges, all of which increased as a consequence of the growing population of the City, which had grown from 122,376 in 1881 to 285,181 in 195119 (Reynolds, 1955, 179), and were built upon changing central government policies and laws. New Walk was subject, as will be seen in a later chapter, to a great deal of expenditure restraint over the years, and still is, but even so, there was a noticeable growth in funding in comparison with Simmons’ (1974b, 28) description of it as being run on a ‘shoestring’ in the Victorian period. In 1928, the City had revenue expenditure of £5,632 on New Walk (equivalent to £3,159,552 in 2014 prices), and only eight cities had higher expenditure on a single museum than this.20 In comparison, the revenue expenditure of the British Museum in the same year was £197,197 (Miers, 1928, 84–209) (equivalent to £110,627,517 in 2014 prices). By 1959/60, New Walk had a total revenue expenditure of £51,819 (equivalent to £10,661,969 in 2014 prices),

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and the City’s four museums (New Walk, the Guildhall, Jewry Wall, and Newarke Houses) spent £116,841 (equivalent to £24,034,194 in 2021 prices) between them, and only one city spent more on their museums than this (Birmingham, which spent £188,473, or £38,768,896 in 2021 prices) on seven separate collections (Rosse, 1963, 82–230). Whether New Walk continues to be so comparatively well-funded is not clear given the difficulties of disentangling individual museum funding figures anywhere in the country, let alone in Leicester. Leaving finance to one side, New Walk has certainly continued the tradition started by Lowe of innovation in museum services and exhibitions: ‘Leicester Museum and Art Gallery was the first museum to tackle a subject well outside museum experience and collections, that of motherhood and infant welfare’ (Kavanagh, 1994, 74) in 1915, for example. Indeed, the creation of one of the Museum’s star collections – of German expressionist art – originated at a time, 1944, when appreciation of almost anything Germanic was seen with, at the very least, public disfavour and showed an independent willingness on the behalf of the then curator, Trevor Thomas (1940–47), to mount a display that ran counter to much popular opinion. Less politically contentious, New Walk was also the central actor in enabling the County Council (by then the responsible authority for museum services) to be not only one of the first six museum services in the country to achieve Museums Association Accreditation status (Wilkinson, 2014, 144), but also ‘one of only half-a-dozen regional galleries to be placed in the highest category (Class 1*) by the National Museums Security Adviser’ in 1981 (DE 7971/36, 6/11/1981: Appendix O), and the first museums service in the country to adopt the International Council of Museums (ICOM) Code of Professional Ethics in 1987 (DE 7971/38, 2/1/1987). The image that is presented here is one of New Walk as being an important part of a forward-thinking and innovative museums service, which was not only concerned with its collections per se, but also with developing new ways of thinking about what, and how, things were displayed as well as the wider social role that museums could have in terms of education and outreach, as well as with the moral and ethical dimension of museum collections. The latter could be seen not only in the early adoption of the ICOM code on ethics but also with the continuous development of policies concerning collections transfer, disposal, and restitution, dating back to the nineteenth century. Gradual changes in these policies have seen a move away from the simple transfer of items to and from other museums, usually for reasons of geographical provenance or for reasons of superfluity (DE 7971/39, Appendix I, 22/4/1988) – as in 1928, when ‘two mummies’ from Huntingdon were exchanged ‘for certain duplicates from the Leicester Museum’ (CM 27/10, 30/3/1928), or in 1959, when the opening of the new Herbert Museum in Coventry led to the City’s Museum and Libraries Committee to approve the donation ‘of certain specimens from Coventry’ as either loans or gifts to it (DE 3277/172, 18/9/1959) – to the acceptance, amongst other things, of the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art and the European and UNESCO Conventions on cultural property and material, regardless of whether central government has signed up to such principles and conventions or not (see Greenfield, 2007). To this extent, at least, New Walk has been a significant contributor to the climate

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’ 25 of opinion within the United Kingdom about what museums should be concerned with and how these things can be translated into practical activities intended to benefit not only the people of Leicester but the wider populations of which it is a part. Many of the developments noted here are largely concerned with institutional policy and practice and are tied in with professional standards and opinions about what museums could and should be doing, and more detail on all these things will follow at the appropriate place in later chapters. For the general public, much of the debate and argumentation about all these concerns is a matter of minor significance – if it is considered to be of any significance at all – and it is to the visitors to the Museum that attention now turns.

The Museum and the Public Discussion of the visitors to New Walk can take one of three forms: how many there were, who they were, and what they thought. None of these is easily discoverable, particularly in early time-periods. In the case of the latter, for example, apart from a German book of 1897, it was not ‘until 1928, when American museums began to interest themselves seriously in classifying and investigating their customers’ (Hudson, 1975, 7), and it took until 1983 before visitors, as a social category, to New Walk were analysed – with the unsurprising finding that visitors were socially unrepresentative, being largely middle-aged, white, and from social class C121 (DE 7971/36, Appendix X, 4/11/83). A survey in 1992 (DE 7971/41, Appendix A, 24/4/92) was reported as being ‘the largest and most comprehensive survey ever undertaken in this country of museum visitors and non-visitors’, incorporating the responses of slightly more than 4,400 people. These responses, however, could not be definitively related to New Walk as they were largely aggregated ones, covering all the museums within the county, rather than specific to individual institutions, which rather limits their utility for saying anything about the Museum itself. What visitors thought of the Museum’s displays and exhibitions was explored rather earlier than this, however, with, for example, a questionnaire being used to elicit visitor opinions as early as 1943 (CM 27/13, 16/7/1943). On the specific issue of how many visitors there were to New Walk, the numbers are, again, not as clear as they might have been. Working through a number of distinct sources of information, it is possible to establish attendance at the Museum for certain years but not for all (see Tables 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3). This is not helped by the fact that the reporting period for visitor numbers has varied between calendar years (January to December), financial years (April to March), and back again over time, meaning that care needs to be taken to ensure that figures are reliable even if not strictly comparable (a problem discussed in Babbidge, 2018, 2019). Notwithstanding this problem, the available evidence points to an average of almost 84,500 visitors per year between 1873 and 1876 (CM 27/1: 6/1/1874; 4/1/1876; 16/1/1877); an average of just over 140,300 visitors per annum between 1949 and 1951 (4D56/420); an average of just over 139,300 per annum between 1962 and 1971 (4D56/470); and the average for 2018/19 and 2019/2022 was just over 208,800 (Leicester City Council, 2022).

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Table 2.1 Visitor Numbers at New Walk Museum, 1872–73 to 1940–41 Year

Visitor Numbers

Year

1872–73 1873–74 1874–75 1875–76 1876–77 1877–78 … 1884–85 1885 1886 1887 …. 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1901–02 1902–03 1903–04 1904–05

42,114 94,521 84,053 75,395 79,997 81,208

1905–06 1906–07 1907–08 1908–09 1909–10 1910–11 1911–12 … 1923–24 1924–25 1925–26 1926–27 1927–28 1928–29 1929–30 1930–31 1931–32 1932–33 1933–34 1934–35 1935–36 1936–37 1937–38 1938–39 1939–40 1940–41

31,370* 66,683 76,535 77,928 43,223** 28,148** 33,757** 43,727** 38,545** 40,239** 38,273** 41,728** 36,876** 41,814** 41,336** 39,099** 45,676** 47,052** 34,316**

Visitor Numbers 50,392** 39,848** 37,626** 36,522** 39,200** 32,190** 34,970** 222,039 231,096 241,519 269,557 256,530 284,334 267,833 285,394 288,603 285,958 283,435 257,177 235,850 234,550 245,312 234,814 196,369 122,001

* These numbers are for visitors during the Easter, Whitsun, August bank holiday, Christmas holiday, and September (Horse-racing) Race Days only. ** These numbers are for visitors on Sundays and during the Easter, Whitsun, August bank holiday, and Christmas holiday periods only. All numbers from the Annual Reports of the Museum and Art Gallery (Leicester, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery/Museums).

Table 2.2 Visitor Numbers at New Walk, 1942–43 to 1981–82 Year

Visitor Numbers

Year

Visitor Numbers

1942–43 1943–44 1944–45 1945–46 1946–47 1947–48

135,962 150,148 132,702 125,577 117,756 109,968

1960–61 1961–62 1962–63 1963–64 1964–65 1965–66

125,466 122,078 129,291 125,283 143,705 135,941

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’ 27 Year

Visitor Numbers

Year

Visitor Numbers

1948–49 1949–50 1950–51 1951–52 1952–53 1953–54 1954–55 1955–56 1956–57 1957–58 1958–59 1959–60

126,078 123,703 153,349 137,221 123,154 148,666 134,233 125,159* 124,460* 127,237* 151,924 120,099

1966–67 1967–68 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973–74 ... 1979 ... 1980–81 1981–82

100,375* 151,159 164,287 147,583 160,147 132,501 157,354 98,253 101,169 101,056

*Parts of the Museum closed for repairs. Sources: Annual Reports of the Museum and Art Gallery (Leicester, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery/ Museums) (Numbers for 1942–1962; 1972–74) 4D 56/470 City of Leicester Organisation and Methods Report on the Management and Administration of the Leicester Museums and Art Gallery Department (Leicester, Town Clerk’s Department, October 1972) (Numbers for 1962–71) DE 7971/35 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes 8th September 1978 to 24th April 1981 (Numbers for 1979) DE 7971/36 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes July 1981 to November 1983 (Numbers for 1980–82)

Table 2.3 Visitor Numbers at New Walk Museum, 1989–2020 Year

Visitor Numbers

Year

Visitor Numbers

1989–90 1990–91 1991–92 ... 1994–95 1995–96 1996–97 1997–98 1998–99 1999–2000 2000–01 2001–02 2002–03 2003–04 2004–05

183,467 113,958 133,870

2005–06 2006–07 2007–08 2008–09 2009–10 2010–11 2011–12 2012–13 2013–14 2014–15 2015–16 2016–17 2017–18 2018–19 2019–20

134,923 146,831 178,385 167,899 170,486 168,059 258,061 219,475 191,670 210,344 197,654 223,306 201,264 223,960 193,668

104,522 108,087 112,420 126,196 117,676 111,346 117,492 111,512 115,592 141,279 111,346

*No visitor numbers available. Source: Leicester Museums Service (2022), New Walk Museum and Art Gallery Visitor Figures (Leicester, Leicester Museums Service)

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At the very least, these figures show that the equivalent of somewhere between 49% and 88% of the population of the City visited New Walk during these years. Even after taking into account the caveats that must exist about the precise numbers of visitors to the Museum – particularly as in the nineteenth century, visitor numbers were largely approximate given the counting mechanisms that were in place at the time, consisting as they did of head counts by on-duty police officers at infrequent intervals, and these largely covering the busiest holiday periods of the year (CM 27/1, 4/1/1876), while earlier than this, New Walk did not even have a doorkeeper, ‘the curator having to attend to it himself’ (14D 55/27, 25/6/1850), so any idea of keeping a count of visitor numbers could hardly be considered a priority for the Museum – there can be little doubt that the Museum was a popular attraction, to put it no higher than that. What these visitors made of their visits, however, resembles something of a black hole in the knowledge that exists. Apart from the surveys in 1983 and 1992 noted previously, the only direct evidence that appears to exist lies in the letters pages of the local newspapers in the City and the occasional letter to the Museum curators. As with such evidence, these letters are normally concerned with pointing out perceived inadequacies in either the exhibitions, the displays, or the general management of the Museum, particularly in terms of the behaviour of members of the visiting public, and these are generally marked by high levels of personal animus towards individuals or practices, which the letter writers believe could be much better managed if only they were being listened to. This line of criticism is a long-standing one, as seen by the reaction to a change in the layout of the Museum galleries in 1944: ‘public reaction followed quickly. The local press carried lively letters against the Museum and its policy as well as spirited letters of defence. There were deputations and that well-known symptom, the anonymous letter’ (Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, 1945, 3). As will be seen in later chapters, a great deal of this criticism is aimed not at the Museum per se but uses the Museum as a means to make political points about the City Council as a whole, including the making of veiled claims about jobbery in the awarding of contracts and outright corruption in some instances. Given the dearth of much in the way of direct evidence of how New Walk was perceived – and even the complaints and criticisms are more often cases of special pleading and personal vindictiveness than they are of reasoned argument (although these do exist) – the crude counting exercise that the simple number of visitors consists of provides a general picture that the Museum was not doing that badly in providing experiences that the public were largely happy with. While this is a form of negative positivity (if the Museum was providing what the people stayed away from it could be taken to show that they were not happy, which would be a form of positive negativity), this is really all that can be said until the specific detail that later chapters provide can be assessed. Before making the break into the detailed examination of the relationship of New Walk with the changing social, professional, economic, and political environments that it operates, and has operated, within the basis upon which this assessment will be made is required.

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’ 29

Assessing Museum Change As previously mentioned, there are many ways of considering the ways in which change plays out in the context of organisational life. Four of these are made use of in what follows: punctuated equilibrium, multiple streams, advocacy coalitions, and path dependence. At the outset, it should be noted that none of these are considered entirely satisfactory for analysing the specific case of the changing histories of the New Walk Museum (a point returned to in Chapter 9), but each of them provides a means for thinking about how change takes place, who is responsible for making change happen, why it happens, and what change actually consists of. Given that the official motto of Leicester City is semper eadem (‘always the same’), the last of these concerns about what change actually consists of has some real meaning. The final chapter of this book confronts this directly to answer questions about the choice and imposition of museum practices over time, the internal and external sources of change, and the relationship between stability and change in museums. The consequences of these for a consideration of how change in the museum can be understood is also discussed in this chapter, as is what this implies for understanding the future of museums as social institutions. The idea of punctuated equilibrium is taken to be a metaphor for describing how to make sense of change over time and assumes that for much of the time, there is a general stability in how organisations function, and this stability is occasionally interrupted by large-scale changes in organisations and their activities (True et al., 2007). How large a change needs to be to be considered ‘large-scale’ is never, however, made clear, relying, instead, on a kind of common-sense recognition of what counts as ‘large’ at any given time. Unfortunately this fails to differentiate between different types of change at all: in the case of New Walk, it is ‘common-sense’ to consider the City’s loss of control of museum services in 1974 and regaining control of them in 1997 as ‘large-scale’ changes, but these are changes of a different nature to the ‘large-scale’ changes in the ethnic mix of the City during the 1970s, or to the shift in political power within the City Council away from the previously dominant Liberal Party after 1900. As will be seen, the nature of change within the City and within New Walk itself differs over time with some issues and processes becoming more significant at some periods than at others, and some becoming less significant. Whether these can then be characterised as being examples of punctuated equilibrium at work remains to be seen. In the case of the idea of multiple streams (Zahariadis, 2007), change is seen to arise as a consequence of the inter-section of problems, policies, and ‘politics’ (a combination of ‘national mood’, pressure group activity, and legislative turnover). This model for understanding change derives directly from empirical work in the political system of the United States and is directly concerned with changes in the policies that organisations pursue. It is used here more generally as a potential mechanism for making sense of change in the specific case of New Walk. The idea that change does not arise spontaneously but is something that is actively pursued by interested parties that are not necessarily starting from the same place as each other is not in itself an exceptional proposition. The extent to which it is applicable

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to making sense of the outcomes arising from large-scale social, economic, political, and professional changes is, however, another matter. Such changes often have their effect upon organisations and actors as unintended consequences rather than as deliberately planned or intended outcomes. While the multiple streams approach is open to the idea that there are multiple possible choices and anticipated effects that policymakers may be aware of, and that their final choices are influenced by multiple sources of intention, these are normally considered in the context of quite specific choices rather than in the much longer-term consideration of change that the current analysis of New Walk is concerned with. As such, it may be the case that the multiple streams approach could be helpful for illuminating specific instances of organisational and policy change rather than for the longitudinal dynamics of change that are the core concern of the present analysis. The advocacy coalitions approach (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999) does adopt a longitudinal approach to thinking about processes of change but, as with the multiple streams approach, tends to focus on specific instances of change rather than a broader conception of the issue. Again, the emphasis is on the conscious choices made by a range of actors – including a variety of technical experts in the issue of concern – with similar structural features lying behind the ways in which these choices are turned into action. Rather than considering change as taking much the same form across all policy issues and policy sectors, where actors utilise similar behavioural traits when making choices – which is implicitly the case with both the punctuated equilibrium and multiple streams approaches – the advocacy coalitions approach assumes that there are considerable differences in how change takes place within each policy sector and sub-sector, as well as within particular policy issues within these sectors and sub-sectors. If punctuated equilibrium and multiple streams approaches are seeking for a general model of policy change (the same sets of actors behaving in the same sorts of ways across time and space), then the advocacy coalition approach is seeking for specific explanations of individual changes with the expectation of different sets of actors operating at different times in different ways to each other. The consequence of this line of reasoning is that generalisations about change become extremely difficult to make, even if it is possible to identify specific explanations for individual cases of change. The emphasis on the structural characteristics underlying processes of change, rather than on the behavioural characteristics of the actors involved, provides an alternative picture of how change can be understood in the case of New Walk. The idea that path dependency could help to explain the nature of the changes that have taken place at New Walk depends upon the existence of a distinct set of structural conditions that serve to limit the range of possible policy choices that individuals and groups might feel are available to them. The idea that museums can have a positive role to play in providing education for all members of society and not only schoolchildren, for example, is a long-standing one (see Greenwood, 1996 [1888]; Murray, 1996 [1904]), and the increasing recognition of the role that museums could play in general school education as opposed to specific educational activities concerned with matters of fine art or palaeontology – as generally recognised by the Education Act of 1918, which made it possible for local

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’ 31 education committees to seek the assistance of museums in the furtherance of local schemes for educational development’ (Kavanagh, 1994, 87), and as supported by Lowe at the local level (1928a), and as stressed by Miers (1928) at the national level – can be seen to be a simple development of this idea – and one which provided the opportunity to establish the Schools Service Department for New Walk. In this case, the acceptance of education as a valid function for museums to provide then acted as a basis for the development of educational services in museums, establishing a pattern of policy activity that has become increasingly difficult to move away from. The extent to which a view is a valid representation of how and why education has become such an important museum function is open to question (see Mahoney, 2000, for general criticisms of the path dependency argument) but it does point to the forms of stability in what museums do that deserve attention, as, also, does the idea that education is so important for museums that it has become almost impossible to envisage a museum that does not provide this function.

Conclusions While there are clearly weaknesses in each of these four approaches to the question of change, they do provide a set of alternative understandings of how and why change occurs, as well as pointing to particular dimensions of organisational and political life that could be, and are, relevant to explaining the processes of change that are concerned. By locating the history of New Walk within the context of the changing social, economic, professional, and political conditions within which it has been operating for over 170 years will allow the greater or lesser value of each of these approaches to become apparent, but so, also, will the role of these structural conditions in museum change. Museums will be both directly and indirectly affected by the contexts within which they function, and it is often assumed that museums directly and indirectly affect these contexts in their own turn. The extent to which each of these are valid positions to hold is open to discussion, and this longitudinal analysis of New Walk provides an opportunity of its own to evaluate this.

Notes  1 The former consists of 12 pages of text, and the latter of 28 pages (with a large font size and a large number of pictures).  2 The experience of museums in New Zealand when dealing with Maori taonga, for example, demonstrates that what occurs in one national museum (in that case the Te Papa Museum in Wellington) does not automatically get translated into conditions in other museums in the country; see McCarthy (2007).  3 Although it should be noted that New Walk has often been seen as being important, not only in itself, but also in terms of the wider museum sector in the United Kingdom – and sometimes internationally as well. As will be seen, the leading role that New Walk took in the development of policies on museum ethics and restitution practices in the 1960s and 1970s were world-leading, while the development of the role of ‘guide-lecturer’ in the 1920s led the way at a national level.  4 This was effectively the Minutes Book of the City’s local authority. This authority had been introduced under the provisions of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 and

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led to the replacement of a thoroughly corrupt, nepotistic, and almost entirely Tory- and Anglican-dominated predecessor by a dominantly Liberal and non-conformist/dissenting successor. The exact quote is from the meeting of the 16th of September 1846: page 277 in the Common-Hall Book (CM 1/4).  5 Of which there were very few in the United Kingdom. In England, the Municipal Corporations Act had allowed for the creation of such bodies in only the largest towns and cities in the country – and London was excluded from this.  6 In the form of a property tax known as the rates and payment of these, at a sufficiently high level, provided the means to become a voter in local and national elections. Rates were not abolished until the 1980s, and the connection of rate payment to voting rights was not abolished until the early twentieth century.  7 It is commonly assumed that Arnold was simply an ‘elitist’ seeking to impose a particular set of values on society, and while there is some element of truth in this in terms of the values involved, it is more true to see him as a democrat who wanted to provide all citizens with the power to make informed choices about their own, and others’, lives. Indeed, much of Anarchy and Culture (1960) is concerned with berating the protagonists of religious beliefs (conformist, non-conformist, as well as more secular persons) for failing to consider the needs of all members of society, particularly in terms of education and the acquisition of knowledge.  8 This building was designed by Joseph Hansom, also the designer of the eponymous cab.  9 Who were a London barrister, farmers from Quorndon and Barrow-upon-Soar, a man from Rearsby, and two Leicester gentlemen, as identified in CM 1/5, 127. 10 This refers to pre-decimalisation prices, all expressed as £, s, d: pounds, shillings, and pence. 11 In actuality, the Museum cost £4,211 and the cemetery £12,500: in 2014 prices these are equivalent to £4,775,274 and £14,175,000. 12 The position of Leicester has certainly been much better than in areas in the north of the country that were appallingly affected by the relative collapse in manufacturing industries and mining during the 1980s and early 1990s. 13 Later the leader of the Labour Party, the first Labour Party Prime Minister, and in bad odour with much of the party following the disastrous 1931 general election, when Labour parliamentary representation was devastated by his campaign for a national government (in effect, a coalition government) in the face of the awful consequences of the global Depression following the Wall Street crash of 1929. He was given the Freedom of the City in 1929 (see Jones, 1993, 114). 14 Labour was also reasonably represented in the larger county, particularly in North-West Leicestershire, Loughborough, and Syston, but much of the rural county was deeply Conservative, as attested by their taking majority control of the County Council in 2001 and retaining it thereafter. 15 For full details of the election results of both the county and city elections from 1973– 2011, see Rallings & Thrasher (2015a, 2015b, 2015c). 16 After the Museums Act of 1845 (that of 8 & 9 Vic, chap 43 referred to on Chapter 1), there was further legislation directly concerning museums in 1850, 1855, 1866, 1868, 1885, 1891, 1892, 1901, 1918 and 1919 (Miers, 1928, 10–13), with later acts to follow. 17 It is largely for this reason, allied with the roles taken in the Museums Association by his successors, Trevor Thomas (1940–47), M. B. Hodge (1947–51), Trevor Walden (1951–72), and Patrick Boylan (1972–90), in the field of museum education that the University of Leicester became the home of the thriving Department of Museum Studies, the first of its kind in Europe: see Singleton (1966). 18 As the example on Bethany Rex’s Lost Museums site demonstrates: see www.lostmuseums.com (accessed 10/12/2021). See also Rex (2020a, 2020b, 2020c). 19 Some of this increase was down to the extension of the town boundaries in 1891 and the city boundaries in 1935 – see Elliott (1979, 148–51) on the former, and Simmons (1974b, 125) on the latter.

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’ 33 20 The eight were Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Norwich, Nottingham and Glasgow. Other cities and towns spent more on museums and libraries combined, but if the Leicester experience was anything to go by, a system of branch libraries was a great deal more costly to provide than were individual museums! 21 Which made them more representative of non-managerial white-collar employment than has usually been seen to be the case with museum visitors in general. 22 The latter figure is slightly deflated as a consequence of the closure of the Museum in March 2020 as a protective public health measure during the early stages of the Covid pandemic.

References Archive Material CM 1/4 Borough of Leicester Common-Hall Book 9th November 1844 to 20th October 1847. CM 1/5 Borough of Leicester Common-Hall Book 9th November 1847 to 20th day of March 1850. CM 27/1 Museum Committee Minutes November 1871 to August 1877. CM 27/3 Museum Committee Minutes 11th January 1887 to 19th February 1995. CM 27/6 Museum and Art Gallery Committee Minutes 18th August 1904 to 20th December 1910. CM 27/9 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 1st January 1924 to 5th April 1927. CM 27/10 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 28th April 1927 to 30th October 1931. CM 27/13 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 16th May 1939 to 14th October 1946. DE 3220/6 Administration Policy 1882–1954. DE 3277/172 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 18th September 1959 to 20th July 1962. DE 6345/34/1 Moore, R (nd), Leicester Museums, 1835–1974. DE 7971/33 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes June 1973 to May 1975. DE 7971/36 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes July 1981 to November 1983. DE 7971/38 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes April 1986 to February 1988. DE 7971/39 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes June 1988 to April 1989. DE 7971/41 Leicestershire County Council Arts, Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes March 1991 to April 1992. 4D56/420 Visitors Book 1943–55. 4D56/470 City of Leicester Organisation and Methods Report on the Management and Administration of the Leicester Museums and Art Gallery Department (Leicester, Town Clerk’s Department, October 1972). 14D 55/27 Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society Museum Curators Minutes 19th April 1850 to 15th October 1860.

Other Sources Alberti, S (2009), Nature and Culture: Objects, Disciplines and the Manchester Museum (Manchester, Manchester University Press).

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Alexander, E & M Alexander (2008), Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums (Lanham, AltaMira Press) Archives Department (1949), City of Leicester Museum 1849–1949 (Leicester, Compiled by the Archive Department and published on the occasion of the Museum Centenary, 21st June, 1949). Arnold, M (1960), Culture and Anarchy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Babbidge, A (2018), ‘Who’s Counting Whom? Non-National Museum Attendance in the UK, Part 1’, Cultural Trends, 27, 239–50 (DoI: 10.1080/09548963.2018.1503788). Babbidge, A (2019), ‘Non-National Museum Attendance in the UK: Part 2: Counting Them in’, Cultural Trends, 28, 6–19 (DoI: 10.1080/09548963.2019.1558945). Begley, S (2013), The Story of Leicester (Stroud, The History Press). Bourke, M (2011), The Story of Irish Museums 1790–2000: Culture, Identity and Education (Cork, Cork University Press). Brown, C (2002), Cherished Possessions: A History of New Walk Museum & Leicester City Museums Service (Leicester, Leicester City Council). Conlin, J (2006), The Nation’s Mantelpiece: A History of the National Gallery (London, Pallas Athene). Elliott, M (1979), Victorian Leicester (London, Phillimore). Evans, R (1958), ‘Parliamentary History since 1835’, 201–50 in R. McKinley (Ed), A History of the County of Leicester: Volume IV The City of Leicester (London, Oxford University Press). Fortey, R (2008), Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum (London, Harper Perennial). Giltinan, K (2008), ‘The Early History of Docents in American Art Museums, 1890–1930’, Museum History Journal, 1, 103–28 (DoI: 10.1179/mhj.2008.1.1.103). Gray, C & V McCall (2020), The Role of Today’s Museum (Abingdon, Routledge). Greenfield, J (2007), The Return of Cultural Treasures (3rd Ed, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Greenwood, T (1996 [1888]), Museums and Art Galleries (London, Routledge/Thoemmes Press). Herbert, J (2016), ‘Immigration and the Emergence of Multicultural Leicester’, 330–46 in R. Rodger & R. Madgin (Eds), Leicester: A Modern History (Lancaster, Carnegie). Hoskins, W (1955), ‘An Elizabethan Provincial Town: Leicester’, 33–67 in J. Plumb (Ed), Studies in Social History: A Tribute to G. M. Trevelyan (London, Longmans, Green). Hudson, K (1975), A Social History of Museums: What the Visitors Thought (London, Macmillan). Jones, P (1993), ‘Politics’, 90–120 in D. Nash & D. Reeder (Eds), Leicester in the Twentieth Century (Stroud, Alan Sutton). Kavanagh, D & D Butler (2005), The British General Election of 2005 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan). Kavanagh, G (1994), Museums and the First World War: A Social History (London, Leicester University Press). Lancaster, B (1987), Radicalism, Cooperation and Socialism: Leicester Working-Class Politics 1860–1906 (Leicester, Leicester University Press). Leicester Museum and Art Gallery (1945), Forty-First Report to the City Council (Leicester, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery). Leicester Museums Service (nd), Leicester Museum and the Schools: An Illustrated Account of the Work of the Schools Service Department (Leicester, Leicester Museums Service).

Origins and ‘One Damn Thing After Another’ 35 Lewis, G (1989), For Instruction and Recreation: A Centenary History of the Museums Association (London, Quiller Press). Lott, F (1935), The Centenary Book of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society (Leicester, W. Thornley). Lowe, E (1928a), A Report on American Museum Work (Dunfermline, Carnegie United Kingdom Trust). Lowe, E (1928b), ‘Notes on American Museums’, Museums Journal, 27, 208–17, 238–46. Mahoney, J (2000), ‘Path Dependence in Historical Sociology’, Theory and Society, 29, 507–48 (DoI: 10.1023/A:1007113830879). Markham, S (1938), A Report on the Museums and Art Galleries of the British Isles (Other than the National Museums) (Edinburgh, T & A Constable). Mason, R (2007), Museums, Nations, Identities: Wales and its National Museums (Cardiff, University of Wales Press). McCarthy, C (2007), Exhibiting Maori: A History of Colonial Cultures of Display (Oxford, Berg). McKinley, R & C. Smith (1958), ‘Social and Administrative History Since 1835’, 251–302 in R. McKinley (Ed), A History of the County of Leicester, Volume IV, The City of Leicester (London, Oxford University Press). Miers, H (1928), A Report on the Public Museums of the British Isles (Other than the National Museums) (Edinburgh, T & A Constable). Murray, D (1996 [1904]), Museums: Their History and their Use (London, Routledge/ Thoemmes). Nash, D (1993), ‘Organizational and Associational Life’, 158–93 in D. Nash & D. Reeder (Eds), Leicester in the Twentieth Century (Stroud, Alan Sutton). Patterson, A (1954), Radical Leicester: A History of Leicester 1780–1850 (Leicester, University College Leicester). Plumb, J (1954), ‘Political History, 1530–1885’, 102–34 in W. Hoskins (Ed), The Victoria History of the County of Leicester: Volume Two (London, Oxford University Press). Rallings, C & M Thrasher (2015a), Leicester City Council Election Results 1973–1995 (At: electionscentre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Leicester-1973–1995.pdf [Accessed: 20/2/2020]). Rallings, C & M Thrasher (2015b), Leicester City Council Election Results 1996–2009 (At: electionscentre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Leicester-1996–2011.pdf [Accessed: 20/2/2020]). Rallings, C & M Thrasher (2015c), Leicestershire County Council Election Results 1973– 2009 (At: electionscentre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Leicestershire-County.pdf [Accessed: 20/2/2020]). Reeder, D (1993), ‘Municipal Provision: Education, Health and Housing’, 121–57 in D. Nash & D. Reeder (Eds), Leicester in the Twentieth Century (Stroud, Alan Sutton). Reeder, D & C Harrison (1993), ‘The Local Economy’, 49–89 in D. Nash & D. Reeder (Eds), Leicester in the Twentieth Century (Stroud, Alan Sutton). Rex, B (2020a), ‘Which Museums to Fund? Examining Local Government Decision-Making inAusterity’, Local Government Studies, 46, 186–205 (DoI: 10.1080/03003930.2019.1619554). Rex, B (2020b), ‘Roses for Everyone? Art Council England’s 2020–2030 Strategy and Local Authority Museums: A Thematic Analysis and Literature Review’, Cultural Trends, 29, 129–44 (DoI: 10.1080/09548963.2020.1761247). Rex, B (2020c), ‘Public Museums in a Time of Crisis: The Case of Museum Asset Transfer’, Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage, 7, 77–92 (DoI: 10.1080/ 20518196.2019.1688265).

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Reynolds, S (1955), ‘Table of Population 1801–1951’, 176–217 in W. Hoskins & R. McKinley (Eds), The Victoria History of the County of Leicester, Volume III (London, Oxford University Press). Rodger, R (2016), ‘Understanding Leicester: Independent, Radical, Tolerant’, 3–52 in R. Rodger & R. Madgin (Eds), Leicester: A Modern History (Lancaster, Carnegie). Rosse Report (1963), Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries, Survey of Provincial Museums and Galleries (London, HMSO). Sabatier, P & H Jenkins-Smith (1999), ‘The Advocacy Coalition Framework: An Assessment’, 117–66 in P. Sabatier (Ed), Theories of the Policy Process (Boulder, Westview). Schubert, K (2009), The Curator’s Egg: The Evolution of the Museum Concept from the French Revolution to the Present Day (London, Ridinghouse). Simmons, J (1974a), Leicester Past and Present: Volume I Ancient Borough to 1860 (London, Eyre Methuen). Simmons, J (1974b), Leicester Past and Present: Volume Two Modern City 1860–1974 (London, Eyre Methuen). Singleton, R (1966), ‘The Leicester Course’, Museums Journal, 66, 135–38. Stearn, W (1981), The Natural History Museum at South Kensington (London, Heinemann). True, J, B Jones & F Baumgartner (2007), ‘Punctuated-Equilibrium Theory: Explaining Stability and Change in Public Policymaking’, 155–87 in P. Sabatier (Ed), Theories of the Policy Process (2nd Ed, Boulder, Westview Press). Waterfield, G (2015), The People’s Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions in Britain, 1800–1914 (New Haven, Yale University Press). Wilkinson, H (2014), Negotiating Change: Curatorial Practice in UK Museums, 1960–2001 (Leicester, PhD Thesis, Leicester University). Wilson, D (2002), The British Museum: A History (London, British Museum). Zahariadis, N (2007), ‘The Multiple Streams Framework: Structure, limitations, Prospects’, 65–92 in P. Sabatier (Ed), Theories of the Policy Process (2nd Ed, Boulder, Westview).

3

Collections and Practices

Introduction This chapter will examine the growth and changing contents of the Museum’s collections as well as how, where, why, and when it has been displayed. Apart from serving to identify changes in the sources of the collection, particularly in the balance between donations and purchases, this will also allow for an examination of who has been responsible for the choices that have been made about not only what is in the collection but also about which parts of it should be on display at any given time. The relationship between new elements in the collection and the accumulated inheritance of the past will also be considered in the context of arguments about the role and functions of material assemblages within the context of the museum. The relationship between these issues and the social, political, and economic environments within which the museum has been functioning will serve as the organising element in this discussion. It is not, of course, practicable to cover in exact detail every element of the collection that New Walk has available to it or, indeed, the relatively small proportion of it that is actually on display at any given time. Discussion of the shifting patterns of exhibition and display can, however, be used as a means to start the exploration of the ways in which the social, economic, and political contexts of the Museum have had an effect on what the staff of the Museum, the local authority, and the local Council1 have used the Museum for in terms of the displays and exhibitions that have been employed. At a relatively straightforward level, this relationship can be seen in terms of the changes that were made to the Museum displays between 1914 and 1921 – over this time the Museum’s displays of Egyptian antiquities (including the collection of mummies) and weapons were both removed from display, with these changes probably2 being related to the effects of the First World War and a desire to remove direct reminders of death and destruction from the Museum’s displays (4D 56/77/5/2–4) – but in many other cases of change, the relationship is much less obvious than this.

Making Sense of the Collection Every museum makes use of collected material, either directly through possession of the objects concerned, or indirectly, as in the case of loans or the creation of DOI: 10.4324/9780429292491-3

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alternative forms of representation that are not dependent upon original artefacts per se (McLeod, 2004). Whatever the case may be, the collections that are concerned are made use of for a variety of reasons by a multitude of people, whether these are physical or remote visitors, the owners of the material concerned, the museum staff who use the material to mount displays or who have responsibility for the care of the material, the managers to whom the museum is accountable, the general public who may not even visit museums or who positively dislike them as examples of colonialist and imperialist attitudes and practices or a waste of money that could be ‘better’ spent on any number of alternative uses (see Gray, 2015, 51–9, 150–8). The reasons for which collections are made use are equally as multiple and can range from educational to aesthetic, political to social, and knowledge-creation to economic development amongst many others (see, for example, Arnold, 2006; Gray & McCall, 2020; Hooper-Greenhill, 2007). Equally, collections can consist of not only physical objects themselves but can also consist of records, either written or otherwise recorded (as with oral histories in the form of taped or videoed records, for example), digital images, and other technically managed forms of representation (Parry, 2007). Museums are not only, however, repositories of tangible and intangible collections that can be used to explore the past, the present, and the future – they are also arenas where changing ideas, models, conceptions, ideologies, and preferences concerning the role of museums within society are developed and applied to the actual practices that are undertaken within them. Changes in professional standards and practices, the possibilities that are given by changes in collections and buildings, and changing relationships to funders, donors, elected politicians, and local populations might all be expected to have an effect upon how museums and galleries will function in terms of the displays and exhibitions that they provide and how they will manage the necessary technical and managerial changes that are generated by these underlying developments. These processes of change are long-term in both their gestation and in terms of how the effects of change are worked through in any given institutional context: the demands of change need to be managed, negotiated, and imposed through the interactions between multiple actors who make use of differing strategies and tactics to have an effect on the overall changes that are created. In this respect, collections are far more than simply a combination of the detritus of the past and those objects that are currently thought to be worthy of keeping and maintaining for the future for one reason or another. They are also symbolic of past beliefs, expectations, and choices as well as being direct representations of how these past beliefs, expectations, and choices were given meaning and form within the museum. To make sense of the collections that New Walk has available to it requires not only an examination of the direct contents of these collections but also the ways in which they have been managed, exhibited, and displayed over time. There has never been a single view of what museums should, could, or ought to collect over the course of time with clear distinctions possible between the types of objects that collectors – whether as museum staff or as private individuals – perceived to be worth amassing at different periods. Pearce (1995, 124), for

Collections and Practices 39 example, argues that over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, two ‘strands’ of collecting were apparent: ‘one, morally respectable and intellectually acclaimed, occupied the collecting high ground’ focussed on natural history and fine art, while the other, ‘which concentrated on historical and exotic material, took a demotic turn’. Hill (2011, 134–5) argues that ‘around 1900’ even this second category of collecting began to change where ‘the monumental, classical and aesthetic were, if not comprehensively rejected, downgraded in favour of the everyday, homely and quaint’, indicating that the ‘demotic’ turn noted by Pearce clearly had some way to go to become fully evident in museum collections by the end of the nineteenth century. Such distinctions between the types of material that collectors pursued, and believed were worthwhile pursuing, are, however, only a part of the whole. It is also evident that over time there has been a marked shift in the sources from which collections were derived. Alberti (2009) has distinguished five sources of collections – gift, purchase, fieldwork, transfer, loan (to which can be added direct exchange3), with the very origin of New Walk being based on the ‘gift’ from the Lit and Phil of its existing collection in 1849. By the end of the twentieth century, the purchases of art that New Walk was making were usually (but not always) dependent upon raising funds from external sources,4 suggesting that an extra specific source – perhaps along the lines of ‘financial patronage’ – might need to be identified given the recognised financial limitations that most museums, particularly local ones, are operating within. Thus, not only what the Museum has collected can be seen to have changed over time but also the specific sources through which the collection continues to grow have also changed. To support this claim, some discussion of the changing nature of the collections that New Walk has available to it is required, taking note of the changes in, and sources of, the collection, as well as in how the elements of the collection have been exhibited over time. The relationship between these concerns with the changing social, economic, and political contexts that the Museum has been operating within forms a core part of later chapters and so will not be treated as a central part of this discussion. Alongside this, concerns with how the collection has been conserved and why items were taken into the collection – there being something of a difference between accepting items to complete or expand existing parts of the collection, and accepting items to start a new part of the collection (as with the development of the German expressionist art collection after 1944), just as there is a difference between accepting items for their local or international significance5 – also need to be considered. The question of who was responsible for making choices about the contents of the collection – including the disposal of unwanted items – also has importance in this discussion: were these choices made, for example, on the basis of the professional judgement of Museum staff, the personal preferences of members of the Museums Committee, or the demands of the local population? Such discussion can point towards where the balance of power lies in terms of who runs the Museum, for what purposes it is being used, and in whose interests it is being managed; each of which has importance for examining the changing nature of the Museum itself.

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Gray and McCall (2020) have argued that museums are always and everywhere multi-functional organisations and that the list of functions that they have been associated with are not only many in number but they have also changed over time in terms of their perceived importance. Part of the reason for these shifting sands of perception lies in the fact that the evidence base to demonstrate that museums actually succeed in meeting the expectations that are attached to these functions is rather thin – if not often non-existent. The weaknesses of museums in fulfilling the often over-inflated expectations that are loaded onto them has been long recognised: Jevons (1883), for example, pointed out that it is almost impossible to identify the precise nature of the educational benefit that visiting museums can provide, Hudson (1975, 45) going so far as to argue that more educational benefit could be seen to attach to attendance at agricultural shows than it does from museum attendance. Despite these weaknesses in the evidence base, museums continue to be proposed as the answer to all sorts of social, economic, and political problems.6 The changing importance and priority that has been given to different sets of functional activity and purpose over time – whether these be museal, political, economic, social, technical/technological – are associated with not only the museum as a specific organisation but also with the museum as a general institutional form. The complexity of the role of museums within society is related to this distinction. The role of the museum in terms of identity formation, for example, can be seen to be concerned with political and societal dynamics (Soudien, 2012) and is also something that can be associated with both specific examples of museums and assigned as a general function to every single museum in the world. The complexity in this case depends upon whether it is the general or the specific that is being addressed: what might be appropriate in terms of identity formation in the case of a small, local museum is not necessarily going to be so for every museum, raising, again, the continuing issue of the generalisability of museum experiences and practices. Possibly the clearest example to demonstrate this point lies in the teleological argument of Bennett (1995) that museums as institutions were, in the nineteenth century, largely developed and used for purposes of social control and class stratification/differentiation. The evidence found by Hill (2005)7 in the case of specific museum organisations (including New Walk), however, casts doubt on this argument, pointing to many other reasons for why museums could be, and were in the nineteenth century, established and how, in practice, they were made use of. Thus, even though the museum as an institution can, and does, have a role in reinforcing class differences, this cannot be translated into an explanation for why individual museums were actually created. While there are multiple functions that museums claim they undertake – and actually do undertake – the role of collections in terms of these functions is not entirely clear. Gray and McCall (2020, 17, 22) have distinguished between different sources from which museum functions derive (behavioural, structural, internal, and external) and the relationship of these functions to particular dimensions of museum activity (with these being core, intrinsic, use, community, and

Collections and Practices 41 social), but the precise relationship of these with items, whether individually or as a whole, within museum collections is neither defined nor explained. While some museum functions – such as conservation, labelling, and classification – effectively demand that such a thing as a collection exists, whether within a museum or not, other functions – such as the representation of local and national identities and the conquest of the craving ‘for intoxicants or vicious excitement’ (as noted in Greenwood, 1996 [1888], 27) – could be, and are, undertaken in many different ways and places that have no relationship to museums and their collections at all. At the very least, this indicates the need to be careful when assigning effects to the roles that museum collections can play, both for the museum itself and the communities that they serve. Bearing this rather large number of caveats in mind, the general point that museums effectively define themselves by means of their collections is still true for the overwhelming majority of museums that exist in the world today. It is not particularly important what these collections consist of, but they serve as identifying markers of what those responsible for the museum see themselves as representing, whether this be a particular subject-matter, a specific locality, or some larger entity. In the case of subject-matter, for example, a range of, generally small-scale, museums with a quite specific collecting focus exist in many places (such as, in Britain, the Bakelite and the British Vintage Wireless and Television Museums, as discussed in Candlin, 2016). Museums with a local focus are equally widely found based, in the main, on objects, individuals, and stories that are associated with a particular, usually geographical, location (such as the museums at Helston in Cornwall and the Nicholson Institute in Leek in Staffordshire). In the last category the self-defined ‘universal’ museums that purport to exist for all of humanity and which contain examples of everything could serve as the classic example – even though this ‘universalism’ is more of a self-serving justification that is designed to cover a multitude of dubious, if not downright illegal, collecting practices from the past and equally as dubious attempts to impose a particular set of extremely debatable meanings upon the entire museum universe (Gray, 2015, 51–9; O’Neill, 2004; Duncan & Wallach, 1980). Apart from this definitional role, museum collections can also serve as markers of changing perceptions of relevance, importance, and meaning amongst museum staff and managers, local populations, and wider groups of opinion formers and makers within society, whether these be critics, political parties and groups, or individuals whose views are deemed within these circles as being worthy of respect and attention. The extent to which these changing perceptions actually have an effect upon the composition of museum collections can, in turn, demonstrate the extent to which differing social, political, and economic conditions affect what takes place within the museum and whether these have any effect at all. While it is almost certain that each of these sets of environmental conditions will have some effect, what this consists of, where it derives from, and how it has an effect are by no means clear. Later chapters will examine these concerns, but for now attention will be shifted to the specific collection that New Walk has.

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The New Walk Collection The original collection of the Museum ‘consisted of about 10,000 objects, against 22,000, the number given in the report of the Museum Committee for 1877’ (Lott, 1935, 39), with the latter figure being a considerable increase over the 17,565 objects reported as being in the collection in 1873 (Leicester Town Museum, 1873, 12–13). Precisely what the original collection consisted of is not entirely clear as the archival record (4D 56/108/1–190) contains a rather haphazardly catalogued list covering just over 50 years’ worth of specimens and items, some of which are recorded in different lists, in different handwriting, that were collated for different purposes, by different people at different times. Where the total of ‘about 10,000 objects’ comes from is not apparent, even if every single example of fossilised bones, insects, beetles, and paintings are counted individually. Despite this, it is evident that during the time that this listing was compiled, the Museum had available to it a large collection of animal, bird, and invertebrate specimens, as well as a sizable collection of geological ones. Alongside what, at the time, were these usual items that were to be found in all the local museums in Britain that were being formed during the middle of the nineteenth century, the early collections were also home to a number of non-biological and non-geological items, including cannonballs retrieved from the sites of the Battles of Bosworth8 and Naseby, two of the most important battles in British history (alongside the Battle of Hastings), an ‘idol covered in jade’ from New Zealand; a Chinese abacus; medieval pottery; and an array of ‘implements, ornaments, utensils (general)’ of bone, metal, leather, stone, and shell (recorded separately at 4D 56/108/8, 20, 29,43); as well as ‘a small piece of point lace, the work of Lady Jane Grey, and ‘part of a lace veil worn by Mary Queen of Scots, on the morning of her execution’ (both these latter at 4D 56/108/2).9 The tendency to rely upon home-grown and foreign exotica alongside more mundane examples of everyday items indicates that there was hardly any form of overall collections policy in place for the Museum and that there was little in the way of what would now be seen as essential information for the precise identification and cataloguing of items in the collection or, indeed, of the precise provenance of each piece. While many items had the name of the donor, many more did not, and the recording of the source of the item concerned was often missing: so for every ‘2 glazed bricks from the porcelain Tower, Nankin (sic) destroyed by the rebels’, donated by ‘H. E. Stephens (R. N)’, there is a ‘Book of Common Prayer formerly the property of Robert Burns’ (both at 4D 56/108/4, donated in 1871 and 1861 respectively). The magpie nature of the collection in its early years was reflective of the fact that New Walk was founded in the early period of the development of a coherent philosophy of museums as an institutional form, something that effectively developed between the establishment of the British Museum in 1753 and the mid-1850s, particularly in Germany and France (Delbourgo, 2017; Poulot, 2009; Ruprecht, 2014; Sheehan, 2000; Whitehead, 2009). The taxonomical organisation of New Walk, where material in the collection was organised and classified according to the type of object that was concerned, had little to do with the idea of the museum

Collections and Practices 43 as an entity and still bore the markings of the older tradition of the ‘cabinet of curiosity’ approach to collecting, where anything and everything could be, and was, collected regardless of whether it made sense as part of an organised collection or not (Impey & MacGregor 2001 [1985]). While individual parts of the New Walk collection, such as the array of insects, beetles, mammals, birds, and fish that formed a part of it, were labelled, organised, and differentiated in a clear fashion and with an underlying idea of how and why this classification was important, the overall picture of what New Walk as a whole contained was much less apparent. Things were not exactly helped by the lack of anything approaching either a defined purchase fund for the Museum – something that did not appear for many years into the future, finally being established in 1957 (DE3277/171, 16/6/1956, 15/2/1957), even though the Museum was empowered to make purchases, ‘subject to the approval of the Museum Committee of the Town Council’ (CM 27/1, 5–6) by the early 1870s – or a clearly defined collections policy. Indeed, for much of the early history of New Walk, the Museum was almost entirely dependent upon the Lit and Phil for additions to the collection, including the ‘very valuable and interesting purchase of a plesiosaurus and other saurians . . . (and) Roman remains recently discovered’ in 185110 (CM 1/6, 440), and the ‘497 specimens of arachnidae and insects from the collection made by Henry Walter Bates11 in the valley of the Amazon’ in 1850 (4D 56/108/136), while most of the income of the Lit and Phil itself went to the Museum (CM 1/8, 22), both to pay the salary of the curator and for improvements to display capacity, as well as for the items that were being added to the collection. The reliance on what was being offered to the Museum by interested members of the public, particularly those who were members of the Lit and Phil, meant that the collection grew by accretion rather than as the result of conscious choices on the behalf of the Honorary Curators – or the paid curator – of the Museum. The Honorary Curators, however, were making choices about what they were not particularly interested in purchasing – ‘there are no funds for purchasing such articles, the museum being dependent on donations’ (in this case the said articles were a collection of Roman coins of which the Museum already possessed quite a number) (14D 55/27; 7/9/1852). This form of negative choice was, in some sense at least, the consequence of the development of a form of rationing on the behalf of the Honorary Curators: with limited resources of both time and money being available, choices were effectively being forced upon them. Even so, there is no evidence that the Honorary Curators had a coherent acquisitions policy or framework in place to guide these choices – unless, that is, the filling in of gaps within the existing collection serves as a policy or framework. The role of the Honorary Curators was largely defined by what their responsibilities towards the collection were meant to be, and these were defined by the different spheres of interest that they had control of. In 1849, the Honorary Curators were individually responsible for geology, zoology, botany, archaeology, and fine arts. In 1872 this was changed to concern for zoology and botany (as a combined category), geology, archaeology, fine arts, meteorological and general physics, and ‘building and grounds’ (DE 6435/34/1). These divisions served, between 1849 and 1890, to fragment the museums service that New Walk provided, and it was

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not until the latter date that a single focus for the work of the Museum could be established. While the paid curator had become increasingly in control of deciding which proposed donations and purchases the Museum would accept and decide upon, the reduction in influence and power of the Honorary Curators had not led the paid curator to assume the position of an almighty autocratic ruler of the Museum. If anything, the ultimate power over the Museum, particularly following the appointment of more ‘professional’ paid curators and the reduction in influence of the Honorary Curators of the Lit and Phil after 1872, eventually shifted firmly into the hands of the Town Council. Before this while, legally, the Council bore full responsibility for what happened in the Museum, in practice the real decisions were being made by the Honorary Curators. Following 1872, and particularly following the appointment of William Harrison (1872–80) as the first of the new breed of curator, there was a marked development of all aspects of the Museum, from the rationalisation of collections policy to an increased concern with matters of conservation, exhibition, and display. Much of this detail is covered in a later chapter, and the enhanced role of the curator and the professionalisation of museum management – limited as this was until the second half of the twentieth century (see, for example, Kavanagh, 1994, 17 on the position of the nascent museums professions before the First World War) – forms a large part of this, but the increased voice of the Council in matters concerning the Museum should not be ignored. The role of the Council could occasionally seem to be that of some Olympian deity passing down edicts and demands from on high, but this is only partially accurate. The much later role that the Council Committees to which the Museum reported, and reports, had was to act as something of a buffer between the Council as a whole and the managers of the day-to-day operations of the Museum, and this was firmly in place by the 1880s. By this period, the relevant Council Committees had become a touch more assertive about the expectations that were held of the Museum. The general principles and purposes of the Museum had been laid down in 1872 as ‘the collection, preservation, classification, and exhibition of specimens of Natural History, Geology, Antiquity, and the Fine Arts, with other objects of interest’, and significantly, that ‘specimens may be obtained by donation, bequest or purchase under the direction of the Museum Committee of the Town Council’ (CM 27/1, 23/1/1872). The latter of these marked the place where the position of the Honorary Curators started to be weakened as the Council became increasingly seen as having a direct, and directing, interest in what the Museum did and how it was organised to do this. The establishment of a separate Art Gallery in 1885 (even though New Walk Museum had been collecting art works since 1849 [4D 56/108/3]) provided the opportunity to revisit these principles and purposes, and even though there was absolutely no change to those that had been established in 1872, the formal roles of the curators were revised. The Honorary Curators were ‘entrusted with the arrangement, classification, selection and rejection of all the specimens in his (sic) Division of the Museum collection’, and the paid curator ‘shall be the Custodian of the Building’ and its contents and was also given ‘the power to exclude all drunken

Collections and Practices 45 and disorderly persons, all children except as are in charge of their parents or guardians, and all children with sticks, bats, hoops or similar articles’, ‘to prevent smoking in the building’, and to stop ‘any one defacing or damaging the museum property; and to keep general good order in the museum’ (4D 56/77/1; CM 27/3, 5/11/1888). This marks the final point at which the privileges of the Honorary Curators with regard to New Walk were given real meaning. By 1890, effective control of the display of the items in the collection had passed firmly into the hands of the paid curator, even if it took until the appointment of Lowe in 1907 for this to be given full effect in the written policy of the Museum (DE 3220/6). The extent to which the powers of the Honorary Curators allowed them to actually control what was exhibited and how it was displayed before 1890 is open to some question, however. While in 1854 the Honorary Curators could insist that ‘the casts of the “Dancing Faun” and “Modesty” . . . be placed in the Sculpture Room . . . finding that many ladies were prevented from inspecting the contents of the Archaeological Room, in consequence of having to pass the said statues’, with them being moved soon after, they could only request in 1860 that ‘the precedent adopted at the Kensington Museum, of covering the nude figures, now in our sculpture room, with fig leaves’ be equally adopted at New Walk, with no evidence that this prescription was actually carried out (14D 55/27: 26/12/1854; 15/10/1860). Despite this, it was still the case that ‘as Heads of Department of this museum the duty devolves upon them of initiating reforms and improvements’ (CM 27/2, 15/11/1881), and they still had formal control of exhibition and display, as noted in the previous section (CM 27/3, 5/11/1888). While the power struggle over who had command of the actual exhibition and display of the Museum’s collection was underway, there was a continued growth in the numbers of items in the collection, mostly in the form of donations from local citizens and purchases by the Lit and Phil. In the case of the Art Gallery, it is possible to be more precise about the sources of the collection. While following its establishment in 1885 there had been a marked increase in the numbers of prints, lithographs, and watercolours that were both made available and collected, the number of ‘paintings’ (normally taken to be oil paintings) had only gradually grown, largely as a consequence of the sheer economic cost that such art works entailed, until such time as enhanced financial support from such bodies as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Art Fund, the Contemporary Art Society, and the Friends of Leicester Museum was made (increasingly) available. In the period between 1852 and 1957, New Walk had developed a collection of 373 ‘paintings’, of which 202 (54.1%) were purchased, 104 (27.6%) were ‘presented’, and 58 (15.5%) were ‘bequeathed’ (DE 6435/29/2). Of these, 72 (19.3%) were accessioned before 1900, 74 (19.8%) between 1900 and 1929, and 207 (55.5%) between 1930 and 1955.12 Decisions about the purchase of items for the Museum and Art Gallery collections, other than those being purchased by the Lit and Phil, has always been the legal and formal responsibility of the Museum Committee13 (and through the Committee, the Town, Borough, and City Council), and this remained the case after the establishment of various sub-committees that were intended to make recommendations

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on purchases to the Committee as a whole. The actual decisions that were made were almost entirely determined by the willingness of the Committee to spend the requisite amounts, particularly in the context of almost hyper-inflationary increases in the purchase prices that were demanded for examples of ‘fine’ art and which put many paintings completely out of reach of the limited funds that the Art Gallery had available to it (DE 3277/172, 5/2/1960; DE 7971/49, 25/6/1975; DE 7971/37, 4/1/1985). Thus, the purchase of the small version of W. Frith’s Railway Station in 1892 for the price of £325 10s (equivalent to £36,812 in 2014 prices) was approved at the same meeting at which it was agreed ‘that in the present state of the finances no expenditure be incurred in photography’ (CM 27/3 20/4/1892). Of course these restraints also applied to the Museum itself and the rationing that was applied to it became more marked as the City increased the number of museums that it managed and the number of heritage buildings that it assumed responsibility for. Even though the overall funding that was made available for museums and heritage by the City increased, it was now being divided into more pots, each of which had equally as valid calls on this funding as New Walk did. Consequently the number of items that the City had in its collection grew, but less of it as a proportion of the whole was appropriately placed in New Walk. This was exacerbated while the City Museums Service was located in the County Council as the County had a distinct policy of opening its own museums outside of the City,14 starting with the Carnegie Museum in Melton Mowbray in 1977, much of whose original displays came directly from the New Walk collection. Bearing in mind the financial constraints that New Walk was therefore operating in, and had been since the mid-nineteenth century, the question of what the collection consisted, and consists, bears examination.

The Collection Compared with the national museums, the local museums of the United Kingdom could never compete in terms of the breadth and depth of the collections that they individually have, and this has often served as the basis for arguments that local museums should be simply that: local. As was argued by Murray (1996 [1904], 268), ‘Town Museums . . . are necessarily local museums, and should have a local character’, something supported by M. Hodge (New Walk curator, 1947–51) when he argued that the Art Gallery should ‘concentrate on the acquisition of works of art especially in the English tradition or having some connection with Leicestershire’ (DE 3277/169, 21/3/1947). While it is inevitable that there will be some form of localism on display in local museums, this does not mean that their boundaries should stop at some convenient local point, whether of a village, town, city, or county. The tradition of collecting more geographically remote exotica, esoterica, or simple examples of material has always played a part in the museum world and continues to do so to the present day. The question of what, within the realm of possible items for collection and display, local museums should concern themselves with is a matter of choice, whether of, in the case of New Walk, the local councillors, museum staff, or the demands of the local population.

Collections and Practices 47 Apart from the broad, if not utterly vague, statement of the Lit and Phil that the Museum collection should consist of ‘objects of natural history, of objects of national, historical and local interest, of specimens of art, and of geological remains’ (CM, 1/4, 282), there was no clear picture of what, precisely, was covered by the collection policy of the Museum until 1907, when Ernest Lowe, then newly appointed as the curator of the Museum and Art Gallery, provided a clear statement of who and what the functions, collections, and visitors of the Museum should be considered as consisting of (DE 3220/6). The report containing this was largely a copy of the one that Lowe had written when he was employed at the Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery prior to his appointment to New Walk. In it, Lowe stated that it has frequently been urged that a provincial Museum should be simply a local museum and nothing more, but I cannot agree with this idea . . . probably many of our town’s people see only one museum in a lifetime; that one, therefore, should teach them something of the world at large. To enable this to happen, Lowe required that the collection of any museum should have a ‘logical and philosophic order’ that covered aspects of geology, zoology and botany . . . a record of these in Leicestershire . . . Man’s (sic) activities in a few selected directions . . . a record of these in Leicestershire . . . collections of the Fine and Decorative Arts, with the art collection being directed towards ‘the benefit of the general public, the art student and the craftsman’ (again, sic). The clear intention to establish a general museum, rather than a specifically local one specialising solely in local items, did have its limits, however: every provincial museum should resolutely set its face against the acquisition or acceptance of ethnological material unless it illustrates some specially chosen subject or is in itself of special and peculiar interest indicating that it was the nature of the objects concerned rather than anything else that should be the determining factor in whether they should become a part of the Museum collection or not, meaning that there should be a clear purpose to the collecting policy of the museum rather than it being an open house for anything and everything. This concern with how objects and items fitted into the collection as a whole lay equally behind The Scheme for the Development of the Art Collection (DE3220/6) that Lowe produced in May 1934. In this, the existing art collection was divided into ‘Fine, Decorative, Applied and Industrial’, and in the case of specifically British painting, he stated that no additions, whether by gift or purchase should be made unless they possess intrinsic merit or interest and really add something of artistic or educational value to the existing collection.

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While this is rather vague – the identification of ‘artistic merit’ and ‘interest’ is left open and could mean more or less anything at all – the intention is much clearer: that additions to the collection should serve some clear purpose and that there should be a clear reason for them having a place within it. The Lowe prescription was subject to later development with M. B. Hodge (curator 1947–51) arguing that New Walk should be a ‘regional’ institution and that the art collection should be English in orientation (A Suggested Policy for the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, 1947, DE 3220/6), something that was again later developed as a collections policy objective after control of the Museum had passed to Leicestershire County Council, with the emphasis on Leicestershire County-wide examples, with exceptions being made for already existing reference collections of European birds and butterflies, and worldwide bryophytes, lichens, and minerals (DE 7971/33, 9/5/1975, Appendix D, Written Statement of Acquisitions Policy, 1975–80). Such developments are hardly surprising given the changing contexts within which the Museum has functioned over time, with the existing contents of the collection becoming something of a fulcrum around which additions to it have increasingly become related. To some extent, this would imply that the Museum has become increasingly defined by the nature of the collection that it holds rather than by anything else. The functions that Museum staff undertake in terms of education, economic development, social integration, and mental health improvement, for example, are largely constrained by the exhibits and displays that can be made of material from within the existing collection (with occasional additions from externally organised exhibitions), with the development of entirely new areas of collection being limited partly by financial restrictions and partly by how they could be seen to fit in with the existing collection. To this extent, at least, the shadow cast by the views and opinions of Lowe in 1907 has been an extremely long one for New Walk: the changes suggested by Hodge, for example, were not directed towards entirely new collections policies so much as they were concerned with developing what already existed and emphasising some parts of it rather than others. The idea that additions to the collection as a whole should serve a defined purpose has become standard museums policy around the world, leading to the creation of a museums universe, where individual museums have become centres of relative specialisation, with the specific specialities that each deals with being largely defined by what the past has provided as a legacy. Even ‘new’ museums are rarely new in terms of the material that they display, being largely dependent on already existing collections being re-sited to new locations (as the Bilbao Guggenheim and the new Derby Museum of Making show) and re-displayed in new ways (as happened in Tate Modern). Large local museums, such as New Walk, have a sizable collection to make use of which can allow for the development of a shifting pattern of display over time. In practice, it is more commonly the case, however, that some parts of the collection are on almost permanent display either because of the terms by which they were given or bequeathed to the museum concerned,15 or because the specific item has a particular resonance with the public or has a particular historical significance or meaning. In the latter case, for example, apart from the Barrow Kipper,

Collections and Practices 49 New Walk also has on display a dinosaur skeleton16 unearthed in the County in 1968 that is the largest Cetiosaur skeleton found in the United Kingdom to date, as well as the first identified example of Charnia masoni found anywhere in the world (in this case in Charnwood Forest, close to Leicester), making it the holotype fossil to which all other examples of Ediacaran fossils are related. Other parts of the collection have something of a rotating existence – including maquettes of Degas and Rodin bronzes, and a Henry Moore sculpture – that are displayed for a period of time then returned to storage before reappearing at a later date,17 as occurs with some frequency in the Museum’s collection of expressionist art, where some items are on almost permanent display, and others come and go over a period of time. The Museum’s collection of Egyptian relics is a case in point in this respect: in 1947 it was proposed that this part of the collection should be sold off (DE 3277/169, 21/3/1947), but it was not, and a small part of it formed a part of the permanent display of the Museum. A much larger part of the Egyptian collection was re-displayed in 2019 in a new, much larger space containing much that had previously been in storage. Such versions of display and re-display are an almost inevitable feature of local museums with large collections available to them and, in the case of Leicester, where there are a number of sites where different parts of the collection can be displayed, including a technology museum, a social history museum, and a Leicester history museum covering from pre-Roman times to the Middle Ages. New Walk could be considered the central hub around which the City’s museum collections rotate. Inevitably the sheer size of the collections that the City has available to it means that some parts of it spend much of their time in storage with only an occasional appearance in New Walk – or any of the other City museums. Prior to the Covid pandemic, access to the reserve collection was possible, with an ‘open day’ policy in effect, which allowed members of the general public access to parts of it on a regular basis. Lowe’s foundational 1907 report (DE 3220/6) held that ‘visitors to such a museum as the Leicester one may be divided into four classes: – 1) General Public, 2) Students, 3) Collectors, 4) Investigators’, and public access to the stored parts of the collection had been typically determined by which of these groups was involved and the purposes for which access was required. While there were hoops that needed to be jumped through before access was granted, it was possible to do the necessary jumping when required – and it is to be hoped that this will return as an active practice when living with Covid eventually becomes normalised. Such access to the New Walk collection has local, regional, national, and international importance for all four of the groups that Lowe identified. The sheer size of the collection means that there is far more in storage than could possibly be displayed at any given time in the limited space that New Walk (and all the other museum and heritage sites that the City has responsibility for) represents. In particular, the length of time that the collection has been growing (now over 170 years) means that there are items within it that have a historical meaning and significance that members of each of Lowe’s groups might wish to make use of and engage with, often in what might seem to be unconventional ways, regardless of whether the items concerned are currently on view or whether they have

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been in storage since the 1850s. In the case of some artefacts from overseas areas, for example, the meaning of the item concerned could have real religious, ritual, symbolic, and even magical connotations (see Throsby, 2001, for a discussion of the value that has been, and is, attached to some of these) that are not a part of either British, European, or Western world views. In these cases, access would mean something quite different to simply being able to see the item concerned.18 This means that the collection itself is, or at least can be, far more than simply a collection of individual items.

The Meaning of the Collection Making sense of the collection entails more than the identification of the categories into which it is divided, and the content of the displays and exhibitions by which it is made available to the visitors to New Walk. While these latter contain within them some idea of what meanings the curators and designers of these displays and exhibitions wish to impart to the items that are being shown at any particular time, the choices that are contained about what will be shown (and how it will be shown) also contain within them another set of meanings about what is not exhibited and displayed at any given time (Monti & Keene, 2013, 74). Unlike single-topic museums (such as the British Lawnmower Museum in Southport in the United Kingdom), the sheer breadth of the New Walk collection means that the displays that are mounted are not effectively the variations on a common theme that such specialist museums are commonly linked to. Changes in fashions in display techniques, and cross-cultural differences in how displays are understood and reacted to (even if such differences are not taken into meaningful account in many practical guides to mounting exhibitions: see Hughes, 2010, or Lord & Piacente, 2014, for example) also play a role in this as the shifts from showing as many items as possible, to the development of more aestheticized systems of display, to the ‘white cube’ phenomenon (O’Doherty, 1986) demonstrates – and as was pointed out by Hudson (1975, 92), ‘many of yesterday’s bold museum experiments already seem faded, quaint or absurd, although they were daring and useful in their time’. The consequence of this is that it would be a mistake to assume that there is only one meaning to be found in the collection of any museum, and New Walk is no exception to this. ‘Meaning’ in the museum context is something that is created through the interplay of a combination of factors, actors, beliefs, ideologies, and power structures (Gray, 2015; Gray & McCall, 2020) and will vary with who is being taken account of: how the ‘meaning’ of a museum collection is assigned and understood by a museums professional is quite likely to differ wildly from that of a non-visitor or somebody who does not share the same cultural conceptions and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 2010). Thus, while there is no single inherent meaning to be found in the New Walk collection, there are, instead, a variety of meanings that can be attached to it. The extent to which these are directly related to the specific locality within which New Walk is based and how much is dependent upon extraterritorial factors will be considered in much greater detail in the following chapters, but for now, ideas about what meanings have been assigned to

Collections and Practices 51 the Museum by those with a direct managerial responsibility for it – the Museum staff and local councillors – will be considered as a starting point. In the first instance, the original meaning of the New Walk collection was clearly tied to the functions that it was expected would be fulfilled by the new Museum. As already seen, the Museum was originally intended to provide ‘amusement and instruction’, as well as to refine ‘public taste’ and induce ‘habits of thought and study amongst the working classes’ (CM 1/4, 16/9/1846; see also Lott, 1935, 38). By the time of Lowe’s foundational report in 1907, the perceived function of the Museum had changed to being ‘to record and convey definite facts and ideas by the collection, exhibition and explanation of specimens’ (DE 3220/6), indicating a decided shift away from using the collection as a means of dealing with wider concerns of public improvement and entertainment towards a focus on the collection as a source of knowledge. While this shift did not preclude the earliest intentions of the Museum’s founders, it did reinforce Lowe’s own views about the purposes that the collection could serve for the visitors to it by using it as a mechanism to open up realms of information that would otherwise be unlikely to form a part of the individual’s everyday experience. How this imparting of knowledge was to be achieved was, however, by no means clear – except that effective labelling would help in this, something that Lowe (1904) was a keen supporter of and which was a major shortcoming in most museums of the time (Lewis, 1989, 15). Apart from relying on some form of osmosis from label to visitor, the ability of a labelling system to effectively impart information except at the most basic level of facts (which was implicitly what Lowe wanted in 1907), the next source for finding out about the collection was through the system of guide-demonstrators that had been launched in 1924 (CM 27/9, 6/5/1924) and which was not always as effective as it might have been: requests for information to the Biology Department of the Museum in the 1960s led to the plaint that ‘at present the only feasible way of answering such questions is by relying on the personal knowledge and experience of the staff, a limited and unsatisfactory source of information’ (Leicester Museums, 1967, 17). The reliance on the information provided by the Museum and its staff rather underplays the fact that many visitors already had available to them a great deal of knowledge about what it was, and is, that they were viewing, either through forms of autodidacticism or simply through their prior educational experiences, even if ‘museums have a remarkable power of making the uneducated feel inferior’ (Hudson, 1975, 14). Be that as it may, museum visitors are rarely entirely bereft of touchstones of opinion, feeling, and emotion, and it is often these more than formal or informal sources of information that provide the basis for assigning meaning to what is on display (Falk & Dierking, 2000, 2013; Hooper-Greenhill, 2007), re-emphasising that the collection is only a part, if a central one, of the meaning-making experience rather than having an objective meaning in and of itself. Indeed, for some purposes, the collection itself is not even a central part of the meaning-making process. For the City and County Councils, New Walk has, at times, acted as a signifier of either the progressive nature of the local authorities and councillors concerned or of what the City or County stood and stand for

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and represent. In each case, the Museum functions as a symbol for wider concerns with status, engagement, and public provision than it does as the source of any particular collection that embodies these. In this respect, the role of local councillors assumes importance. While councillors are not usually directly concerned with the content of displays and exhibitions, the occasions when they have been so are more to do with the effects that these displays and exhibitions could have on the visiting public than they are with anything else. Apart from the concerns with whether the sensibilities of female visitors to the Museum in the 1850s and 1860s might be upset by displays of nudity in the form of statues (as discussed in The Collections section of this chapter), it was also the case that the calves heads presented by Mr Elson and accepted by the Literary and Philosophical Society are objectionable, and unfit objects for displaying in the Museum, particularly in reference to Female visitors. (14D 55/27, 31/1/1854) While this objection was raised by the Honorary Curators, these were a part of the Museum Committee of the Borough Council in their capacity as co-opted members,19 and indeed, several were both Honorary Curators and elected councillors serving on the Museums Committee, as was the case, for example, of Frederick Mott, who served on the Committee from 1879 to 1896, whilst others were long-standing members of the Lit and Phil, such as Charles Squire, who served on the Committee from 1916 to 1945 and was president of the Lit and Phil in 1928–29 – six years after Lowe served as president (Lott, 1935, 253). Indeed in 1872, of the 16 members of the Museum Committee, 13 were members of the Lit and Phil (Lott, 1935, 52), although this dominance of the membership of the Committee started to decline shortly after this high peak. On occasion the elected councillors could provide advice or make recommendations about the types of items that the Museum might collect, but these were noticeable more for the rarity of them than anything else. Thus, in 1961, for example, the Committee recommended that a contemporary painting by Adrian Heath . . . be purchased on the understanding that the Keeper of Art submit next some pictures for purchase which are not in the abstract field, as it is considered that sufficient of these have been purchased for the time being. (DE 3277/172, 3/2/1961) This was an unusual recommendation for the Committee to make. The idea, noted before, that the Council, in general, and the Museums Committee, in particular, were more or less detached – or at least semi-detached – from the everyday activities of the New Walk Museum is not disturbed by the fact that occasionally they did intervene, if at something of an arm’s length, and then usually to approve the choices that had been made by Museum staff rather than anything else. Thus, direct

Collections and Practices 53 orders to the Museum about what it should be doing, how it should be doing it, and even why it should be doing it, are almost non-existent in the records, although a request was made in 1892 that the Curator be requested to have the name of the artist, the title of the picture, with the date of birth of the artist, and in the case of deceased artists, the date of death, placed upon all pictures, also the name of the Donor in the case of presented pictures. (CM 27/4, 1/9/1892) This is not to say that elected councillors were not actively engaged with the Museum, even if they were rarely as engaged as these examples show they could be. Indeed from the 1920s onwards, individual councillors played a role in not only supporting the activities of the Museum but also in the wider field of museums in general. Thus Charles Squire was elected as president of the Museums Association in 1936 (CM 12, 15/7/1936), whilst Monica Trotter, a later chair of the Museums Committee, served on the Libraries, Museums, and Art Galleries Committee of the Association of Municipal Corporations20 in the 1960s (DE 3277/172, 20/1/61, 15/12/61; DE 3277/173, 15/2/63, 17/1/64).

Conclusions The extent to which councillors were concerned with the interests of the Museum is something of a secondary concern in terms of the collections that it has. The relatively low level of direct engagement of councillors with the Museum collections on a day-to-day basis may serve to understate the role that they could, and did, play in terms of the making of decisions about purchases for the collection: the relevant committees had for many years after 1885, and the establishment of the Art Gallery, separate sub-committees to approve purchases that had been recommended or suggested by the curator, and occasionally these were turned down or queried, particularly over matters of attribution, but were generally no more than the means to give formal legitimisation to the decisions of Museum staff. The collection, as a whole, was for many years a matter of happenstance rather than a consciously developed and coherently organised one. While individual curators before 1907 had their pet areas of specialisation – Montague Brown, for example, being a taxidermist and favouring the development of the collection of stuffed animal specimens that the Museum had – it took until the appointment of Lowe as curator for a full-blown collections policy to be established. In many respects, this 1907 policy has remained in force since then, even when making allowances for changing circumstances. While there have been variations in precisely what items have been added to the collection at any given time, with additions to and subtractions from the Museum staff lists having an effect on this, what has been more noticeable has been the manner in which the collection has been displayed and exhibited over time than anything particularly to do with the collection itself, with probably the largest changes to the Museum’s collections

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over the past century having been in the development of the expressionist art and Picasso ceramics sub-collections, and even these built on the already existing art and ceramics collections that the Museum had and has – even if the latter had no Picasso examples until the Attenborough Collection arrived.

Notes  1 A distinction is drawn here between the local authority, made up of the organisational framework within which the Museum is managed on a day-to-day basis, and the local Council, made up of the elected councillors with overall responsibility for the Museum. In some respects, this is simply a variant of the officers/members distinction that was commonly used in discussions of local government, although this has tended to fall from fashion – even though it is still entirely relevant to understanding how the system continues to function – following the passing of the Local Government Act 2000 and the introduction of new forms of executive government for local authorities: see Leach (2006).  2 It is difficult to be certain about this as the archive material does not provide exact references for the reasoning behind these changes, but it would seem to be a reasonable supposition given the fact of the massive death toll (over 1% of the entire City population died whilst serving in this conflict) that the First World War exacted.  3 ‘Transfer’ refers specifically to objects being passed from one collection to another with no expectation of reciprocation – in practice this normally involves the disposal of duplicate items to other museums; ‘exchange’ refers to items from one museum collection being directly swapped for items from another museum’s collection. CM 27/10 (10/3/1928; 28/6/1929), for example, notes that New Walk not only exchanged two ‘mummies’ from Huntingdon ‘for certain duplicates’ (as noted in Chapter 2), but also exchanged ‘a document’ for ‘a print’ at a later date.  4 Usually these have included money from the Art Fund and the Victoria and Albert Museum, both sources being covered in more detail elsewhere in this book, and the Friends of Leicester Museum, a voluntary group that was established in 1930 (Leicester City Museum and Art Gallery, 1930, 1931) and still exists and is formally independent of the Museum, even if members of the Museum staff are members of its management board. Financial restrictions have increasingly limited the funds available from both the Victoria and Albert and the Friends over recent years.  5 And these can overlap quite considerably in some cases. In the New Walk case, the acceptance of the collection of Picasso ceramics that were donated to the Museum in the will of Lord Richard Attenborough, the ceramics had an international importance while the donor had been bought up in Leicester and had spent much time in the Museum as a young man – and his father was a co-opted member of the City’s Museum Committee for many years in his role as director of Leicester University College during the 1920s to 1940s.  6 It is important to note that museums are not entirely incapable of providing benefits, which they do, only that these benefits are often not as great as it is often claimed they are, or that the benefits take a different form to those that are claimed. Both of these are discussed, with supporting evidence, in Gray and McCall (2020).  7 It is also worth noting that Hudson (1975, 43), writing of the Great Exhibition of 1851, found that ‘riots and brawls failed to occur and damage and theft proved to be very minor worries. The working people of Britain turned out to be better disciplined and more intelligent than was generally considered possible or proper’, meaning that the class element of Bennett’s argument was, perhaps, over-stated as an explanation for why museums were introduced in such numbers during the nineteenth century.  8 Fought in 1485. The uncovering of more cannonballs from the battle site in the early 2000s led to a reappraisal of exactly where the battle had been fought, indicating that

Collections and Practices 55 the poor quality of the record-keeping (with no information about precisely where the balls had been found) associated with the much earlier acceptance of cannonballs could have saved a lot of argument for all concerned.  9 The point lace is possibly authentic as the Grey family lived in what is now Bradgate Park, just outside the City. The authenticity of the Queen of Scots piece is more open to doubt until or unless convincing evidence of provenance was and is forthcoming. 10 The plesiosaur involved is now known as the ‘Barrow Kipper’ after where it was uncovered in Leicestershire, and a cast of it is still on display in the dinosaur gallery in the Museum. 11 Bates was a native of Leicester, best known for developing the important biological notion of ‘Batesian mimicry’. 12 Of the total number of paintings, the remainder (nine paintings) were either from unknown sources or had been transferred to the New Walk collection from the Leicester Guildhall; on the dates of accession, ten paintings had no date assigned to them: DE 6435/29/2. 13 This became the Museum and Art Gallery Committee in 1891; the Museum and Libraries Committee in 1919; the Museums, Libraries, and Publicity Committee in 1962; reverting to the Museums and Libraries Committee in 1967, before becoming the Libraries and Museums Committee in 1973 following the transfer of the Museums Service to the County Council. It then became the Arts, Libraries, and Museums Committee in 1988. 14 Prior to 1974, the only extant museum in the new County area was the Rutland Museum, which was established in 1965 with the advice and assistance of the City Museum Service (DE 3277/173, 3/9/1965). 15 In New Walk, the Attenborough Collection of Picasso ceramics fits this, but it is also common in many other local museums in the United Kingdom – Brighton Museum, for example, having the Willett collection of pottery and ceramics on permanent display following the requirements of the donor who bequeathed it to the museum. 16 Much of it is actually in storage as the fossilised bones are too fragile to be put on permanent display. 17 This includes the taxidermied polar bear that was used as the trademark for Fox’s glacier mints, a local sweet manufacturer whose mints are still produced (no longer in Leicester city centre however) and sold in large quantities in the United Kingdom to this day. 18 For New Zealand Maoris, for example, items that are considered to be taonga have a life-force embodied within them that effectively make them the same as a living human being, and having such items in storage without the Maori people (and museum visitors) being kept informed about the family and families that they originate from is insulting. Whether any of the few New Zealand items in the Leicester collections are taonga is not known to me. 19 Meaning that they could not vote on matters on finance but they could – and did – take an active role in such discussions of policy as took place. Until 1933, committees were only required to have at least a bare majority of elected members on them. After this date, at least two-thirds of all committee members were required to be councillors. 20 This organisation was the voice of all of the Municipal Corporations in England (of which Leicester was one) whose committees served as a clearing house for advice on legal matters, policy, finance, and administration to its members.

References Archive Material CM 1/4 Borough of Leicester Common Hall Book 9th November 1844 to 20th October 1847.

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CM 1/6 Borough of Leicester Common Hall Book 2nd May 1850 to 25th March 1852. CM 1/8 Borough of Leicester Common Hall Book 22nd June 1854 to 23rd September 1856. CM 27/1 Museum Committee Minutes 30th November 1871 to 28th August 1877. CM 27/2 Museum Committee Minutes 11th March 1879 to 14th December 1886. CM 27/3 Museum Committee Minutes 11th January 1887 to 19th February 1895. CM 27/4 Art Gallery Committee Minutes 21st April 1880 to 11th May 1903. CM 27/9 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 1st January 1924 to 5th April 1927. CM 27/10 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 28th April 1927 to 30th October 1931. DE 3220/6 Administration Policy 1882–1954. DE 3277/169 Museums and Libraries Committee Minutes 13th November 1946 to 5th May 1950. DE 3277/171 Museums and Libraries Committee Minutes 28th May 1954 to 17th July 1959. DE 3277/172 Museums and Libraries Committee Minutes 18th September 1959 to 20th July 1962. DE 3277/173 Museums, Libraries and Publicity Committee Minutes 21st September 1962 to 21st April 1967. DE 6345/29/2 Leicester Museums and Art Gallery Collection of Paintings (Leicester, Department of Art, 1958). DE 7971/33 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes June 1973 to May 1975. DE 7971/37 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes 3rd January 1984 to 28th February 1986. DE 7971/49 Leicestershire County Council Library and Museums Advisory Committee Minutes June 1974 to February 1977. 4D 56/77/1 Rules for the Management of the Leicester Museum November 1872. 4D 56/77/5/1–8 What to See in the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery (editions 2–9). 4D 56/108/1–190 Bundle of Notes on the Provenance of Museum Specimens Extracted from the Literary and Philosophical Society, Minute Books, Account Books etc. Also Rough Notes for Inventories etc. 14D 55/27 Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society Museum Curators Minutes 19th April 1850 to 15th October 1860.

Other Sources Alberti, S (2009), Nature and Culture: Objects, Disciplines and the Manchester Museum (Manchester, Manchester University Press). Arnold, K (2006), Cabinets for the Curious: Looking Back at Early English Museums (Aldershot, Ashgate). Bennett, T (1995), The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London, Routledge). Bourdieu, P (2010), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, Routledge Classics). Candlin, F (2016), Micromuseology: An Analysis of Small Independent Museums (London, Bloomsbury). Delbourgo, J (2017), Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane (London, Allen Lane). Duncan, C & A Wallach (1980), ‘The Universal Survey Museum’, Art History, 3, 448–69 (DoI: 10.1111/j.1467-8365.1980.tb00089.X).

Collections and Practices 57 Falk, J & L Dierking (2000), Learning From Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning (Walnut Creek, AltaMira Press). Falk, J & L Dierking (2013), The Museum Experience Revisited (Walnut Creek, Left Coast Press). Gray, C (2015), The Politics of Museums (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan). Gray, C & V McCall (2020), The Role of Today’s Museum (Abingdon, Routledge). Greenwood, T (1996 [1888]), Museums and Art Galleries (London, Routledge/Thoemmes Press). Hill, K (2005), Culture and Class in English Public Museums, 1850–1914 (Aldershot, Ashgate). Hill, K (2011), ‘Whose Objects? Identity, Otherness and Materiality in the Display of the British Past c1850–1950’, Museum History Journal, 4, 1 CM 27/10. Hooper-Greenhill, E (2007), Museums and Education: Purpose, Pedagogy, Performance (Abingdon, Routledge). Hudson, K (1975), A Social History of Museums: What the Visitors Thought (London, Macmillan). Hughes, P (2010), Exhibition Design (London, Laurence King Publishing). Impey, O & A MacGregor (Eds) (2001 [1985]), The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe (London, House of Stratus). Jevons, W (1883), ‘The Use and Abuse of Museums’, 53–81 in Methods of Social Reform and Other Papers (London, Macmillan). Kavanagh, G (1994), Museums and the First World War: A Social History (London, Leicester University Press). Leach, S (2006), The Changing Role of Local Politics in Britain (Bristol, Policy Press). Leicester City Museum and Art Gallery (1930), Twenty-Sixth Report to the City Council (Leicester, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery). Leicester City Museum and Art Gallery (1931), Twenty-Seventh Report to the City Council (Leicester, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery). Leicester Museums (1967), Annual Report Leicester Museums for the Year Ended 31st March 1967: The 61st Report to the City Council (Leicester, Leicester Museums). Leicester Town Museum (1873), First Report of the Museum Committee to the Town Council to March 31, 1873 (Leicester, Leicester Town Museum). Lewis, G (1989), For Instruction and Recreation: A Centenary History of the Museums Association (London, Quiller Press). Lord, B & M Piacente (2014), Manual of Museum Exhibitions (2nd Ed, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield). Lott, F (1935), The Centenary Book of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society (Leicester, W. Thornley). Lowe, E (1904), ‘Letter to the Editor’, Museums Journal, 4, 106. McLeod, M (2004), ‘Museums without Collections: Museum Philosophy in West Africa’, 52–61 in S. Knell (Ed), Museums and the Future of Collecting (2nd Ed, Farnham, Ashgate). Monti, F & S Keene (2013), Museums and Silent Objects: Designing Effective Exhibitions (Farnham, Ashgate). Murray, D (1996 [1904]), Museums: Their History and their Use (London, Routledge/ Thoemmes). O’Doherty, B (1986), Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Expanded Ed, Berkeley, University of California Press). O’Neill, M (2004), ‘Enlightenment Museums: Universal or Merely Global’, Museum and Society, 2, 190–202.

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Parry, R (2007), Recoding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change (Abingdon, Routledge). Pearce, S (1995), On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition (London, Routledge). Poulot, D (2009), Musée et Muséologie (Paris, La Découverte). Ruprecht, L (2014), Classics at the Dawn of the Museum Era: The Life and Times of Chrysostome Quatremere de Quincy (1755–1849) (New York, Palgrave Macmillan). Sheehan, J (2000), Museums in the German Art World: From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism (New York, Oxford University Press). Soudien, C (2012), ‘Emerging Discourses around Identity in New South African Museum Exhibitions’, 397–405 in B. Carbonell (Ed), Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts (2nd Ed, Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell). Throsby, D (2001), Economics and Culture (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Whitehead, C (2009), Museums and the Construction of Disciplines: Art and Archaeology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, Duckworth).

4

The Museum in Society Social Change and the Museum

Introduction Arising from the discussion of the Museum’s collection, this chapter is concerned with the relationship of the Museum to the multiple communities that it serves. Social changes over time will be examined for their effects on the practices and behaviours that the Museum makes use of in terms of the material that it has collected and the displays and exhibitions that it has mounted. The relationship of museum and society will consequently serve to question the extent to which such phenomena as the New Museology (McCall & Gray, 2014) are as new as is generally claimed, as well as the extent to which its principles have been adopted at different times in the life of the Museum and, when they have been taken on board, what influenced their adoption. In addition, other changes in accepted museum practice and their relationship to changing societal practices and expectations will also be noted before being developed in greater detail in Chapter 7. The local dimension of the Museum will be emphasised in this discussion to identify and demonstrate the potential importance of locality for what the Museum has collected and what has been, and is, done with this collection. The multiple functional uses to which the collection can be applied (Gray & McCall, 2020) will be identified as they have been developed in the case of New Walk and shifts in these uses will be investigated in the light of the social changes that took place within the City of Leicester and in wider British society over time. The emphasis in all this discussion rests on how the structures, practices, and behaviours associated with New Walk have been – or have not been – affected by the general processes of social change that every society goes through, even if in different ways at different times. Given that the effects of social change do not come into play immediately and require time for them to take root, the emphasis in Chapter 1 on the passage of time as being important for understanding change in the museum is returned to, emphasising the patchy, inconsistent, and at times contradictory processes by which change occurs within the museum. At the same time the argument that museums can actively contribute to societal change – something that has been continually claimed, most recently in arguments about the instrumentalisation of museums in recent years (see, as a specific example of this Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2000; and, more generally on instrumentalisation and museums, DOI: 10.4324/9780429292491-4

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see Gray, 2008, 2015, 86–96) – will be assessed to consider what evidence might exist to demonstrate whether, and how, New Walk might be deemed to have played a part in such changes.

Which Changes? There are numerous dimensions across which social change can be considered, with these processes taking place continually. As there is no single instant when change can be seen to have commenced or finished, it is important to locate change across time. Given that many social changes that are occurring within British society today can have their roots traced back, in some cases, for centuries, and given that most of these changes are still clearly unfinished business, it is also important to limit discussion to selected instances and examples rather than trying to cover the entirety of the field of social change. These two starting points assume that change is a messy business – as well as being unfinished – and it also tends to underplay the fact that change does not occur in isolation, with individual instances of change being discrete events that take place in both the long- and short-term and independently of all the other changes that are taking place within society at the same time. While the former of these is seen as being self-evident, the latter runs the risk of ignoring the complex interplay of numerous strands of change occurring across society that reinforce, cut across, and sometimes negate each other. Thus, the role of women within British society has been affected by, amongst other things, warfare, the changing nature of employment within the economy, legal changes concerning property ownership, as well as changing beliefs and ideologies, both religious and secular, concerning what the role of women in society could be, should be, and is, as well as by many other dynamic causal factors. Given that British society is still a patriarchal one, these wider patterns of change have not been as thoroughgoing as might have been the case, and identifying how and why this is so assumes the social equivalence of quantum physics, where logic and reason have no role to play in identifying exactly what is going on in the sub-atomic world and the complexity that is involved is – at least at present – too great to be made full sense of. This provides the basis for looking at one social factor as a starting point for this chapter: gender differentiation within society and the museum. A second factor that will be explored is that of social diversity. While the increase in the number of New Commonwealth immigrants in Leicester has been evident for over 60 years now (as discussed in Chapter 2), diversity has been an ever-present within the City as a whole, as seen in the growth of the Jewish population of the City in the nineteenth century, when it already had a small but growing Irish population as well as in the changes that have taken place, and are still taking place, in the City today, ensuring that ‘Leicester’s population is one of the most ethnically diverse in the European Union’ (Herbert, 2016, 332).1 What the effect of this diversity has been on the Museum, and whether the Museum has reflected it, forms a distinct area for discussion. The fact that these two areas of social change – gender differentiation and ethnic diversity – cut across each other and reinforce some dimensions of each

The Museum in Society: Social Change and the Museum 61 demonstrates the complexity of any discussion of them. By keeping the focus of the current discussion on New Walk, the emphasis will be on how the Museum represented, integrated, displayed, and responded to social change in these areas, rather than with how the City, or the country as a whole, did so. Alongside these two major areas of social change there are many others that could be covered in detail but which will serve as illustrative pointers to indicate how multiple types of change have been dealt with in similar or divergent ways in the Museum. Thus, one of the major events that forms parts of discussions of the social role of New Walk was the sacking of Trevor Thomas (curator, 1940–46) from his position on the grounds that he was ‘convicted of the commission of an act of gross indecency with a male person’ under legislation dating to 1885 (CM 27/13, 20/9/1946).2 What is never discussed, however, is that the Museums Committee acted in exactly the same way at a later date when another Museum employee was also found guilty of ‘indecency’ and sacked (DE 3277/170, 20/10/1950). Both cases were concerned with offences under the same antediluvian legislation, and both were dealt with in exactly the same way, indicating that the Museum was at least consistent in terms of the decisions that were reached. Indeed, it would have been surprising given the social climate of the times if any other decision had been reached, indicating, in this case, that the Museum Committee was hardly in advance of public opinion or prepared to go against the spirit of the law as it then stood. Changes in both the legal and social recognition and acceptance of gay rights mean that these cases would not have been bought to court today, but what is of greater importance for museums as a whole is the fact that New Walk did not seek to act as a supporter of these rights at the time, showing that the idea that the role of the museum could be, should be, and is that of a social activist needs to be treated with some care. Indeed, this positive social role for the museum was simply not current at the time of these cases and criticism of New Walk about them, either singly or together, is something of a case of reading history backwards and attempting to get the Museum to abide by principles that were largely unheard of at that time even if they are common currency today. This clear example of the role of emic and etic understandings, as noted in Chapter 1, is indicative of the caution with which discussions of social change and the museum need to be treated.

The Active, Reactive, and Unreactive Museum Arguments concerning the role of the museum in social terms are long-standing by this date (see, for example, Dana, 1999 [1927] for an early example of such arguments). Alongside the educational role of museums, which has been seen as an important function of museums since they were first established in their modern form and which has served as a matter not only of the purposes of museums but also of their very nature as an institutional form, the idea that museums can serve a more general social purpose has equally been seen as a defining characteristic of museums. Indeed, ‘in recent years, museums have become increasingly confident in proclaiming their value as agents of social change and, in particular, articulating their capacity to promote cross-cultural understanding, to tackle prejudice and

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intolerance and to foster respect for difference’ (Sandell, 2007, 2), although there remains a lack of adequate and effective evidence to substantiate these claims (see Gray & McCall, 2020). Rather, however, than repeating the arguments about this general point, what is considered here is the issue of whether museum activism is a case of museums taking the lead, or whether they are in a secondary position of reacting to already existing social conditions and concerns, or whether they are generally oblivious to a wide range of these conditions and concerns that they could, and perhaps should, be engaged with. This, in turn, raises the question of whether museums could and should be not only socially active and engaged but also politically active and engaged. Given that interventions into the public sphere inevitably carry a political component with them in terms of their relationship to the core political concepts of power, legitimacy, ideology, and rationalities (Gray, 2015, 8–26), museums cannot be considered to have solely a social role: if they are behaving in a socially active fashion, they are also behaving politically as well. While the acceptance of the fact that museums are political institutions is something that is often objected to (Cuno, 2004, 2011), it is part and parcel of the idea that museums serve purposes that extend beyond being simply a graveyard of ‘stuff’. The previous chapter concerning the New Walk collection showed that the ‘stuff’ that the Museum has available to it serves a number of purposes of its own, with few of these being simply the seemingly neutral one of providing a storehouse of aesthetically, historically, and educationally pleasing material to show to the public. Indeed, the multiple dynamics that are associated with the collection – including those of its display, provenance, and amassing – themselves demonstrate that this material assemblage is, in itself, equally as socially engaged and politically loaded as are the purposes to which it is put. Whether the social and political engagement of the museum is something that is seen in a positive or negative light is deeply informative about not only how the museum as an institution can be understood but also about how the actions that are undertaken through the museum can be justified and given legitimacy. If, for example, museum activism is something that is believed to be inimical to the core functions of museums to collect, preserve, and present items and objects to the public, then anything that goes beyond these functions will be seen as either simply illegitimate and something that museums should not be engaging with, or as operating in a fashion that opens the museum up to criticism and complaint, largely on the basis that it is impossible to please everybody at the same time – and such criticism has been commonly expressed, as was shown, for example, with the storm of outrage about exhibitions at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, in 1994 and 1995, where both were criticised and defended for the validity of the cases that the exhibitions were presenting to the public (Gieryn, 1998). The furore that surrounded these exhibitions was largely couched around the opposing ideas that museums should be simply neutral establishments (as proposed by the critics), or that they should positively explain material in such a way as to get the public to think about what they believe and question the basis upon which they

The Museum in Society: Social Change and the Museum 63 believe it (as proposed by the defenders). The latter position was certainly seen by some critics as being a case that the museum was seeking to impose meanings and understandings upon the public that were unjustifiable (when they were not, that is, simply seen as being the wrong meanings and understandings to associate with the subjects of the exhibitions). Thus, it is not only what is exhibited and displayed that matters, it is also how things are presented to the public that is equally as, and sometimes more, important in some instances. While this may be obviously apparent in cases and issues that are already politically and socially loaded with significance and importance, it can also occur over subjects that may be considered to be less so by many people – such as displays about evolution, which for many people is simply a fact of life and was firmly established in museums from the 1880s and 1890s onwards (Adelman, 2005; MacGregor, 2009), whilst for others it is not only not a fact of life but is also not even a fact (a position that is taken apart in Scott, 2007). The perils for museums that arise from their dealing with what are seen by some as socially and politically contentious issues are many, ranging from simple outrage as expressed in the media, as well as in terms of the potential damage that could be caused to the funding of museums, with threats of financial punishment being a possibility for all museums3 if they show the ‘wrong’ things or display them in the ‘wrong’ ways. While this could be taken as a warning to museum staff to avoid anything that could be construed as providing an active approach to social and political issues, the reality is more complex than this. The standard approach to many display and exhibition practices since the 1960s has been to use them ‘as an argument, a statement, and a polemical space’ (Deepwell, 2006, 75), with this involving ideas and arguments regarding the perceived necessity for the museum to become a socially engaged partner for communities and groups (Fuller, 1992; Crooke, 2007; Simon, 2010), both of which have become something of a commonplace in the museum studies literature. The issues with which museums have tended to associate themselves are occasionally driven by the pet interests of museum staff, although this is not often the case, but are more often those that are perceived as being of public interest, with this being particularly the case in the United Kingdom with public sector non-national museums, such as New Walk. The reasons for this are not particularly hard to fathom – the nationals tend to have their eyes on at least the national, if not decidedly international, visitor. Local authority museums, on the other hand, are more normally concerned with potential local and regional visitors, with some interest in national and international visitors if they happen to be in the area. The consequence of this is that the displays and exhibits that museums present to the public tend towards showing different sorts of objects for different sorts of reasons. As the national museums tend to have much more potential material and many more objects that they can make use of than do local museums, it is much easier for them to attract international visitors than local museums can. The prestige of national museums also counts in their favour as they are more able to get access to foreign material to mount the proverbial ‘blockbuster’ show than are local museums. As most national museums are located in capital cities, the further local museums are away from the capital in simple

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terms of distance, the harder it is for them to become recognised as significant and worth a visit for international tourists and visitors4 who may be willing to pop into a museum for a few hours during their time in the capital, but unless they are particularly interested in museums, this will likely be a part of their visit rather than as the reason for their visit in the first place. A consequence of this is that national museums are more likely to be seen to be setting the trend in terms of museum activity than are local museums – even though much of the most innovative museum work has always stemmed from the local rather than the national level. The question of whether local museums are simply reactive organisations in terms of dealing with social issues or whether they are active ones in this area is closely related to this point about museum status – as well as it is to questions of museum size. In the case of the former, the relative lack of prestige that is associated with local authority museums as museums has spilt over into a general lack of significance being assigned to them by other organisations, and this is exacerbated when matters of social significance are concerned. Thus, the contribution that museums could make in terms of assisting people who are coping with forms of dementia (as seen in Newman, 2013, for example) or in contributing to reducing social exclusion (Sandell, 1998; Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2001) has often been either overlooked, ignored, or unconsidered (Newman, 2005), particularly by those organisations and groups that have established themselves as the ‘professionals’ in those areas, even when museum policies have been transformed into versions of relevant social policy through either the instrumentalisation or ‘attachment’ (Gray, 2002) of museums to the policy agendas of other actors (McCall, 2010, 2016; Gray & McCall, 2020). This instrumentalisation and attachment of museums indicates that museums are certainly in a secondary position in policy terms when non-museum subjects are under consideration, implying that, at best, museums are reactive organisations in social terms, reacting to what is occurring outside of their doors rather than behaving in the active fashion that many museum staff would prefer to see and attempt to pursue (Dewdney et al., 2013; Sandell & Nightingale, 2012; McCall & Gray, 2014; Gray & McCall, 2018). This secondary position is not surprising given the general perception of what museums are concerned with – their collections – however unfair this actually is. Such a position, however, is concerned with only one dimension of the museum in society: that of being an active social agent. In practice, museums can adopt many more roles than this, particularly those of representation, meaning making, and social engagement, and it is to these that attention now falls with regard to the changing role of women in society.

Women in Society and in the Museum Hill (2016) has considered the role of women in museums in the period between 1850 and 1914 in terms of their direct engagement as donors, visitors, and patrons – to which can be added their direct employment by the Museum and their position on the committees of the City Council; both of which were largely developed after 1914, even if New Walk, as an example, had women cleaners in the mid-nineteenth

The Museum in Society: Social Change and the Museum 65 century. While in each of the spheres of engagement noted by Hill women were active, there were clear differences between women as a gender grouping as much as there were differences between women and men in terms of what was engaged with, how it was engaged with, and when it was engaged with. Hardly surprisingly, social class had a major influence on each of these, particularly in terms of when the museum was visited, with mid-week attendance being largely that of the middle- and upper-middle classes, and weekend attendance having a far greater number of working class women in attendance. Given that this pattern was exactly the same for men, it is difficult to argue that there were gendered differences in terms of museum visiting. The relative absence of information about what visitors made of the museum and its collections (as noted in Chapter 2) limits what can be said about either of the concerns with what visitors engaged with and how they engaged with it, and this is true both for New Walk and every other museum in the country until the later twentieth century. As Kavanagh (1994, 20) states, No visitor surveys exist to indicate who visited museums in the years before the (first world) war and what their occupations and social backgrounds might have been. Further, museums did not conduct any form of evaluation to find out how well their exhibitions and services worked. The first evidence that exists for a visitor survey at New Walk is from 1941 (CM 27/13, 6/6/1941) concerning an exhibition of art from Nash and Farleigh. The ‘questionnaire’ asked seven questions, and only one of these concerned the visitor as an individual (asking ‘are you a regular visitor’), demonstrating what in present-day terms is a remarkably limited form of research. Given the limitations that there clearly are on direct evidence of visitor behaviour – Hill (2016, 116), for example, bases her claim about the class-structure of female museum visiting on a newspaper report of 1887 – this should not be taken to mean that valid generalisations about the changing role of women in terms of New Walk cannot be drawn. Certainly there is sufficient evidence about donations, bequests, and gifts to the Museum to show that women were actively engaged in these practices from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, even if in fewer numbers (as both donors and in numbers of donations) than were men. The fact that women could not be full members of the Lit and Phil until 1886 – although they could attend meetings of the Society as guests from 1838 and could be ‘lady associates . . . without vote or voice in the business of the Society’ from 1870 (Lott, 1935, 131) – was indicative of the secondary position that women had in terms of the dominant organisation concerned with the affairs of the Museum at that time,5 as well as in Leicester society as a whole. The decision to admit female members of the Lit and Phil was said ‘to be a natural outcome of the alteration which is taking place in the English mind with regard to the position and education of women’ (Lott, 1935, 132), something that shows the changing climate of opinion about the role and place of women in society in the later Victorian period if nothing else. While the role of women in the Leicester economy has been an important one from the Victorian period up to the present day (see Chapter 2), their position

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within the Museum has tended to be less so until the turn of the twenty-first century with the appointment of Sarah Levitt as head of the museum service in 1997. This is not to say that women have not been in place within the Museum workforce – although with the exception of working as cleaners, they were not in positions of responsibility until the early decades of the twentieth century. The appointment of the Museum’s first guide-demonstrator in 1924 (CM 27/9, 6/5/1924), a Miss F. A. Rogers, from a shortlist of four women candidates was thus significant for the Museum given that the new appointee was expected to develop their role ab initio, with only limited reference being possible to what the function might consist of, given that no such position existed in any other British museum at that time.6 By the time that a replacement was required, the number of applicants had risen to 76 (with no mention of gender differentiation being given) (CM 27/10, 27/9/1929) with a female (Ruth Weston) again taking the role. Admittedly the new position of guide-lecturer was a temporary one until 1930 (CM 27/10, 28/11/1930) based on a succession of rolling contracts, but after that date, it was made permanent, as was the case with the appointment of a female assistant guide-lecturer in 1937 (CM 27/12, 13/4/1937). The importance attached to the work that was being undertaken in this area was demonstrated by the agreement of the Museum and Library Committee to propose a pay increase for Ruth Weston that would have taken her pay above the maximum level for female pay that the Council permitted – although the proposed increase was rejected by the Council’s Wages and Salaries Sub-Committee (CM 27/12, 7/12/1937). A further proposal for the same wage increase was also turned down by the sub-committee – although a lesser increase was agreed to (CM 27/12, 25/11/1938 and 21/12/1938). Her final annual salary at the time of her resignation to get married – something that was more or less expected to happen in such circumstances – was £325 (equivalent to £16,250 in 2014 prices) ‘and therefore beyond the Corporation Grading Scheme for females, the maximum grade of which is £250 per annum’ (equivalent to £12,500 in 2014 prices) (CM 27/13, 5/1/1940): her pay had been above this ‘maximum’ since 1933 (CM 27/11, 24/11/1933). This difference concerning pay levels, and the ability of the Museums and Libraries Committee to get the Council to break its own pay rules, demonstrates that as far as the Museum was concerned, gender should not serve as an impediment to developing the work that was being undertaken by one of its staff. This resistance to pay differentials was again in evidence at a later date when the Museum and Library Committee, in conjunction with the Museums Association, moved that there should be no difference between male and female pay for persons undertaking the same work in the Museum, something that the City Council Wages and Salaries Committee did not agree with (CM 27/13, 1/2/1946). The changing nature of the role, as well as the changing responsibilities that it entailed, that Ruth Weston had been developing was demonstrated by the change in her job title that was made in 1938, from ‘Guide-Lecturer’ to ‘Organiser of School Services’ (CM 27/12, 27/5/1938). The growth of this service since 1931 (Leicester Museums Service, nd) had developed into something that spilled over from the City to the County and outside both to the wider country, with Ruth Weston being

The Museum in Society: Social Change and the Museum 67 the leading figure in this and taking responsibility, for example, for displays at the Annual Conference of the Museums Association – the showcase for displaying developments in museum practices and techniques (CM 27/11, 12/6/1934) – representing the Museum in discussions at the BBC concerning broadcasting and schools (CM 27/12, 3/3/1939), undertaking study tours of American museums on the behalf of New Walk (Weston, 1939), as well as providing training and advice to the guide demonstrators, who were beginning to be employed elsewhere in the country.7 This functional area of museum education was not the only one where women were employed in the Museum. Female employees may not have been on the highest rungs of the career ladder, but they were clearly important members of the various branches of the rest of the work of the Museum. Apart from the employment (noted previously) of women as members of the cleaning staff from the mid-nineteenth century, they were also increasingly finding employment as the secretaries and administrative assistants without whom the Museum would not have been able to function. This in itself was a reflection of the changing nature of female employment in the economy and had become entrenched by the 1950s, with the overwhelming majority of such employment being undertaken by women by that time. Beyond this, there was an increasing employment of women in both curatorial roles and in other parts of the museum service. In these cases, New Walk actively encouraged their female staff to take the new professional examinations for Museum staff that were being provided by the Museums Association. Apart from the isolated case of Ruth Weston, there is nothing in the record to demonstrate that New Walk, or the museums service as a whole, was doing anything other than accepting the broader changes that were taking place in British society concerning the roles that women were expected to, and could, play in employment terms. Indeed, Ruth Weston’s pay position demonstrated effectively enough the secondary position that women were expected to accept until the introduction of more equal pay and employment conditions starting with the Equal Pay Act of 1970 – even though this has not eliminated unfair and discriminatory practices at work. While saying this, it is also worth noting that Weston’s appointment to a senior management position was not unique in the City’s museum service: the archaeological excavation of the Jewry Wall complex8 starting in 1936 (see Kenyon, 1938a, 1938b) was headed by Kathleen Kenyon,9 whose work on the site extended until after the conclusion of the Second World War. Employment by the City Council was, however, only one aspect of the role of women in terms of the Museum as part of the local authority. A potentially more significant aspect was the position of women on the various committees that oversaw, and had ultimate responsibility for, the work that was undertaken in the Museum. The relative lack of women councillors on the Museum Committee – only 12 served on it up to 1970,10 with the first being Sarah Simpson, who sat on the committee between 1932 and 1946 – is not surprising given that women as a whole were a decided minority of councillors anyway.11 The mass under-representation of women was, however, recognised by the committee itself when it decided that ‘a lady be invited to serve on this Committee’ in 1929 (CM 27/10, 12/11/1929)

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as a co-opted member who would have speaking but no voting rights. A Miss G. Vincent was subsequently co-opted and served until 1936 when, under the provisions of the Local Government Act of 1933, which required that a minimum of two-thirds of committee members be elected councillors, a number of co-opted members lost their places – with Miss Vincent being one of these. While Monica Trotter was a long-standing member of the committee (serving from 1953 to 1969), for several years as the committee chair, and was particularly concerned with Museum matters, the expansion of the responsibilities of the committees that dealt with the Museum meant that there was a gradual diminution in the importance that was attached to museum concerns, particularly as a consequence of the linkage of the Museum with the Council’s Library responsibilities in the committee structure after 1919. This loss of centrality for the Museum, largely associated with the fact that libraries spent a great deal more money on their services than the Museum did, associated as it was with the distributed nature of the library system, took a number of years to have an effect, but it certainly meant that serving on the Museum Committee no longer had the civic importance that it had developed in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The expansion in the responsibilities of committees, however, was not peculiar to the Museum Committee – throughout the City ‘the workload of all town council committees was becoming more extensive and cumbersome’ during the period from 1900 to 1939 (Ewen, 2016, 105), and there has been little, if any, diminution in terms of local authority functions since then, particularly following the introduction of many more statutory duties that have been assigned to local authorities after 1945. The Museum Committee was also affected by the lack of political visibility and importance that was assigned to it, with other service areas being perceived to be of far greater importance for the people of the City than was the Museum, and this is reflected in the committees that councillors have served on over the years. The first two female councillors on the City Council (Ellen Swainston, first elected in 1922, and Emily Fortey, who joined the Council in 1923), for example, served on committees that were concerned with their particular interests – Swainston with mental health issues, and Fortey with education and housing – each of which was of particular political concern during their time on the Council (see Reeder, 1993, 122–3), as indeed they have continued to be until the present day. In this respect, they were not particularly concerned with what have been traditionally considered to be ‘women’s issues’ – although Fortey was a strong proponent of greater gender equality – but with the mainstream of political debate. In this regard, the lack of political weight that has been, and is, attached to the Museum has contributed to the lack of centrality that it has acquired over the years. Indeed, despite the claims that museum activists have made about the role that museums can play in changing (and basically improving) the social conditions of a whole host of societal groups, it is apparent, at least in the field of feminist politics, that adopting political responsibility at the Council level for what museums do has hardly been at the forefront of engagement,12 despite the role that individual women have played in the field over time, as with D. Bolton, who was an active participant in the work

The Museum in Society: Social Change and the Museum 69 of the Library and Museums and Arts, Libraries, and Museums Committees when New Walk was part of the County Council structure between 1974 and 1997. In terms of the direct engagement of women with the Museum in terms of employment and political responsibility, the picture is not entirely an optimistic one. The Museum appears to have been simply following the more general trends within British society, adapting itself to the changes that were taking place but without acting in a positive way to either improve the position of women or to ameliorate the disadvantages of discrimination that they faced and continue to face. Despite the occasional bright spark in the general gloom – as seen by the work of Ruth Weston in the field of museum education and the recognition of this by both the Museum and the Museum Committee – the overall picture is less optimistic. While an increasing number of women have attained senior management roles within the Museum, and in the museums service overall, it should be noted that the field of museum employment is a small one with relatively low levels of pay at even senior levels within it.13 By shifting focus to other parts of the Museum – particularly in terms of displays and exhibitions – it is possible to identify whether New Walk has provided alternate approaches to the representation of women to those available in other museums or in wider society as a whole. What is evident is that the period between 1913 and 1948 saw what can be described as, at best, a limited representation of work by women in the art exhibitions that New Walk mounted: out of 23 individual and group exhibitions during this period, only one makes specific reference to a named woman – the 1934 exhibition of ‘Water Colours and Oil Paintings’ shared by Dame Laura Knight and her husband, Harold Knight (4D 56/135). While other women artists were displayed in the group exhibitions that were mounted during this time – in addition to the 23 ‘professional’ exhibitions, there were also 20 exhibitions from the Leicester Society of Artists,14 a number of whose members were women – the vast majority of displayed artists were men. This again is not necessarily to be taken as something that New Walk positively accepted, more that most artists of the time were male: if anything, the Museum was simply accepting the dominant status quo of the time. This lack of active engagement with female artists could be taken to demonstrate that the Museum, by its lack of positive support for women, was effectively contributing to the continuing undervaluing of the work of women in the field of art, but again, this discounts the fact that the past was a different country to that of today and what criticism there is should be aimed at the past itself rather than at the institutions that reflected what past societies were like. The Museum may not have consciously moved beyond the standard view of women in society in terms of its choice of exhibitions during the interwar period, but the First World War itself did allow for the development of pioneering work that directly related to the status of women in society. In particular, the theme of ‘motherhood and infant welfare’ had become a matter of real import in British society before the war, but New Walk was the first museum in the country to actively mount an exhibition on the subject in 1915 (Kavanagh, 1994, 74). While this exhibition was largely organised in medical terms and was as much an educational concern as it was anything else, being supported with lectures and

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practical demonstrations (Lowe, 1916), its theme was taken up in a number of other museums shortly afterwards. Again, the exhibition was reflective of already existing general societal concerns rather than being truly innovative in itself by dealing with entirely new matters in entirely new ways, but it was still important in opening up the museums sector to new types of exhibition that extended the sorts of matter that museums could engage with, as well as in terms of how this engagement could be undertaken: the fact that the exhibition was on a theme that was explicitly related to women is largely peripheral in these terms however important and significant it was in other ways. Overall, then, New Walk has not been particularly in the forefront of feminism, being much more representative of the general societal arrangements concerning women that are present in British society than it has been as a trailblazer for women’s rights and how women could and should be represented inside museums. Whilst occasionally innovative things have been carried out inside the walls of New Walk (including the ‘mother and infant welfare’ exhibition of 1915) for much of the time since the late 1840s, it can hardly be labelled as an activist museum as far as women are concerned either in terms of its displays and exhibitions or in terms of how its visitors and staff have been dealt with. Given that this position was replicated across the world of museums for almost the entirety of this time, New Walk is marked as much by its similarity to the prevailing norms of this world and of the societies within which museums function as it is by anything else. Change in terms of women has, effectively, been something that society has done to the Museum rather than the other way round.

Ethnic Diversity in the City and the Museum As briefly seen in Chapter 2, and earlier in this chapter, there has been a considerable increase in the extent to which Leicester has become a truly multi-cultural City with a large increase in the social diversity of its population, particularly since 1945, and as seen in Chapter 3, the Museum collection has always had within it a range of anthropological, as well as exotic and esoteric, objects. These never formed, however, a significant collection in their own right, being largely a series of individual items rather than anything else. The fact that the Leicester museums had little in their collections that was of direct relevance to the new communities that formed a part of the increasing social diversity of the City (DE7971/33, 9/5/1975, Appendix D) is simply a reflection of the collections policies that the Museum had pursued in the past, even if this could appear to be a deliberate failure to establish a full-blown anthropological collection that could have significance and meaning for those who were living in the new City. The current displays that New Walk has in place could also be taken to be representative of an attitude that fails to recognise that the population of the City has changed over time: the fossil and geological specimens have a decidedly local cast, being largely drawn from the City and the county. The (seemingly permanent) art on display in the Victorian Gallery is precisely that – art drawn from the Western art tradition and largely drawn from the nineteenth and early twentieth

The Museum in Society: Social Change and the Museum 71 century.15 The Expressionist Gallery ranges across some of the twentieth century (largely from around 1905 to the mid-1930s, with a few works from the 1940s to 1960s) and again draws entirely on the Western art tradition. The Attenborough Collection of Picasso ceramics is largely from the late 1940s to the late 1950s. The Egyptian Gallery16 may count as anthropological – although given the historical significance attached to such material, it can be considered to be a part of Western culture rather than anything else. The final main gallery in the Museum deals with what are effectively seen as being ‘other’ cultures than the traditionally Western norm and is largely laid out in something of a Pitt-Rivers fashion (van Keuren, 1984), taking common topics and demonstrating how differing cultures deal with the same subject. Even if the original system that was intended to demonstrate evolutionary progression is no longer generally used in museums, it has generated a thematic display style that is still in use in many museums (Pitt-Rivers Museum, 2009, 11), including New Walk. Seeing this layout demonstrates what the Museum was collecting from the nineteenth century onwards (which is also evident in the Museum’s natural history displays), but there is also some evidence of a more active collections policy that recognised the increasing importance of non-Western traditions for the museums service of the County from the early 1980s onwards (DE 7971/37: 7/6/1984, Appendix O; 7/9/1984, Appendix I). Equally, special exhibitions that were explicitly aimed at the new constellation of ethnic groups arriving in the City have been a part of New Walk since even earlier, when in 1975 ‘the “East Comes West” display proved to be almost as much a demonstration in community relations than an exercise in exhibition organisation’ (DE 7971/34, 30/4/1976). Indeed, the mounting of exhibitions and activities that relate directly to, particularly, the sub-Asian continental population of the City as well as to ‘European ethnic minorities’ (DE 7971/37, 7/6/1984, Appendix O) has been a feature of New Walk ever since this original one. In the past ten years there have been specific exhibitions on Indian fashion and Indian art, for example, and there will be a large-scale exhibition in 2022 examining 50 years since the expulsion of Indian sub-continental populations from East African countries in 1972, with many of these refugees moving to Leicester. In the same period, however, it should be noted that there have also recently been exhibitions on Mod fashion in the East Midlands (focusing largely on Nottingham and Leicester), Leicester City’s entirely unexpected triumph in winning the Premiership in 2016, and Lego models of famous landmarks, demonstrating that the Museum has tried to find exhibitions that will appeal across age groups as well as across ethnic groups. This raises the question of whether the Museum has had an exhibitions policy of trying to appeal to everybody or whether it has deliberately aimed at appealing to specific groups. The classic model of the museum certainly favoured the former approach by mounting exhibitions that, it was hoped, would attract visitors from across the community (and from outside) by offering displays that would appeal to everyone with an open mind. The fact that some of these exhibitions and displays had something of a niche appeal was not the point: the interested visitor would, again it was hoped, be able to find something of interest in whatever was the

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subject of the exhibition. Thus in 1961, New Walk not only mounted The Arts of India, a circulating exhibition provided by the Victoria and Albert Museum, but also The British Caribbean (provided by the Commonwealth Institute at Guildhall), Trees in Towns (courtesy of the Civic Trust and sponsored by the Civic Society), and the 1962 Jubilee Exhibition (of Leicester City Transport and based on the City’s museum collections) (Leicester Museums, 1962). It should be noted that what appears to have been one of the most successful ever exhibitions the Museum has mounted was that of the then Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress, which was displayed in the Museum from the 8th to the 16th of September 1948 and drew 74,017 visitors. Given that the total visitor numbers for 1948–49 were 126,078 (excluding the wedding dress exhibition), the dress was clearly something of an attraction (Leicester Museums, 1949, 30). These examples, and the arrangement of the permanent galleries, demonstrates that New Walk is not abnormal: the seemingly traditional view that to attract visitors museums require a good dinosaur and some good Egyptian relics as well as some specifically local material is certainly borne out in the case of Leicester and helps to explain part of the display policy of the Museum, and it can also be seen in many other local museums across the United Kingdom and much of the Western world in general. Certainly the Western dominance in the field of museums may be being matched by those in the rest of the world in terms of numbers, but in terms of museum techniques and practices, it is still Western museums that lead the way (Bhatti, 2012), and the same emphases on items that reflect the traditions and practices of the societies that the museums exist within is evident throughout the world – even if the presence of fossils and Egyptian relics is not quite as widespread. While there are clear differences between what is on display in museums in different countries, the ways in which this material is organised and displayed in practice is largely the same everywhere, even if how the material is explained and justified can diverge considerably not only between countries but also within them. It would appear that if this general policy of appealing to as wide a crosssection of society as possible is to be made effective, then the Museum would be expected to be concerned with not only what is exhibited and displayed but also with how this material is given meaning. In many ways, exhibition and display practices have tended towards the idea that the articles being shown should speak for themselves, and the reasons behind the choices of material and its layout in the museum would be something of a distraction from the material itself. While there have been developments in exhibition and display practice since Hudson (1975, 74) characterised such practice as being split between the aesthetic, the romantic or escapist, and the intellectual, particularly in the combined influence of the ideas of the curator as creator and the importance of the co-created display. Much of this development has taken place out of sight of the public. Indeed, the idea that there can be serious arguments and debates about the content and the display of material within the museum is still largely hidden from view (although see Macdonald, 2002) – even if, given the political nature of the museum, it is a continuing, indeed ever-present reality within all museums (Gray, 2015).

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Conclusions Of course, if the practice of the museum is to appeal to as wide a selection of the general public as is possible, then the expectation that it will mount exhibitions and displays that have appeal to only a minority of the public, or which are directed at only a sub-section of the public, is an unrealistic one. In this respect, the idea that the Museum would or should be deliberately aiming their activities at either a particular gender or ethnic or social group within the City without having a concern for all the other members of their local communities would imply either a hierarchy of relevance for one set of social actors over any others, or a simple acceptance of the societal status quo, which displays the pattern of biases that are currently in existence. The former of these would leave museums open to accusations of bias or of an intent to ideologically manipulate understandings of social diversity, whilst the latter would imply that the museum has no interest or concern with the deeply entrenched discrimination and bias that confronts members of a wide variety of social groups on an everyday basis. As it is, museums cannot actually win: whatever they do is open to criticism – and whether such criticism is valid or not is beside the point. As public institutions, there are certain expectations that museums should behave in certain ways that will allow the public the opportunity to express themselves in an open fashion (Barrett, 2011), and this expression is never likely to be entirely either accurate or valid given the sheer diversity of opinion, belief, ideology, and meanings that exist within society as a whole. The examination in this chapter of the ways in which gender and ethnicity have been represented in the Museum in terms of both exhibition and display practice, and in terms of employment in the case of women, effectively reinforces the view that the Museum has both attempted to be all things to all people and has accepted the behavioural and social norms that prevailed within society rather than acting as a leading force to change the status quo. The fact that the Museum has largely reacted to the broader currents of social change over time, rather than adopting an activist role in attempting to lead the direction of social change, indicates that there is also an element of social adaptation at work within the Museum and that this is something that the Museum takes seriously. If the Museum is seen to be acting in a largely reactive fashion to the social changes that have affected the City over the last 170 years, then this is no different to the ways in which a whole host of social organisations have dealt with the same changes. Despite variations in the specific responses that have been adduced to cope with, manage, and generally deal with social change, much of what the Museum has done is not out of the general mainstream of change that has occurred elsewhere within society. The general stability of the place of the Museum in the life of the City is in part a reflection of the fact that social change rarely occurs in a rapid fashion – even in revolutionary times17 – implying that there is a form of gradualism at work in this field. Certainly, the expectations of the arguments of punctuated equilibrium that there is likely to be a period of swift change within policies and practices to cope with the results of changes within either society at large or the political climate, environment, expectations, and practices that are in place is not matched by

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the experience of New Walk, where change has occurred over the long-term – if not quite as long as the longue durée, and more like the medium-term history ‘of groups and groupings’ where social, economic, and political change is gradual (see Braudel, 1972, 20–1). In this respect, the role of the Museum in supporting or resisting these medium-term experiences of social change assumes some importance. Certainly New Walk has been a part of the reaction to social change in the City, with this reaction taking a positive rather than a negative form, even if in a minor key. Thus, the willingness of the Museum to hire women to take positions of authority within the museums service can be seen in the appointments of the first guide-demonstrator in 1924 and the first official city archivist in 1929 and the willingness to go beyond the City Council’s pay scale for Ruth Weston in the 1930s, all demonstrating an acceptance of the role of women within museums in the same way that women were starting to gain positions of organisational importance in other parts of the British economy at the same time. None of these examples, however, could be taken to show the Museum behaving as an activist, only that it was not resistant to the role of women within it. The position of the Museum with regard to the City’s ethnic minority groups is less apparent, largely as a consequence of the collections policies of the past, which had not developed a coherent or specific set of either ethnographic or geographically specific items within them. This lack of specific items from the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and the Asian sub-continent, the areas where many of the recent ethnic-minority populations of the City originate, did not mean, however, that these communities were simply ignored by the Museum. The intentions and actions of both the City and County Council authorities over many years were intended to make the new arrivals into the County and the City accepted as part and parcel of the wider community, a point stressed in the recent BBC Radio 4 broadcast about the Museum (MacGregor, 2022). While this could be (and has been) seen as a form of covert racism and, equally, a means for an unfair privileging of the interests of these groups, the general intention has been for the good, even if it has not always succeeded. As part of this, the Museum has continued to operate as a public institution, open to all, and has presented itself as being largely blind to any differences that may be, or which may appear to be, present with the population. As a reflection of the general policy idea that exhibitions and displays are for everybody, New Walk lives up to this practice. In general terms, therefore, the Museum serves as an example of a reactive social organisation within the City rather than as an active agent in its own right. The policies and practices that the Museum pursues and makes use of are those that are also evident in other areas of social life, as well as being quite common within the museums field as a whole. As such, New Walk can hardly be considered to be a revolutionary organisation in any meaningful sense, even if it has been, in museum terms, a quietly radical one. Doubt has been cast on the idea that the role that the Museum has played in terms of social change is to be found in the ideas of punctuated equilibrium as there are no startling changes in museum practice and behaviour to deal with wider patterns of change within Leicester society, and with changes in both cases appearing to be far more gradual than

The Museum in Society: Social Change and the Museum 75 revolutionary. Equally, however, there is little real support in evidence that how New Walk has reacted to patterns of social change in the wider society of which it is a part can be explained by appeals to ideas of path dependence, multiple streams, or advocacy coalitions. The closest to practice that appears to exist is the fact that the collecting policies of the past have had an effect on the displays that the Museum mounts today, which might be taken as an example of path dependence, with New Walk being bound by the decisions of the past in such a way that its room for manoeuvre is severely limited, if there is any leeway in operation at all. This view, however, rather ignores the fact that there have been changes in the focus of the collections policies that New Walk has pursued, even if these are still shaped by the general criteria laid down by Lowe in 1907 (as discussed in Chapter 2). If path dependence is to be held as being valid for New Walk, then it operates at a rather generic level – that of museums in general around the world – rather than at the level of the specific instance of New Walk. Even at this level, however, there are limitations on what path dependence can explain as systemic practices themselves have altered over time, meaning that how the Museum appears today bears minimal relationship to how it appeared 170 years ago – even if the Barrow Kipper continues to remain on display – and the underlying principles, precepts, and policies that are made use of in the Museum today bear only a slight relationship to those that governed the Museum in its early years. At best, the functional expectations that existed about the role of museums in society in the middle-to-later nineteenth century have more or less continued in place into the early twenty-first century (Gray & McCall, 2020), even if the meanings that are associated with these assorted functions and the contents of them have, again, changed over time, as with the educational function of the museum, which, through the activities of docents and guide-demonstrators and the expansion of the understanding of how museum education works and what the educational benefits of education in museums are, bears minimal relationship to how Greenwood (1996 [1888]) and Murray (1996 [1904]) saw this role, let alone how the later work of Miers (1928) and Markham (1938), both of whom were extremely strong supporters of the role of museums in education, argued the case. In the case of the multiple streams argument, change is largely understood as being something that is tied to specific instances of organisational activity and driven by the combination of the intersection of problems, policies, national ‘mood’, pressure group activity, and changes in elected personnel in the shortterm rather than to long-term processes of social, economic, and political change. While each of these views of change could be tied to multiple causal factors in the short-termism of the former, it is easier to identify with some, if not exact, precision what these factors are and how they directly contributed to specific instances of change. In the case of longer-term instances of change, this becomes much less clear as factors can assume prominence at one time and lose significance at another without it being obvious as to what actual effect they had. A risk with the former is that it can descend into forms of political journalism or storytelling – who did what, to whom, when, why, where, and how – while a risk with the latter is that the

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sheer complexity of change ends up defeating the analyst by producing a plethora of events and actions with no clear means of differentiating their importance (or lack of it). With advocacy coalition arguments, a longer-term perspective is adopted even though the focus still tends towards individual and specific instances of change rather than broader conceptions of what change might consist of and how it occurs. The consequence of this is that change becomes a fragmented process driven by different sets of actors behaving in different ways at different times. While this is unexceptional in itself, it does not make it easy to identify any generalisable argument about what change consists of and what the consequences of change are except as a succession of individual instances of change. The assumption that there are recognisable sets of coalition actors operating, usually in unison although sometimes being in conflict with each other, to see change being introduced into a particular arena of activity could be seen to apply to New Walk insofar as the response to the broader patterns of social change that have been discussed in this chapter have tended to be based on the actions of senior staff in the Museum and senior local authority councillors on the Museum Committee. These actors, however, have not formed anything more than a mutual support system, with each undertaking their own organisational roles and not intruding on the competencies of the other. This division of labour is not unusual in museums and reflects the acceptance of the organisational ‘rules of the game’ that serve to underpin smooth operational activity within organisations, with a clear differentiation between the ‘professional’ and ‘managerial’ dimensions of running an organisation (Gray & McCall, 2018). The extent to which either of these dimensions has an individual effect on New Walk in the context of changing social conditions is something of a moot point as both could be seen to play such a role, but equally, they could also be seen to operate in tandem to see organisational change take effect. The role of the ‘professional’ dimension of museum work in the case of New Walk forms the basis for a later chapter and, for now, is simply left open. The final conclusion to be drawn from this chapter is that it appears that social change had a more profound effect on the Museum than the Museum had on social change. Even then, the direct effects of social change took time to work their way through the Museum system, with the first female employee (a clerical assistant, Miss I. P. Biggs) taking office in 1911 (Leicester Borough Museum and Art Gallery, 1912), sometime after women had become a major force in the local economy as a whole, and the extent of the changes involved were not particularly profound and certainly not in terms of the collections that the Museum developed where, at best, marginal changes could be seen to take place in the context of the entirety of the Museum’s holdings of material. The Museum then could be seen to be more acted upon than being a positive actor in its own right, with a great deal of continuity in terms of museum policies. The extent to which this is also reflected in terms of the finances of the Museum forms the subject of the next chapter when the different pressures that economic concerns have bought to the doors of the Museum will be examined.

The Museum in Society: Social Change and the Museum 77

Notes  1 The United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union has led to some marginal changes in the ethnic diversity of the City but by no means so many as to make this statement untrue as of 2022.  2 Thomas insisted that he was innocent of the offence for which he was charged and insisted that his legal rights and representatives were basically ignored during the course of the proceedings: see Thomas (1991).  3 This is most marked in the case of those museums that rely upon independent funding streams for their finances, but it is also the case for those that are entirely publicly funded. Again, American examples are more common in this area than are European ones.  4 Despite the surveys that are used by museums to show that the ‘cultural tourist’ is attracted to visit places on the basis of their museums and heritage sites, the reality is not quite the same, particularly given the sheer poverty of the survey evidence that is adduced in support of the claim. A personal assumption is that the opportunities for shopping and potentially being able to see a good show are more likely to be attractive for most tourists than is having a decent or good local museum or interesting local heritage sites (Gray & McCall, 2020).  5 The first female president was Mrs William (sic) Evans in 1913–14, although Margaret Gimson had been appointed as honorary minute secretary in 1912 (Lott, 1935, 253, 254).  6 The ‘guide-lecturers’ mentioned in a speech to the House of Lords by Lord Sudeley in 1914 appear to have been simply ‘guides’ who ‘show off the exhibits’ (Royal College of Surgeons, 1914, 3). The educational role of the guide-lecturers introduced into New Walk was a key part of the position and thus quite distinct from Sudeley’s examples.  7 As with those from the Derbyshire County Museum and Bristol Museum in 1936 and 1937 (CM 27/12, 31/7/1936; 24/9/1937).  8 This is a major heritage site in the City centre dating to around 120–30 ce containing not only the bathhouse, dating to around 350 ce, but also one of the largest free-standing Roman walls in the country.  9 Who later became secretary of the Council for British Archaeology in 1944 (Kenyon, 1944). 10 Full details of councillors and committee memberships can be found in the Minutes of the Proceedings of the Council, published annually by the City Council. 11 There were three women out of 57 councillors in 1927, six out of 59 in 1933, six out of 57 in 1942, eight out of 59 in 1957, and ten out 61 in 1963. Details from the Minutes of the Proceedings of the Council in the appropriate years. 12 This is not to deny that there is a powerful feminist critique of museum contents, displays, and exhibitions (see, for example, Duncan, 1995), only that this has not been met by any significant developments in feminist practice in the museums field. 13 At 2004 prices, Weston’s pay when she left the service was equivalent to £10,830. In the same year (2004), the median pay for education and outreach staff in the museums service across the United Kingdom as a whole was £19,400 (Museums Association, 2017a). This shows a small real terms inflationary pay effect over 1940 prices, although by 2017 education and outreach staff were calculated to be being paid at around 6% below comparable pay in other sectors (Museums Association, 2017b); neither of which would imply that pay in the sector is by any stretch of the imagination excessive. 14 A collection of semi-professional and amateur artists from the City and County. This tradition of an annual show at New Walk commenced in the late nineteenth century and continues until today. 15 There are a few bows towards both older (including pre-renaissance and renaissance art and some eighteenth-century paintings), and some slightly more modern art in the gallery, but all this equally falls within the Western tradition.

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16 This has recently (since 2015) been expanded and re-displayed from the much smaller display that was in place beforehand. 17 The whole point of characterising something as a ‘revolution’ entails large-scale change within society – but it rather depends upon what this change consists of. None of the revolutions discussed by Skocpol (1994), for example, changed everything within the societies that were affected. While there were major political changes in each case, in none of them were, for example, the everyday lives of women radically altered, and in some cases they remained much the same in terms of social status and position, with these being reinforced as a consequence of the political changes that revolution bought with it.

References Archive Material CM 27/9 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 1st January 1924 to 5th April 1927. CM 27/10 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 28th April 1927 to 30th October 1931. CM 27/11 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 10th November 1931 to 25th October 1935. CM 27/12 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 12th November 1935 to 2nd May 1939. CM 27/13 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 16th May 1939 to 14th October 1946. DE 3277/170 Museums and Libraries Committee Minutes 25th May 1950 to 30th April 1954. DE 7971/33 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes June 1973 to May 1975. DE 7971/34 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes July 1975 to July 1978. DE 7971/37 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes 3rd January 1984 to 28th February 1986. 4D 56/135 Exhibition Catalogues.

Other Sources Adelman, J (2005), ‘Evolution on Display: Promoting Irish Natural History and Darwinism at the Dublin Science and Art Museum’, British Journal of the History of Science, 38, 411–36. Barrett, J (2011), Museums and the Public Sphere (Chichester, Wiley/Blackwell). Bhatti, S (2012), Translating Museums: A Counterhistory of South Asian Museology (Walnut Creek, Left Coast Press). Braudel, F (1972), The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London, Collins). Crooke, E (2007), Museums and Community: Ideas, Issues and Challenges (Abingdon, Routledge). Cuno, J (2004), ‘The Object of Art Museums’, 49–75 in Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust (Princeton, Princeton University Press/Harvard University Art Museums). Cuno, J (2011), Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Dana, J (1999 [1927]), ‘Should Museums be Useful?’, 133–44 in E. Peniston (Ed), The New Museum: Selected Writings by John Cotton Dana (Newark, Newark Museum Association/ The American Association of Museums).

The Museum in Society: Social Change and the Museum 79 Deepwell, K (2006), ‘Feminist Curatorial Strategies and Practices Since the 1970s’, 65–80 in J. Marstine (Ed), New Museum Theory and Practice (Oxford, Blackwell). Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2000), Centres for Social Change: Museums, Galleries, Archives for All (London, Department for Culture, Media and Sport). Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2001), Libraries, Museums, Galleries and Archives for All: Co-operating Across the Sectors to Tackle Social Exclusion (London, Department for Culture, Media and Sport). Dewdney, A, D Dibosa & V Walsh (2013), Post-Critical Museology: Theory and Practice in the Art Museum (Abingdon, Routledge). Duncan, C (1995), Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London, Routledge). Ewen, S (2016), ‘Watching the Town: Protecting Leicester from Fire and Crime’, 98–114 in R. Rodger & R. Madgin (Eds), Leicester: A Modern History (Lancaster, Carnegie). Fuller, N (1992), ‘The Museum as a Vehicle for Community Empowerment: The Ak-Chin Indian Community Ecomuseum Project’, 327–65 in I. Karp, C. Kreamer & S. Lavine (Eds), Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington, Smithsonian Institution Press). Gieryn, T (1998), ‘Balancing Acts: Science, Enola Gay and History Wars at the Smithsonian’, 197–228 in S. Macdonald (Ed), The Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture (Abingdon, Routledge). Gray, C (2002), ‘Local Government and the Arts’, Local Government Studies, 28/1, 77–90 (DoI: 10.1080/714004133). Gray, C (2008), ‘Instrumental Policies: Causes, Consequences, Museum and Galleries’, Cultural Trends, 17, 209–22 (DoI: 10.1080//09548960802615349). Gray, C (2015), The Politics of Museums (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan). Gray, C & V McCall (2018), ‘Analysing the Adjectival Museum’, Museum and Society, 16/2, 124–37 (DoI: 10.29311/mas.v16i2.2809). Gray, C & V McCall (2020), The Role of Today’s Museum (Abingdon, Routledge). Greenwood, T (1996 [1888]), Museums and Art Galleries (London, Routledge/Thoemmes Press). Herbert, J (2016), ‘Immigration and the Emergence of Multicultural Leicester’, 330–46 in R. Rodger & R. Madgin (Eds), Leicester: A Modern History (Lancaster, Carnegie). Hill, K (2016), Women and Museums, 1850–1914: Modernity and the Gendering of Knowledge (Manchester, Manchester University Press). Hudson, K (1975), A Social History of Museums: What the Visitors Thought (London, Macmillan). Kavanagh, G (1994), Museums and the First World War: A Social History (London, Leicester University Press). Kenyon, K (1938a), The Jewry Wall Site in Leicester: Excavations during 1936 (City of Leicester Museum and Libraries Committee, Leicester, W. Thornley). Kenyon, K (1938b), Excavations at the Jewry Wall Site Leicester 1937 (City of Leicester Museum and Libraries Committee, Leicester, W. Thornley). Kenyon, K (1944), ‘The Council for British Archaeology’, Museums Journal, 44, 91–3. Leicester Borough Museum and Art Gallery (1912), Nineteenth Report to the Town Council (Leicester, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery). Leicester Museums (1949), Forty-Third Report to the City Council (Leicester, Leicester Museums and Art Gallery).

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Leicester Museums and Art Gallery (1962), Fifty-Sixth Report of the Committee, 1961–2 (Leicester, Leicester Museums and Art Gallery). Leicester Museums Service (nd), Leicester Museum and the Schools: An Illustrated Account of the Work of the Schools Service Department (Leicester, Leicester Museums Service). Lott, F (1935), The Centenary Book of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society (Leicester, W. Thornley). Lowe, E (1916), ‘Infant Welfare in the Leicester Museum’, Museums Journal, 15/8, 254–64. Macdonald, S (2002), Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum (Oxford, Berg). MacGregor, A (2009), ‘Exhibiting Evolutionism: Darwinism and Pseudo-Darwinism in Museum Practice After 1859’, Journal of the History of Collections, 21, 77–94. MacGregor, N (2022), The Museums That Make Us: Leicester Museum and Art Gallery (BBC Radio 4 broadcast, originally aired 11/4/2022. (At: bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/ m0016810 [Accessed: 12/4/2022]). Markham, S (1938), A Report on the Museums and Art Galleries of the British Isles (Other than the National Museums) (Edinburgh, T & A Constable). McCall, V (2010), ‘Cultural Services and Social Policy: Exploring Policy Maker’s Perceptions of Culture and Social Inclusion’, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 18, 169–83 (DoI: 10.1332/175982710x513902). McCall, V (2016), ‘Exploring the Gap between Museum Policy and Practice: A Comparative Analysis of Scottish, English and Welsh Local Authority Museum Services’, Museum and Society, 14/1, 98–115 (DoI: 10.29311/mas.v14i1-678). McCall, V & C Gray (2014), ‘Museums Policies and the New Museology: Theory, Practice and Organisational Change’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 29, 19–35 (DoI: 10.1080/09647775.2013.869852). Miers, H (1928), A Report on the Public Museums of the British Isles (Other than the National Museums) (Edinburgh, T & A Constable). Murray, D (1996 [1904]), Museums: Their History and their Use (London, Routledge/ Thoemmes). Museums Association (2017a), Pay in Museums (At: ma-production-ams.digitaloceanspaces.com/app/uploads/2020/06/18145317/31102017-pay-in-nuseuns-2004.pdg [Accessed: 4/2/2022]). Museums Association (2017b), Museums Association Salary Guidelines 2017 (At: maproduction-ams.digitaloceanspaces.com/app/uploads/2020/06/18145318/31102017salary-guidelines-2017.pdg [Accessed: 4/2/2022]). Newman, A (2005), ‘“Social Exclusion Zone” and “The Feelgood Factor”’, 325–32 in G. Corsane (Ed), Heritage, Museums and Galleries: An Introductory Reader (Abingdon, Routledge). Newman, A (2013), ‘Imagining the Social Impact of Museums and Galleries: Interrogating Cultural Policy through an Empirical Study’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 19, 120–37 (DoI: 10.1080/10286632.2011.625419). Pitt-Rivers Museum (2009), Pitt Rivers Museum: An Introduction (Oxford, Pitt Rivers Museum University of Oxford). Reeder, D (1993), ‘Municipal Provision: Education, Health and Housing’, 121–57 in D. Nash & D. Reeder (Eds), Leicester in the Twentieth Century (Stroud, Alan Sutton). Royal College of Surgeons (1914), The Public Utility of Museums: Official Report of the Debate in the House of Lords, May 20th, 1914 (At: https://wellcomelibrary.org/item/ b22444762 [Accessed: 17/3/2022]).

The Museum in Society: Social Change and the Museum 81 Sandell, R (1998), ‘Museums as Agents of Social Inclusion’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 17, 401–18. Sandell, R (2007), Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference (Abingdon, Routledge). Sandell, R & E Nightingale (Eds) (2012), Museums, Equality and Social Justice (Abingdon, Routledge). Scott, M (2007), Rethinking Evolution in the Museum: Envisioning African Origins (Abingdon, Routledge). Simon, N (2010), The Participatory Museum (Santa Cruz, Museum 20). Skocpol, T (1994), Social Revolutions in the Modern World (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Thomas, T (1991), ‘An Academic Life’, 55–71 in K. Porter & J. Weeks (Eds), Between the Acts: Lives of Homosexual Men 1885–1967 (London, Routledge). van Keuren, D (1984), ‘Museums and Ideology: Augustus Pitt-Rivers, Anthropological Museums, and Social Change in Later Victorian Britain’, Victorian Studies, 28, 171–89. Weston, R (1939), ‘American Museums and the Child’, Museums Journal, 39, 93–115.

5

Paying the Piper Finance, Economics, and the Museum

Introduction The willingness of the City Council, as the major source of Museum support in the locality – as well as local groups and individuals and external groups and organisations – to fund the Museum has important consequences for not only the collections that the Museum has built up but also for the actual ability of Museum staff to undertake their activities. Changes in the pattern of local funding over time are expected to have an effect on changes in Museum practice, with opportunities and limitations on the ability of Museum staff to experiment, innovate, or simply maintain their existing practices being likely to be key consequences of changes in funding. Apart from this direct effect on Museum staff, there are also secondary effects of spending decisions in terms of Museum buildings, collections storage, and conservation. How internal spending patterns have changed over time and which Museum services have benefitted or have been adversely affected as a consequence of this are an important consideration in this chapter, as is the relationship of these changes to shifting patterns of political and social change within the City – if, that is, these patterns of change have an effect at all on the funding of the Museum.1 The City Council, however, is not operating within an economic world of its own. The decisions and choices of national governments – and in a less important way, as far as museums are concerned, international organisations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – about levels and types of expenditure across the public sector, of which New Walk is a part, also have significant effects on museum expenditure. This is exacerbated by the fact that local authority expenditure on museums remains what it has always been in the United Kingdom, a matter of discretion rather than one of statutory duty. This position has always made the local authority museum sector vulnerable to cuts when economic stringency is demanded by those who hold the purse strings and, equally, has always made their financial position and stability questionable when local authorities have new statutory duties given to them – something that has occurred with great frequency over the course of the history of New Walk, including the statutory provision of education, libraries, social and children’s services, and housing (amongst many other services) that local government has acquired since New DOI: 10.4324/9780429292491-5

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum 83 Walk was first opened in the 1840s. The requirement to fund these services can serve to place extreme pressure on the financial resources of local authorities and the extent to which local museums become sacrificial lambs on the altar of competing demands for economic support is something that has always been a concern for the museums sector in the United Kingdom (see, for example, Rex, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c on the position of museums under the austerity regime that has been in place since 2010). Given that ‘the institution itself was run on a shoe-string’ (Simmons, 1974b, 28) in the Victorian period, the experiences of New Walk over the past 170 years can serve to provide a picture of whether there has been an improvement, either absolute or relative, in this position or whether it remains a poor relation in expenditure terms when compared with not only other local authority services but also the national museums.2

Funding New Walk At the opening of New Walk in 1849, its financial basis was strictly controlled by statute. The enabling legislation that allowed the Town Council to establish the Museum (the Museums Act of 1845) restricted the Council to levying a maximum extra rate demand of one half-penny in the pound for its maintenance.3 Fortunately for the taxpayers of Leicester, a sizeable share of the original revenue costs of the Museum were met by the Lit and Phil, which paid the salary of the paid curator, contributed the Honorary Curators from their own membership, and provided the finance to purchase many of the additions to the collection – as well as the original collection in the first place (see Chapters 2 and 3)4 – with the expenditure on the Museum in the early years of its existence taking the majority of the income of the Lit and Phil (CM 1/8, 22/6/1854). In effect, the Town was left with the responsibility of paying back the original loan that was raised to purchase the propriety school to house the Museum and the cost of materials for such mundane, but important, tasks as cleaning, decoration and re-decoration, running repairs to the fabric of the building, and the provision of the cases that the Museum needed to allow for the effective display of the collection. The costs of these soon outweighed those that the Lit and Phil were paying for, particularly when the interest on the original debt is taken into account. To give some idea of the sums of money these activities involved, it can be noted that the amount raised by a half-penny rate in 1849 was £239 (equivalent to £27,126 in 2014 prices); in August of that year, loan repayments were £63 2/05 (equivalent to £7,162 a month in 2014 prices, and equal to £85,944 a year), and total expenditure from the Museum Fund that month was £77 7/7 (equivalent to £8,8192 in 2014 prices). By comparison, the cost of maintaining ‘convicted prisoners in the Borough Gaol’ for the six months from January to June 1849 was £167 13/9 (equivalent to £18,580 in 2014 prices) (CM 1/5; 254, 328), which means that the debt repayments for six months for the Museum were over twice the cost of caring for the town’s prisoners and over the year were more than three times the annual income derived from the rates. Given the subsidy that the Town Council was therefore required to raise through other sources to fund the founding Museum

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debt, it is hardly surprising that a certain parsimony can be seen in the funding for revenue expenditure that was made available by the Council, and this remained the case until the debt was finally paid off in 1879 (Leicester Town Museum, 1879, 3). The removal of what had proved to be a sizeable, but not impossible, debt to manage in the early years of the Museum’s existence did not, however, mean that the tap was turned on for a large increase in the funds that were made available to it after the debt was cleared. As seen in Table 5.1, while there was some increase in real terms expenditure on a yearly basis by the Museum while the original debt was being settled, there is little evidence that it was the site of gross extravagance, with much of the growth in expenditure in the 1870s, for example, being explicable by the £7,591 16/1 it cost to build the extension that opened in 1879 (the equivalent, in 2014 prices of £781,955) (Storey, 1895, 35) with this leading to increased revenue costs for such things as heating, lighting, and cleaning, as well for the servicing of the associated construction debt that went with it, alongside the requirement to furnish the new rooms with the appropriate fixtures and fittings6 – something that continued to affect expenditure until 1882. Certainly the Museum during the nineteenth century was not spending large amounts on staff wages – largely thanks to the role that was played by the Honorary Curators drawn from the ranks of the membership of the Lit and Phil – with the numbers of staff who were being paid directly by the Town rising from three in 1873 (the curator, a junior, and a Table 5.1 Museum Expenditure, 1848–84 Year

Revenue Expenditure (£)*

Year

Revenue Expenditure (£)*

1849–53 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868

153,557 22,087 19,836 30,611 24,099 27,506 34,395 22,828 32,347 36,435 32,771 52,646 24,416 39,650 42,845 46,975

1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880–81 1881–82 1882–83 1883–84

40,351 54,569 39,024 48,070 111,527 65,110 65,177 49,062 89,218 77,259 139,444 89,109 157,997 108,937 75,489

Source: Museum Annual Reports (Leicester, Leicester Town Museum) *All expenditure is expressed in 2014 prices. Source: Office for National Statistics (2022)

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum 85 porter) to six in 1911 (the curator, a sub-curator, two assistants, a porter, and an attendant) (Leicester Town Museum, 1873; Leicester Borough Museum and At Gallery, 1912).7 Something of the same effect can be seen in the case of the expenditure associated with the Art Gallery (see Table 5.2), where marked rises in expenditure are almost entirely attributable to large amounts being spent on new works of art, not only on oil paintings, but also on sketches, watercolours, and statues. Indeed in 1909–10, of the £475 8/0 spent by the gallery, £340 10/0 (equivalent respectively to £442,818 and £324,926 in 2014 prices) was spent on the purchase of pictures, which is just over 70% of the total expenditure by the gallery in that year. As pointed out on in Chapter 2 with reference to the Frith painting The Railway Station, the increase in the prices of works of art since then has meant that even if the gallery wished to purchase art at the same rate that it did in 1909–10, it would not be able to buy much and certainly none of the major works of art that were purchased in the past, not unless, of course, there was a significant amount of money from external sources available. As has been noted earlier, the reliance of the Museum and Art Gallery on financial support from the purchase funds made available via the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Art Fund, and the Friends of the Museum has allowed the museum to continue to develop its collections in the face of rapidly spiralling prices in the art markets of the world but has also served to make the Museum a supplicant for favour rather than anything more positive. This problem was made apparent in 1985, when it was pointed out that the sum of £31,100 for art purchases in the Draft Estimates for 1985–86 would have needed to be £700,000 (these figures being equivalent to £1,125,110, and £25,963,000 in 2014 prices) to return purchasing power to the equivalent of World War II levels (DE 7971/37, 4/1/1985, Appendix AA). Table 5.2 Art Gallery Expenditure, 1893–1912 Year

Revenue Expenditure (£)*

Year

Revenue Expenditure (£)*

1893–94 1894–95 1895–96 1896–97 1897–98 1898–99 1899–1900 1900–01 1901–02 1902–03

25,293 13,694 57,263 9,179 177,313 24,357 15,230 314,794 71,009 167,200

1903–04 1904–05 1905–06 1906–07 1907–08 1908–09 1909–10 1910–11 1911–12

23,661 22,904 102,842 104,987 175,803 11,918 50,392 131,282 84,053

Source: Museum Annual Reports (Leicester, Leicester Borough/Town Museum) *All expenditure is expressed in 2014 prices. Source: Office for National Statistics (2022)

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Maintaining the Museum Equally as pointed out previously, the Museum has not been immune to the global, national, and local economic environments in which it functions, and the willingness of the Council to continue to maintain services in the face of severe economic downturns in both the international and national economy have been a continuing issue throughout the Museum’s history. While the Council has always found the necessary financial resources to fund the Museum and its day-to-day activities, the pressures that have been placed on it have seemingly never gone away. While it is almost unheard of for local authority services to claim that they are overfunded and that there should be reductions in the amounts that they are given to spend, they are, equally, apparently always under pressure to either simply spend less or, in more recent terms, to do more with the same or fewer resources than they currently have. Despite the platitudes of national politicians about how local authorities need to be more efficient and effective in the choices that they make concerning their expenditure, the reality is that the consequences of expenditure restraint are very different for different organisations. In brief, the larger the organisation, the more capable of absorbing expenditure cuts it tends to be in comparison with smaller organisations undergoing the same level of budgetary reduction, and in terms of Leicester, the Museum is, and always was, a small organisation, even from its earliest days of existence, with it being noted as late as 1986 that there was a ‘disproportionate effect of decisions (about cuts) . . . on committees with comparatively small budgets where there was virtually no scope for savings’ (DE 7971/38, 25/4/1986). In 1850–51, for example, when expenditure from the dedicated Museum Fund was approximately £340 (equivalent to £40,834 in 2014 prices), total Town expenditure was £26,530 (equivalent to £33,056,380 in 2014 prices), and expenditure on the cemetery for the first financial quarter was £775 and, on the police in the same quarter, £944 (CM 1/6) (equivalent respectively to £96,565 and £117,622 in 2014 prices). Indeed, the financial support available to the Museum from the rates was recognised from an early date as being limited when further demands were being made for extra expenditure by the Town. Thus in 1850, the income for the Museum was ‘insufficient to enable the Council of the Borough to undertake the establishment of public libraries (even should such a measure be deemed desirable)’ (CM 1/5, 20/3/1850), with this possibility arising from new enabling legislation then passing through Parliament to allow local authorities to establish public libraries, which would be funded from the same half-penny-in-the-pound rate that the Town was already making use of for the Museum.8 At the same time as the Museum was opening its doors to the public, the City was also undertaking considerable expenditure on a number of new projects that were intended to be of direct benefit to the people of the City in both the physical and spiritual sense. The £12,500 cost of the Welford Road Cemetery (see Chapter 2) was dwarfed in turn by the £17,000 (£14,175,000 and £21,182,000 respectively in 2014 prices) that was spent in 1851 in investing in a private waterworks company that was intended to supply clean water to the Town, with the company eventually being taken over by the Town in

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum 87 1877 (Simmons, 1974b, 11–12). This development was associated with the establishment of a Local Board of Health in late 1849 and a Highways and Sewerage Committee, which, in combination, marked ‘the greatest single development in the expansion of local government in 19th-century Leicester’ (Elliott, 1979, 58). These developments saw a major expansion in the expenditure of the Town Council, the debt that it carried forward into the future, and the demands that were placed on the Town’s rate-payers. The total debt of the Town rose, for example, from just over £280,000 in 1878 to just over £1,500,000 in 1882 following the takeover of the Water Company (Elliott, 1979, 132) (£29,764,000 and £159,750,000 respectively, in 2014 prices). The rate in the pound demanded increased from 9d in the pound in 1849 to 2/3 in the pound, a threefold increase, in 1850 following the establishment of the Local Board of Health (Elliott, 1979, 159). In comparison with these increases, the costs associated with New Walk were minor in both relative and absolute terms. The size of, and increases in, the Town’s debt and rate demands were simply beyond the capabilities of the Museum, limited, in particular, as it was in terms of the rate income that it could levy from the people of the Town, particularly given the demands on this income that were being made by the servicing of the initial debt that the Museum carried, with the interest repayments on this being seen as ‘a very heavy burden on the funds of the Institution, its only source of income being an annual Rate of one half penny in the pound’ (CM 27/1 28/6/1872). The financial pressures that the Museum rate faced during the latter part of the nineteenth century were not eased by the introduction via Parliamentary legislation of free libraries in 1883 to be paid for from the same half-penny rate that funded the Museum. While this idea had been frowned upon by the Museum Committee in 1850, there was nothing that the committee could do about this once the legislation was put into effect, with £100 (£10,086 in 2014 prices), or roughly 20% of Museum expenditure, being transferred ‘towards the expense’ of maintaining a free public library in the Town in 1883 (CM 27/2, 28/5/1883). This small step translated fairly rapidly into a negotiated division of the available rate income between the Art Gallery, the Museum, and the library service with the latter taking the lion’s share of this division: the first formal agreement on this in 1899 divided the money between the three institutions 10%, 30%, and 60% (CM 27/5, 21/3/1899), and in 1900, 12.5%, 25%, and 62.5% respectively (CM 27/5, 21/3/1900). Even with such a division of income, however, the Museum still found itself effectively subsidising the library services accounts over a number of years – as in 1906 when the Museum and Art Gallery Committee ‘temporarily’ ‘loaned’ £825 (£89,595 in 2014 prices) to the Libraries Committee ‘to defray the deficit on the Libraries Account’ to be ‘repaid out of future yearly increments of revenue’ (CM 27/6, 17/7/1906), even though there is no evidence that this debt was ever actually redeemed. The three institutions agreed that they should be given the opportunity to increase their rate income when asking the Council in 1913 (CM 27/7, 24/11/1913) to authorise the levying of a further rate increase under the terms of the replacement of the half penny rate limit by a tuppenny-ha’penny9 rate under the provisions of

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the Museums and Gymnasiums Act of 1891. The establishment of the Art Gallery had already seen, under the provisions of the Leicester Corporation Act of 1884, the maximum rate demand available to the Museum, Art Gallery, and libraries rise to twopence in the pound (Storey, 1895, 43), while the later abolition of rate limitations under the Public Libraries Act of 1919 made more funds available to all three institutions. With the same share of the rate fund income being maintained up to 1919 (CM 27/7, 28/5/1919), this might have indicated a steadily increasing expenditure opportunity for the Museum, but the reality was somewhat different, with the national economy becoming an increasingly important factor affecting the funding of both local government, in general, and museums, in particular, after 1890. The first real evidence of this lies in the petition received in 1905 from ‘the unemployed citizens of Leicester’ asking as to what public work could be found to alleviate ‘the keen distress now so rampant in the Town’ (CM 27/6, 16/5/1905) when a major depression affecting the whole national economy made its mark on the City. Similar petitions were also received by the Committee in 1911 (CM 27/7, 19/9/1911) during a general depression in the British economy, 1922 (CM 27/8, 13/6/1922) during the post–World War I economic depression, 1926 (in the aftermath of the General Strike of that year) (CM 27/9, 16/9/1926), and 1932 (CM 27/11, 28/10/1932), when the effects of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 fed through into the local economy. In all these cases the response of the Museum Committee was much the same: an acceptance of the petition and a failure to do anything about it. This failure was largely down to the fact that the Committee was (and still is) answerable to the full Council and, currently, to the Executive Cabinet of the Council, meaning that anything falling outside of the immediate remit of the Committee would either have to be referred up to the full Council or to one of the more powerful committees (such as, as is usually the case in these matters, those dealing with questions of the Council’s finances as a whole10). While it is apparent that the Committee indicated agreement with the aims of the petitioners – particularly in 1932 – they were hamstrung by not having the legal authority to have a meaningful effect on the conditions that were in existence, even though the extensions to the Museum that were commenced in the late 1920s were finally completed in 1930 and 1932, and while these had provided employment for those in the building trade up to that date, the immediate restraints on government expenditure after 1929 meant that there was no prospect of maintaining the workers involved in paid employment beyond the completion of the extensions. Being a part of the much larger, and far more expensive, local authority provision of services that the Council was responsible for, it would be surprising if the Museum, and the Museum Committee, were to be found to be insulated from the demands that were being placed on the finances of their parent organisation, and such was effectively the case in the interwar period from 1919 until the immediate post–World War II period (see Table 5.3), although without the extremity of the Council-imposed pay cuts of 5% for all staff that were introduced in 1922 being a common occurrence (CM 27/8, 14/3/1922). Apart from the increased costs associated with building, stocking, and refurbishment of the Museum leading up

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum 89 Table 5.3 Museum and Art Gallery Expenditure, 1923–47 Year

Revenue Expenditure (£)*

Year

Revenue Expenditure (£)*

1923–24 1924–25 1925–26 1926–27 1927–28 1928–29 1929–30 1930–31 1931–32 1932–33 1933–34 1934–35

336,184 436,128** 366,293 473,192 480,077 476,075 427,259 528,177 556,660 854,405** 753,004 772,007

1935–36 1936–37 1937–38 1938–39 1939–40 1940–41 1941–42 1942–43 1943–44 1944–45 1945–46 1946–47

812,968 815,562 821,627 801,262 713,692 611,254 697,499 616,909 624,186 752,959 788,418 756,170

Source: Museum Annual Reports (Leicester, City Museum) * All expenditure is expressed in 2014 prices. Source: Office for National Statistics (2022) ** The major rise in expenditure in 1924–25 is due to £62,101 (in 2014 prices) being spent on art works to add to the collection, and the rise in 1932–33 is due to the completion of the Museum extensions.

to, and immediately following, the building of the new extensions, the finances of the Museum were largely stable. Stable, that is, until the Second World War had its inevitable effects in depressing the funds that were available for all public service provision. The necessity to live within tightly drawn financial boundaries was not a new post–World War I phenomenon, however: at different times in the later nineteenth century, for example, expenditure constraints were used as a justification for not introducing electric lighting into the Museum and Art Gallery, even though there were strong arguments in favour of such a move (CM 27/2, 19/10/1885; CM 27/5, 19/1/1897). Indeed, the estimate of £357 (£41,448 in 2014 prices) for wiring up the entire New Walk building in 1897 was met by the Committee refusing to carry out the work on the grounds of expense, given that the sum involved was over one-third of the total expenditure of the Museum that year.11 The price for switching the electricity supply from 100 volts to 240 volts in 1935 was £408 8/8 (£25,773 in 2014 prices) (CM 27/11, 12/7/1935), demonstrating both that electricity supply had become cheaper – largely as a result of the expanding market and improvements in electricity supply – and the effect of price inflation over the 38 years involved. Demands for expenditure restraint by the Museum have been by no means infrequent over the years, with particularly acute cuts being demanded during the 1960s and 1970s. The responses to these demands have varied from strong

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resistance – ‘the Committee find that there is no possibility of saving upon their estimated expenditure of this financial year’ (CM 27/7, 2/10/1915), and in the face of demands for savings of £7,000 (£130,900 in 2014 prices) from the Committee budget in 1963, ‘the maximum saving which could be offered without seriously affecting the services rendered by the Committee was £2,000’, with £600 (£37,400 and £11,220 in 2014 prices) of this to come from New Walk (DE 3277/173, 15/3/1963) – to simple acceptance (CM 27/7, 7/3/1916), or even the offering of greater cuts (New Walk offered £7,410 in cuts on 15/12/1963, and a further £2,790 on 21/2/1964, £138,567 and £44,919 in 2014 prices respectively) (DE 3277/173), within the same financial and/or calendar year. While there is a certain lack of logic in the 1963/64 figures, from no cuts being possible to even greater cuts being accepted – unless, of course, there was a serious effect on the services being offered, and there were no arguments and no evidence put forward to show that this was indeed the case – this could, more simply, be seen as part and parcel of the usual financial games-playing that is carried out between spenders and savers across all organisations: threaten the worst to stave off demands that are being made and have the bluff called by those who actually hold the purse strings (who are generally anticipating that the worst scenario will not play out). Given that there were further demands for cuts in the museums budget, not all of which was expected from New Walk of £14,280 in 1965 and offers of cuts of £24,950 in 1966 (DE 3277/173, 19/2/1965; 18/2/1966) (equivalent respectively to £254,184 and £400,697 in 2014 prices), it is clear that the initial claim about severe service consequences in the light of proposed cuts were either simply a bluff that failed, or a gross overstatement of the position on the behalf of the City’s museums as a whole. The fact that the City’s museums did not subside into a state of service dereliction following these cuts, the latter is more likely to be the case – especially as the Museums and Libraries Committee offered further cuts of £4,190 in the museum budget in 1969 and £66,475 across both museums and libraries in 1972 (equivalent to £60,336 and £777,758 in 2014 prices) (DE 3277/174, 3/12/1969; 20/10/1972), again without the collapse of services in either case or for either of the services involved. The continuing demands that were made on the museums service as a whole – and New Walk in particular as the flagship, and biggest spending, museum – in the City and, after 1974, in the County, by both national governments and, through them, the local authority (as with the demands for cuts ‘in the light of the financial targets being set nationally and locally’ [DE 7971/34, 18/7/1975, Appendix G]), showed that there was an element of crying wolf in the 1960s as while ‘the deteriorating financial position is making it increasingly difficult to maintain existing standards and services’ (DE 7971/34, 16/12/1975, Appendix A), it had not led to the collapse of service provision, but it took until 1985 for it to be claimed that there had been ‘a marked reduction in standards of service’ (DE 7971/37, 7/9/1984, Appendix S) as a result of the cuts that had been imposed over a number of years. The cutting of the Museum’s staff training budget in 1991, only two years after it had been instated as ‘a commitment’, as being the cut that would have ‘least impact’ on the services that were being delivered to the public

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum 91 (DE 7971/40: 27/10/1989, Appendix D; 4/1/1991, Appendix D) indicates that the front-of-house activities of the Museum were seen as being more important than those taking place at the back-of-house, even though these latter activities have their own importance in terms of how the front-of-house functions are actually undertaken and delivered, even if their overall impact is a long-term, rather than short-term, one. Again, the position of museum services as a discretionary function for local authorities, as opposed to being a statutory function as library provision is, made the position of New Walk a relatively weak one. What is surprising is that in the attempt to reduce public expenditure following the 2010 general election, which saw the arrival of a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government committed to this course of action, the Leicester Museums Service has been affected but not in the ways that have been seen elsewhere in the country where local authority museums have either been permanently closed or farmed out to a range of community trusts that depend upon volunteer labour, thus reducing the wage bill and a number of other costs for the local authorities concerned (Rex, 2020a). While New Walk has seen a reduction in both staffing numbers and the hours that it is open for, what has been more common is debate about how the Museum can improve its financial position through its own efforts, and it is to these that attention now turns.

Financing the Museum While the Museum remains dependent on the City Council for the overwhelming majority of its income, demands for it to become more income-focused are by no means new. Indeed, the original establishment of New Walk saw the Lit and Phil agree to pay an annual charge of £75 (equivalent to £7,950 in 2014 prices) to the Museum in return for access to the Museum’s new Lecture Theatre, which was opened in 1876 at a cost of £7,591 16/1 (equivalent to £781,955 in 2014 prices) (Storey, 1895, 35), for the meetings and lectures of the organisation (Lott, 1935, 52–3), with this agreement lasting for many years. In addition, the School of Art in the Town was housed in the Museum from 1877 until 1897 (Simmons, 1974b, 26), again in purpose-built accommodation as part of the 1876 extension of the Museum. The rental income from these inhabitants of the Museum’s accommodation was a minor, if not insignificant, part of the Museum’s funds, even though they raised far more than the £10 (equivalent to £1,075 in 2014 prices) levied for ‘the use of the Lecture Hall’ that was ‘granted to Miss Ellis for 10 lectures to Ladies’ (CM 27/2, 10/1/1882), and the £10 (equivalent to £1,133 in 2014 prices) for the season received for the rental of the Museum grounds to tennis clubs (CM 27/7, 10/4/1912), something that continued for many years. Hardly surprisingly the increasing cost of the Museum to the City’s rate-payers led to considerations of how income could be further increased, with the first sign of this being in 1913, when the chair of the Museums Committee was requested to confer with the chair of the Libraries Committee ‘as to the steps which should be taken to increase the income of the two institutions’ (CM 27/7, 5/4/1913). The most obvious action that was taken after this was the printing of 2,000 Guides to

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the Museum, which would be sold for a half-penny each (CM 27/7, 5/5/1914), which, if all of them were sold, would furnish the Museum with a net profit of £1 14s (or just over £170 net profit in 2014 prices) – which was hardly sufficient as a money-spinning exercise but which was useful for the purposes of public engagement and information, as well as for showing to the Committee that their request was being taken seriously. While general admissions charges to publicly funded museums were more or less legally prohibited until 1964 (DE 7971/35, 7/3/1980, Appendix C), special admissions charges could be levied for individual exhibitions, and these had been used at New Walk when, for example, ‘over 5,000 people paid for admission to the War photographs exhibition’ in 1918 (CM 27/7, 1/10/1918), even if these were rare occasions. The vexed question of introducing general admissions charges to New Walk – and, indeed, all the museums that were answerable to the Museums Committees of both the Town/City and County, as well as to all local authority museums across the country and the publicly funded national museums – has, not surprisingly, been raised, if rather infrequently, over the years, usually in response to externally based political decisions and demands and/or to the political party affiliations that individual councillors and nationally elected politicians have. The imposition of admissions charges – although largely honoured in the breech rather than in practice (see Wilson, 2002, 337) – on the national museums in 1974 and 1986 by the Conservative governments of the day12 is the prime example of this, with the legislation enabling charges to be levied being repealed at a very early opportunity by the incoming Labour governments that replaced them in 1974 and 1997. The resistance to admissions charges in the case of the national museums has been matched by many local authorities, including Leicester and Leicestershire, even though ‘a charge of 2s a head be made on Sundays for a trail period of twelve months’ was introduced at New Walk (and the City’s Newarke Houses Museum) in 1971, with exemptions for accompanied children and ‘old age pensioners’ (DE 3277/174, 15/1/1971; 19/3/1971), with no report about the experience being made and the charge being quietly dropped. The County Libraries and Museums Committee, ‘after lengthy discussion’, resolved that it was ‘opposed to the introduction of charges to County museums’ (DE 7971/35, 7/3/1980, Appendix C), following the decision of the County’s Policy and Resources Committee (the most important Committee in the authority) that it should ‘consider the introduction of charges for the museums service’ (DE 7971/35, 4/12/1979). The Policy and Resources Committee continued to pursue the possibility of introducing admission charges in the face of the Libraries and Museums Committee’s opposition, suggesting a trial period of one year for introducing charging at one museum (DE 7971/35, 4/7/1980, Appendix E). The Libraries and Museums Committee then resolved, again ‘after a lengthy discussion’, that the Policy and Resources Committee be informed that in view of the probable substantial drop in the number of visitors to the museums, if admission charges were introduced, and the likely cost of collection, it is the considered opinion of the Committee that the introduction of admission charges to

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum 93 County museums would be self-defeating and would not produce a significant amount of additional income and should therefore not be introduced. (DE 7971/35, 7/11/1980) Leading to the Policy and Resources Committee dropping the proposal at a later meeting (DE 7971/35, 6/3/1981, Appendix F). While the arguments against introducing charging were the standard ones that are used by both museum professionals (with a vested interest, perhaps, in not charging visitors) and by economists (who sometimes have a vested interest in the commercialisation of everything), this internal discussion demonstrated that the issue was being taken seriously by all the interested parties within the local authority, and reading between the lines, the subject raised a great deal more political argument than the museums service usually involved: the references to ‘lengthy discussion’ provide the clue here as it is rare that there is any evidence that there is anything more than a consensus between the members of the Museum committees over the years. This consensus may be the result of serious discussion and debate, but this is almost never placed in the minutes of Council Committee meetings, which are generally intended to be bland statements of decisions reached with no detail about the strength of feeling that the discussions and debates gave rise to. Despite the agreement about admissions charges that was eventually reached in 1981, the subject did not simply die a death, although as the director of Museums and Art Galleries (Patrick Boylan, 1972–90) later argued, ‘The prospects for the successful introduction of admissions charges at all the museum branches has certainly not improved, and may even have worsened somewhat because of the general economic climate today’ (De 7971/37, 7/9/1984, Appendix S). The only other topic that has generated as much evident dissensus in the Museums Committee over the years concerns the purchase of art for the Art Gallery collection and the potential for selling some of it in times of economic hardship. While the former displays more of a dislike of ‘modern’ art than anything more positive – as when it was agreed that an Adrian Heath painting be purchased ‘on the understanding that the Keeper of Art submit next some pictures for purchase which are not in the abstract field, as it is considered that sufficient of these have been purchased for the time being’ (DE 3277/172, 3/2/1961) – it is also tied in with the economic conditions that New Walk found itself in, when, for example, ‘concern was expressed at the proposal to purchase further paintings during the period of financial restraint’, largely for reasons of bad publicity, and ‘whether it would be possible to sell one or more of the existing pictures in the collection’ to allow for the purchase of other paintings (DE 7971/33, 8/11/1974). Given that this latter concern arose shortly after the Museum had been taken over by the County Council, which had a very different political complexion than the City had – being governed by an alliance of Conservative and ‘Independent’ councillors in comparison to the Labour-dominated City13 – and which had no history of engagement with museums until the City’s and Rutland’s museums were taken over, it could be reasonably assumed that there was a combination of party ideology and a lack of knowledge of the niceties of the disposal of objects from the museum

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collection at play in this request. The Museum director pointed out the economic and reputational consequences of following this proposal, leading to its rejection by the Committee. The same happened at a much later date when a councillor suggested that New Walk should sell its Francis Bacon painting to cover some of the budgetary difficulties that the Council as a whole was facing in the light of central government cuts in grant-aid to local authorities after the general election of 2010. In both cases, the loss of accreditation of the museum service, with subsequent problems in accessing independent sources of grant-aid – and the loss of items that were effectively irreplaceable – in return for a short-term injection of funds with no guarantee that the long-term problem of economic cuts would be resolved by this action both proved to be potent enough arguments to stave off the suggestion that had been made. Other sources, however, of generating income for the Museum as well as for the museums service as a whole have been considered, with many of these being put into place over the course of the last 170 years. While the hiring out of the Lecture Room at the Museum to a variety of groups and organisations, such as the Leicester Railway Society, was seen by the Committee to be a valid use of the space – in the case of the Railway Society, this depended on the City starting to consider the opening of a separate Museum of Technology in the City having already amassed a collection of equipment associated with railways – other groups, such as the Crusade for World Government and the Conservative Political Centre, were denied access to the use of the City’s Guildhall for their own meetings on the basis that the Committee drew a clear line between community groups with a clear interest in the Museum and its collections and political groups who simply wanted to use City heritage properties to further their own political interests (DE 3277/171, 6/7/1956 and 21/9/1956).14 This view of the Museum as a politically neutral space within the City depends upon making a distinction between ‘small p’ politics (as in ‘museums are political organisations’) and ‘capital P’ politics (as in ‘Parliamentary Politics’ and ‘Political Party Politics’), with the former being seen to be more acceptable than the latter (if they are seen as being political at all), although it is rarely, if ever, explicitly stated in these terms, being largely reliant on ‘common-sense’ ideas of what is ‘political’ and what is not. The charges for hiring space in the Museum were a standard annual decision made by the Museum Committee from early in the Museum’s history, while charging entry fees to attend lectures and demonstrations in the Museum was also common practice. Thus, the Lit and Phil was able to boost their funds through the entrance fees that they levied for attendance at their ‘professional’ lectures after these were introduced in 1870 (see Lott, 1935, 65–6), and the Museum itself was able to either part-fund the cost of mounting, or profit from, the entrance fees required from those attending the Saturday evening lectures and lunchtime music recitals that were a regular feature of the Museum from the 1870s onwards, with the music recitals continuing (although not at lunchtimes) until the present day. The introduction of tea- and coffee-making facilities provided another source of income, with these being added to over the years to include the provision of food, and the establishment of a dedicated restaurant and museum shop in 1989 (DE

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum 95 7971/39, 2/9/1988, Appendix CC) and were the last additions to what are now considered to be the standard visitor provisions in every Museum in the country bar the very smallest. In addition to these money-raising activities, the Museum also made a habit of selling offprints of articles that had been published by members of the Museum’s staff, as well as larger publications arising from work that had been undertaken on behalf of the Museum – as with the publication of the excavation reports of Kenyon (1938a, 1938b) concerning the Jewry Wall site in the City during the 1930s – as well as selling postcard and poster reproductions of works that are a part of the Museum’s collections and books relating to the Museum and its collections. Although attempts have clearly been made over time to increase the income that the Museum raises on its own behalf, there are limits to what these attempts can provide. Given the large amounts that it costs to provide the Museum and its services, such income-generating efforts are always likely to provide only a small contribution to the financing pot rather than being a realistic means of making the Museum a self-sufficient (and financially sustainable) institution in its own right. The consequent dependence that the Museum has on the financing that is provided by the City Council means that the Museum itself is, and will continue to be, answerable to the Council and subject to the demands that the City makes of it, whether these take the form of requiring cuts to be made directly to the Museum budget or to change the opening hours of the Museum to allow for savings to be made in such costs as those for heating and lighting that would otherwise have been used. While the Museum is no longer run on the ‘shoe-string’ that it was in the Victorian period (Simmons, 1974b, 28), and has not been since the early twentieth century, particularly in terms of other local authority museums in the country,15 the continued pressure on expenditure has made life difficult for the staff for maintaining their capacity and ability to continue to provide the full range of services that the people of the City have grown accustomed to and which the Museum has continued to develop over time.

Demands on the Museum The expectations that exist about the services that the Museum currently provides, used to provide, and would like to provide in the future form a direct factor in the financial requirements of the Museum. As these expectations changed over time, so too did the allocation of the Museum’s funds to different parts of its budget. Some of these changes can be directly attributed to the choices that staff members made about what the Museum should be doing for service provision to be effective and to what was seen as being required for the efficient management and exhibition of the Museum’s collections. Given the differing political demands that the Museum has been confronted with over time (see Chapter 6), changing conceptions of what are seen to be the professional standards and methods to which staff should be expected to abide (and these are discussed in Chapter 7), and the differing directions from which these political and professional demands have derived, the internal role of Museum staff in managing the resources that they have is,

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however, only a part of the whole. The development in the 1980s of the National Curriculum for schools to pursue, for example, was a central government policy choice, but it had significant implications and direct effects upon the forms of education provision and learning opportunities that museums provided across the entire country (Gray, 2014, 2016). Equally, the policy choices of local authorities in quite different policy areas have implications for service provision in museums, as has been seen recently with the attention being paid to issues of social care, particularly as it concerns older members of society and those with forms of dementia and other mental health conditions (Baldino, 2012; Gray & McCall, 2020; Newman, 2005, 2013). In sum, the financial expectations that museums confront are only a part of an entire catalogue of expectations that surround them, with these being associated with different groups of actors and very different explanations for why they should be fulfilled. Needless to say, these financial expectations vary considerably between the different types of funding model that museums are aligned with. Local authority museums, such as New Walk, for example, face an entirely different financial environment than do nationally funded museums, such as the British Museum, and each of these vary considerably from museums that are funded through charitable trusts, such as the Getty Museums, or through entrance or membership fees. In practice, the overwhelming majority of museums and galleries rely upon a combination of sources for their income rather than simply one, but this does not change the point that financial dependence, whether to one funding source or many, carries with it demands that can rarely be entirely ignored and, at times, are positively expected to be fulfilled – as with the position of New Walk following it becoming a National Portfolio Organisation of the Arts Council England (see Chapter 6). In some cases, the demands on the museum service from those inside the museum profession, both nationally and internationally, have quite clear financial requirements if they are to be met. It is also the case that New Walk has been one of the earliest adopters of policies and practices that are intended to meet these demands. This can be seen not only in the case of the appointment of the first paid guide-demonstrator in a British Museum in the 1920s (CM 27/9, 6/5/1924, with the actual interviews for, and appointment of, the first of these taking place on 13/5/1924), but also in the fact that the County (as the Museum Authority for New Walk at the time) was the first museum service in the country to formally adopt the Code of Practice for Museum Authorities that had been adopted by the Museums Association in 1977 and which contained expectations about the work that museums would undertake and the public services that they would provide (DE 7971/36, 3/7/1981; 7/5/1982), as well as being an early adopter, not only nationally but also internationally, of the International Council of Museums’16 Code of Professional Ethics (DE 7971/38, 2/1/1987). All these required expenditure to be made if they were to be put into effective practice. In some cases, grant-aid from a variety of pots of money that had been allocated by central governments for specific functional activities were made use of to help meet the additional staffing costs arising from new demands on the Museums Service, as with the County requesting grant-aid under Section 11 of the Local Government Act of 1966 ‘for

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum 97 the appointment of specialist staff to work specifically with ethnic minorities’ – with the County being the first local authority in the country to gain approval for this in 1982 (DE 7971/37, 7/6/1984, Appendix O). The official record, being precisely that, contains details about the formal political and economic demands that have been made on New Walk in the past but is very thin on the sources of other types of demand that the Museum has been subject to. In particular, demands from the general public are rarely to be found, even in the usual mouthpieces of public opinion such as the local press. As previously argued, much of the public comment in these quarters about the Museum has often been highly critical, with personal axes being ground to a fine point in many instances. The more positive reactions to what the Museum may have been doing are less often explicitly stated and can only be surmised on the basis of such things as the number of visitors to the Museum, questionable as these are in many cases in the early years of the Museum’s existence. While the Museum has, over the years, developed links with a large number of organisations and institutions in both the City and the County, these are, again, largely unrepresentative of the views, opinions, and demands of the general public, which is not aligned already with these bodies. The local equivalent of the ‘great and the good’ (Hennessy, 1989, 540–86 referred to them as ‘the auxiliaries’) in public life,17 those individuals who crop up on large numbers of local organisations and who can be relied upon to display a ‘safe pair of hands’ when dealing with issues of public interest and concern, have tended not to be particularly concerned with, or even interested, in New Walk, concentrating, instead, on the changing series of problems and matters of public debate that form the day-to-day political battlefields of local importance. While individual councillors over the years (such as Charles Squire, Monica Trotter, and Nigel Holden) have displayed a keen interest in the Museum and have been active advocates for the importance of it as a local institution in its own right, it would require a return to the much earlier years of the existence of New Walk and the overlapping memberships of the Town and Borough Councils with that of the Lit and Phil to find an unambiguous relationship between the Museum and what used to be referred to as the local ‘establishment’. Indeed, for much of the time, the Museum has been something of an adjunct to what are seen as far more important matters by relevant political actors whether inside or outwith the local authority. This lack of political concern is actually assisted by the fact that in terms of the total expenditure of the local authority, the Museum is a small part of the whole – with the cost of its purchase and opening being only a third, for example, of the cost of establishing what, at the time, was the politically far more important Welford Road Cemetery – and provided that the Museum continues to provide its services to the public, it can safely be left subject to benevolent neglect. This perceived lack of political importance of New Walk as far as the City is concerned is discussed in more detail in Chapter 6, but its significance for the financing of the Museum has its own political logic. The generally accepted position that the Museum is something of a public good (Barrett, 2011), providing benefits to every member of the local community with the use of it by one individual not diminishing the use of it by anybody else, and the benefits obtained from it

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by one individual not detracting from the benefits that any other individual can obtain from it, provides it with a form of immunity from the everyday demands that might be placed upon it if it was seen simply as a cost to the local taxpayers of the City rather than as a source of public benefit. As such, the economic cost of the Museum assumes lesser importance than might otherwise be the case and becomes perceived as something of a necessary evil to be borne rather than as a drain on the public purse. The repeated cuts to the Museum budget that have been made over the years have clearly been inconvenient, but they have never been terminal for it. The fact that the Museum has continued to survive also points to another part of the political logic that underpins it – the symbolic status that it has for the City as a whole. Certainly, it would take an extremely brave local politician to suggest that the Museum be simply shut, even if cuts have been seen to be the necessary cost that it must shoulder as a part of the entirety of the provision that the Council makes for the people of the City. In effect, the juggling of the multiple demands that have been made on the Museum over time demonstrates a number of points that serve to locate it within the entirety of not only the local authority, which is its major funder, but also within its local communities. The latter of these are actually far less significant for the Museum than might, perhaps, be expected to be the case, particularly in the light of the ideas of the proponents of ideas of the activist museum and the new museology (McCall & Gray, 2014). Instead the key issues and arguments about the funding of the Museum are played out within the local authority, the Museum, and the relationship of the former of these with national governments. In practice, the Museum lies at the end of a financing food chain where the key decisions are about which part of the Museum will be relatively favoured and which will be less so rather than about the simple fact of its continuing existence. The various committees to which the Museum has been answerable over time have served more as conduits to pass requests up the chain and demands for stringency down it. As with all local government – and indeed all public – services, there is never enough finance available to fund everything that local politicians and staff members might wish to do, and the rationing of finance between multiple services is a continuous subject of internal argument and debate with no hope of satisfying every demand. In this respect, New Walk is no different to any other part of the local authority, although it does have the advantage of being accepted as a public good, unlike most other services, and as something of symbolic importance and significance for the City – again, unlike most other services that the City provides. The ability of New Walk to provide a wide range of functional services from not only the museum ones of conservation, exhibition, and display, but also those services, such as education and social care that are often normally provided by other parts of the local authority, or by a range of external service-providing organisations, provides a further support for the Museum, with the multi-functional capabilities of the organisation allowing it to garner support and some further financial resources from a range of external actors. What this all means for making sense of the changing Museum will now be discussed in the concluding arguments of this chapter.

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum 99

Conclusions It is much less easy to examine the historical financing of New Walk by the application of the different models of change that were identified in Chapter 1 and applied to the impact of social change on the Museum in Chapter 4, as questions of finance do not follow the same historical patterns as the latter did. Apart from the obvious short-term effects of global and national economic factors upon the budgets of the Town, Borough, County, and City authorities – as with the impact of various economic downturns and shocks to the system that, for example, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the World Wars of 1914–18 and 1939–45 represent – there is little evidence that there have been any long-term economic effects that have proved to be of significance for the Museum. If anything, the economic history of New Walk is one of a largely steady-state set of affairs with the occasional blip thrown in rather than anything else. The changes to the taxation rates and systems that the Museum has been associated with have been almost entirely out of the hands of the Museum itself, forming, instead, part of the much larger calculations that the local authorities concerned have had to make on the back of the even larger calculations that national governments have been making at the same time. As a minor service, as far as these local authorities have been concerned for the Museum, and the museum and heritage services that they provide, it has always been the case that there has never been sufficient interest in these services to see them as particularly important enough to warrant special treatment by the providers of funds at any level of government. The integration of the Museum into the larger patterns of financing that the local authorities concerned have always been associated with means that it is difficult to differentiate the one from the other. At best, New Walk could be taken to be a specific example of how changes in the funding and taxation systems of local government as a whole affect a particular local service, but this would not allow any meaningful generalisations to be drawn as this specificity is not even applicable to all local authority museum services particularly given how individual New Walk actually is, let alone how individual museum services are in the entirety of local government service provision. This means that applying the different general models of change from Chapter 1 to the financing of the Museum is not particularly easy, to put it mildly. In the case of punctuated equilibrium arguments, for example, the punctuations that have taken place have been at the systemic level, rather than at the individual local authority or museum level, and these have had minimal direct effect on New Walk, whatever effects they have had on local government as a whole, as the sorry fiasco of the community charge or ‘poll tax’ (Butler et al., 1994) demonstrated. Even when there have been direct implications for the Museum from changes in financing systems – as with the changing rate poundage that local authorities could levy for the financing of museums, art galleries, and libraries over the course of time – the real decisions about these systems were not being made by Museum staff. At best, Museum staff could make proposals, suggestions, recommendations, and give advice about what could, should, and ought to be paid for from the

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funds made available, but ultimately these ideas needed to be accepted and put into practice by local politicians, and for most of these, the Museum was, at best, peripheral to other concerns. While this might suggest that the multiple streams and advocacy coalitions arguments could be of more relevance to explaining the financing decisions that affected the Museum over time and certainly the role of individual councillors in supporting and arguing the case for the Museum has been significant, particularly when they were able to develop a long-standing position on the Museums Committees: Charles Squire, for example, sat on the Committee for 30 years until his death in 1945, while Charles Keene, an important figure in local Labour Party politics, sat on it for over 40 years. However, while such individuals were important for the Museum itself, with Squire being recognised as ‘an enthusiastic supporter of the cultural value of museums and had helped to establish Leicester’s place as a leading provincial museum’ (Pearson, 2017, 217), this does not mean that they were significant voices in terms of the overall financing of the local Council or the Museum. Indeed, as it was argued, in Chapter 5, the best that could be hoped for was some reduction in the cuts demanded of the Museum rather than anything else. Given that the original proposal for the establishment of ‘a Permanent Gallery of Art’ was made in 1880 (CM 27/4, 27/8/1880) and was followed not long after by calls to build a new Art Gallery in a separate location to New Walk (CM 27/3, 17/4/1894), with the request repeated in 1935 (CM 27/12, 25/11/1935) and 1945 (CM 27/13, 31/5/1945) and sporadically ever since and with no sign that such a new construction is likely to take place in the immediate future, it does raise questions about the ability of the Museum Committee to do much more than make do and mend with New Walk (as happened during the 1950s and 1960s, for example: see Table 2.2) rather than persuading the rest of the Council to do something more innovative in museum building terms. The lack of persuasive clout that the Museum Committees have carried over the years is, if anything, a reflection of the low political status that the Museum has, however high its symbolic status might be to the City. In either case, however, there is no evidence to suggest that the streams or coalitions arguments explain much, if anything, about the financing of the Museum over time. Lastly, the path dependence argument equally falls short of explaining anything much at all. The continued development of new museum services with consequential financial costs and long-term economic implications has demonstrated that, if anything, the financing of the Museum is dependent upon a range of explicit external and internal factors rather than anything more systemically constricting. While this has ended up with, as stated before, a largely steady-state set of financial affairs with the occasional blip thrown in, this is not as a consequence of the Museum being driven down a continuing series of ruts with no hope of cutting across them. It is more a consequence of the gradual nature of change in financial terms that the Museum is built into. While the Museum itself has financial decisions applied to it, rather than being the lead actor in these, this does not mean that it is trapped within boundaries over which it has no choice, as the allotment of its budgetary allocation demonstrates. The ability to make meaningful choices over

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum 101 how the Museum will function is affected by the wider financial setting that it is located in, but the Museum today is an entirely different creature to what it was in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the cause of those changes is not specifically rooted in the financing of the Museum but in actors, actions, and choices over which it has only a small role to play. Attempting to make sense of the Museum without looking at the financial and economic environment within which it is located is fairly meaningless as the ability of the Museum to hire staff, purchase objects for the collection, maintain and display these objects, and manage the experience of visitors and staff alike are all dependent on the financial resources that the Museum has available to it. The decisions that are made by Museum staff are not cost-free, and in the case of New Walk and every other museum and museum service in the world, these costs are tied in with a whole realm of demands, expectations, ideologies, and beliefs about what museums can, should, and ought to do. The fact that New Walk has little direct control over what other people think about the Museum makes it vulnerable to the wishes and inclinations of actors who have their own concerns to deal with. This examination of the general financial context within which the Museum has been functioning for the last 170 years effectively reinforces the view developed in Chapter 4 that New Walk is more a reactive than an active participant in the major decisions that eventually filter down to it. What is equally as evident is that the Museum has been inventive and innovative within the boundaries that its financial environment provides and is not simply reactive when it comes down to the day-to-day management and control of its own resources.

Notes  1 All expenditure figures provided in this chapter are given as both out-turn figures (what was actually spent in any given year or on any given activity) and as they translate into 2014 prices. As a comparison, in 2013/14, Leicester City Council had a gross budget of (in 2014 prices) £978,581,000, and a net budget (after all government grants and other sources of income are taken into account) of £297,515,000 (Municipal Year Book (2016). The total cost of buying and fitting-out New Walk in 1848 was equivalent to £4,775,274 in 2014 prices, even though it would cost considerably more than this to replace the building or construct an entirely new one today.  2 The national museums in the United Kingdom are funded by grants from central government, which also controls who are appointed to their management boards. It has always been the case that the nationals are more generously funded than either local authority, charitable, or voluntary museums.  3 The rather arcane financing system of ‘the rates’ was a mechanism designed to ensure that local people paid for local services through a property tax. Each property in the local authority area was assigned a rateable value in pounds (which was a proxy for how much the property could be rented for for one year), and the local authority fixed the rate per pound that would be charged (a simple but clear guide to this system can be found in Byrne, 1986, 206–12). The rates were abolished (except as a means of paying for water services) in 1989 in Scotland and 1990 in England and Wales in favour of the Community Charge (or ‘Poll Tax’), which was an unmitigated disaster and was replaced in turn by the Council Tax, the current local taxation system, which combines elements of property and personal taxation within it, in 1993 (see Butler et al., 1994).

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 4 In the period from 1850 to 1875, the Lit and Phil spent over £1,400 on the Museum (Lott, 1935, 48) (approximately £24,360, or around £940 a year in 2014 prices) with the amount declining towards the end of that period, leaving the Council as the Museum’s major funder by some distance at that end date.  5 This signifies an expenditure of 63 pounds, two shillings, and no pence and is the standard notation for the pre-decimal currency system in use at the time.  6 Normally these would be considered to be a part of capital expenditure given that they were expected to have a lifespan of more than five years, but the accounts included this as a part of revenue expenditure.  7 These figures refer only to those individually identified in the annual reports that were made to the Town, Borough, and City Council over the years. In practice, there were also a number of cleaning staff (ranging from one to five over the years) who can be identified at different times, normally in connection with them leaving their employment at the Museum, sometimes after many years of conscientious service, and sometimes for reasons of drunkenness or idleness.  8 The bracketed comment shines a rather dim light on the idea that Leicester was an extremely radical local area, even though financially it made sense for the Town given the existing financial commitments that the Museum was imposing in financial terms.  9 This means a two-and-a-half-penny rate, something that those readers who were bought up under the pre-decimal coinage system would have already known. 10 The Museum Committee, under its various guises, has always possessed some discretionary control over aspects of Museum finance, including the purchasing of items for the collection (up to a limit). It has never, however, had full executive powers over the level of rate or Council tax that it could levy, or over ‘major’ items of expenditure (however defined, but which would require full Council agreement before they could be approved, as with the building of the various physical extensions to the Museum over the years), or over questions of staffing, which would lead to the Council having to fund extra or new posts. Indeed, it was not until 1968, following the publication of the Maud Report (1967) on management in local government, that the City’s Finance Committee agreed to provide greater measures of delegation to officers, including museum staff, on financial issues. 11 It took until 1906 for electric lighting to finally be installed, with the tenders for the work being submitted to the chair of the Committee in December 1905 (CM 27/6, 21/12/1905). 12 In the latter case, the government decided to ignore, as reported to the Museums Committee in 1985 in the report following the Museums Association Annual Conference of that year, ‘the traditional principle supported by Mr. Wilding that “free admission is a sign of a civilised society”’ (DE 7971/37, 6/9/1985, Appendix II). Mr. Wilding was, at the time, the principal secretary in the Office of Arts and Libraries, the senior civil servant overseeing the funding and management systems for the arts (including museums) and libraries in the United Kingdom – see Gray (2000, 145). 13 Labour had 37 seats on the City Council, as against 11 Conservative seats after the 1973 elections. On the County, the Conservatives had 41 seats and were supported by 8 ‘Independent’ councillors – a number of whom ended up running for the Conservative Party at later elections – as against 37 Labour and 7 Liberal councillors, a small but very workable Conservative/Independent majority: see Rallings & Thrasher (2015a, 2015c). 14 Although how this position squared with the decision to allow the ‘Leicester Parliamentary Debating Society’ to use the Guildhall later that year (DE 3277/171, 19/10/1956) can only be answered by assuming that the Debating Society did not have any particular political position that it wished to promote, even though it was quite clearly a political organisation. 15 Miers (1928, 84–209) identified only eight local authorities that spent more on a single museum than Leicester did, while Rosse (1963, 82–230) identified only one (Coventry’s Herbert Museum which had only just been opened when the statistical information

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum 103 in the Rosse Report was published). It is possible, if not probable, that Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool as much larger local authorities spent more on individual museums at the time of the publication of the Miers Report (1928), but the data is not clear on this. 16 ICOM is ‘the leading pressure group operating on behalf of museums around the world’ (Gray, 2015a, 5). The Code of Professional Ethics was largely the work of Patrick Boylan (Director of Museums and Galleries for the City and the County from 1972 until 1990). 17 Often labelled in the case of local government from the 1980s onwards as ‘the new magistracy’ – see Skelcher & Davis (1996).

References Archive Material CM 1/5 Borough of Leicester Common-Hall Book 9th November 1847 to 20th day of March 1850. CM 1/6 Borough of Leicester Common Hall Book 2nd May 1850 to 25th March 1852. CM 1/8 Borough of Leicester Common Hall Book 22nd June 1854 to 23rd September 1856. CM 27/2 Museum Committee Minutes 11th March 1879 to 14th December 1886. CM 27/3 Museum Committee Minutes 11th January 1887 to 19th February 1895. CM 27/4 Art Gallery Committee Minutes 21st April 1880 to 11th May 1903. CM 27/5 Museum and Art Gallery Committee Minutes 18th March 1895 to 18th July 1904. CM 27/6 Museum and Art Gallery Committee Minutes 18th August 1904 to 20th December 1910. CM 27/7 Museum and Art Gallery Committee Minutes 17th January 1911 to 7th October 1919. CM 27/8 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 14th October 1919 to 26th March 1924. CM 27/9 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 1st January 1924 to 5th April 1927. CM 27/11 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 10th November 1931 to 25th October 1935. CM 27/12 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 12th November 1935 to 2nd May 1939. CM 27/13 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 16th May 1939 to 14th October 1946. DE 3277/171 Museums and Libraries Committee Minutes 28th May 1954 to 17th July 1959. DE 3277/172 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 18th September 1959 to 20th July 1962. DE 3277/173 Museums, Libraries and Publicity Committee Minutes 21st September 1962 to 21st April 1967. DE 3277/174 Museums and Libraries Committee Minutes June 1967 to February 1974. DE 7971/33 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes June 1973 to May 1975 DE 7971/34 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes July 1975 to July 1978. DE 7971/37 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes 3rd January 1984 to 28th February 1986.

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DE 7971/38 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes April 1986 to February 1988. DE 7971/39 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes June 1988 to April 1989. DE 7971/40 Leicestershire County Council Arts, Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes June 1989 to January 1991.

Other Sources Baldino, S (2012), ‘Museums and Autism: Creating an Inclusive Community for Learning’, 169–80 in R. Sandell & E. Nightingale (Eds), Museums, Equality and Social Justice (Abingdon, Routledge). Barrett, J (2011), Museums and the Public Sphere (Chichester, Wiley/Blackwell). Butler, D, A Adonis & T Travers (1994), Failure in British Government: The Politics of the Poll Tax (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Byrne, T (1986), Local Government in Britain: Everyone’s Guide to How it All Works (4th Ed, Harmondsworth, Penguin). Elliott, M (1979), Victorian Leicester (London, Phillimore). Gray, C (2000), The Politics of the Arts in Britain (Basingstoke, Macmillan). Gray, C (2014), ‘“Cabined, Cribbed, Confined, Bound In” or “We are not a Government Poodle”: Structure and Agency in Museums and Galleries’, Public Policy and Administration, 29, 185–203(DoI: 10.1177/0952076713506450). Gray, C (2016), ‘Structure, Agency and Museum Policies’, Museum and Society, 14/1, 116–30 (DoI: 10.29311/mas.v14i1.629). Gray, C & V McCall (2020), The Role of Today’s Museum (Abingdon, Routledge). Hennessy, P (1989), Whitehall (London, Secker & Warburg). Kenyon, K (1938a), The Jewry Wall Site in Leicester: Excavations During 1936 (City of Leicester Museum and Libraries Committee, Leicester, W. Thornley). Kenyon, K (1938b), Excavations at the Jewry Wall Site Leicester 1937 (City of Leicester Museum and Libraries Committee, Leicester, W. Thornley). Leicester Borough Museum and Art Gallery (1912), Nineteenth Report to the Town Council (Leicester, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery). Leicester Town Museum (1873), First Report of the Museum Committee to the Town Council to March 31, 1873 (Leicester, Leicester Town Museum). Leicester Town Museum (1879), Seventh Report to the Town Council to March 31 1879 (Leicester, Leicester Town Museum). Lott, F (1935), The Centenary Book of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society (Leicester, W. Thornley). Maud Report (1967), Report of the Committee on the Management of Local Government (London, HMSO). McCall, V & C Gray (2014), ‘Museums Policies and the New Museology: Theory, Practice and Organisational Change’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 29, 19–35 (DoI: 10.1080/09647775.2013.869852). Miers, H (1928), A Report on the Public Museums of the British Isles (Other than the National Museums) (Edinburgh, T & A Constable). Municipal Year Book (2016) (London, Hemming Information Services). Newman, A (2005), ‘Understanding the Social Impact of Museums, Galleries and Heritage Through the Concept of Capital’, 228–37 in G. Corsane (Ed), Heritage, Museums and Galleries: An Introductory Reader (Abingdon, Routledge).

Paying the Piper: Finance, Economics, and the Museum 105 Newman, A (2013), ‘Imagining the Social Impact of Museums and Galleries: Interrogating Cultural Policy through an Empirical Study’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 19, 120–37 (DoI: 10.1080/10286632.2011.625419). Pearson, C (2017), Museums in the Second World War: Curators, Culture and Change (Abingdon, Routledge). Rallings, C & M Thrasher (2015a), Leicester City Council Election Results 1973–1995 (At: electionscentre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Leicester-1973–1995.pdf). Rallings, C & M Thrasher (2015c), Leicestershire County Council Election Results 1973– 2009 (At: electionscentre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Leicestershire-County. pdf). Rex, B (2020a), ‘Which Museums to Fund? Examining Local Government Decision-Making in Austerity’, Local Government Studies, 46, 186–205 (DoI: 10.1080/03003930.2019. 1619554). Rex, B (2020b), ‘Roses for Everyone? Art Council England’s 2020–2030 Strategy and Local Authority Museums: a Thematic Analysis and Literature Review’, Cultural Trends, 29, 129–44 (DoI: 10.1080/09548963.2020.1761247). Rex, B (2020c), ‘Public Museums in a Time of Crisis: The Case of Museum Asset Transfer’, Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage, 7, 77–92 (DoI: 10.1080/20518196.2019. 1688265). Rosse Report (1963), Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries, Survey of Provincial Museums and Galleries (London, HMSO). Simmons, J (1974b), Leicester Past and Present: Volume Two Modern City 1860–1974 (London, Eyre Methuen). Skelcher, C & H Davis (1996), ‘Understanding the New Magistracy: A Study of Characteristics and Attitudes’, Local Government Studies, 22(2), 8–21 (DoI: 10.1080/03003939608433817). Storey, J (1895), Historical Sketch of Some of the Principal Works and Undertakings of the Council of the Borough of Leicester Since the Passing of the Municipal Corporations Reform Act (Leicester, W. H. Lead). Wilson, D (2002), The British Museum: A History (London, British Museum).

6

And Calling the Tune Local Politics, National Politics, and the Local Museum

Introduction The discussion in Chapter 5 of the economic climate within which New Walk has operated since its establishment feeds directly into the concerns of this chapter, which deals with the changing political environment of Leicester City. Changes in party politics in the City, as well as political changes at the national level, have had both direct and indirect effects on how the Museum is made use of, the publics that it is expected to serve, and the functions that it is expected to play a part in providing, and supporting, ideas of local identity as well as many other local concerns. Alongside the role of other local and national organisations in providing ideological and legitimating support for what the Museum is and how it is meant to operate, local politics has also provided a central forum within which the Museum is directly addressed. Relating these discussions and debates to the actual practices that are undertaken within the Museum will be used to emphasise the fact that museums have never been simply neutral public spaces but have always had a directly political component to them (see Gray, 2015) that extends beyond the simply party political to wider questions of societal and economic power, as well as issues of museum legitimacy, ideology, and the rationalities that are associated with them. In addition to this, the ways in which the Museum has been addressed by politicians of all political colourings has an important dynamic to it that says as much about the changing politics of British society as a whole as it does about the Museum itself. The symbolic status that New Walk has acquired since its establishment as one of the earliest local authority museums in the country has seen it being held up as something that is praiseworthy not only locally but nationally as well – as the comments about it in the Miers (1928), Markham (1938), and Rosse (1963) reports made clear – not only for its service-providing role and its innovative approaches to the delivery of museum services, but also for its representational role for all local authority museums in the country. The assumption that might be drawn from this that what happened, and happens, to New Walk is regarded as important by national and local politicians is, however, not entirely true. The discussion in Chapter 5 about the financing of the Museum makes it clear that for many local politicians, the Museum is largely a peripheral concern except insofar DOI: 10.4324/9780429292491-6

Local Politics, National Politics, and the Local Museum 107 as it can be used for symbolic and representational purposes, and even then, it is hardly central to most local political debate. The position at the national level is even worse with museums being seen as something of a fluffy nicety that can be utilised for purposes of cultural diplomacy (Nisbett, 2013a, 2013b) but which are generally seen to be otherwise largely irrelevant to the more pressing concerns that national governments must deal with, from taxation and inflation to defence and foreign affairs, with museums forming a part of what Bulpitt (1983) referred to as ‘low politics’ as far as national governments are concerned, being seen as relatively unimportant even though necessary areas of public policy, with this meaning that they receive, at best, cursory attention. Given that this is true of the ‘national’ museums that are directly grant-funded by central government, it is even more so for local authority museums, which receive minimal, if any, direct financial support from the centre. This may be taken to mean that politics is largely irrelevant to New Walk, but this is not the case. There is a clear distinction to be drawn between the everyday party politics around which the British political system rotates, and broader conceptions of politics that are concerned with questions of power, ideology, legitimacy, and rationality (Gray, 2015, 8–26). While the party politics of Council chambers and the Houses of Parliament have been played out in a distinctly minor key as far as New Walk is concerned – as the preceding paragraph indicates – the other dimension of politics has underpinned almost everything that has happened in the Museum since 1846, when it was first mooted that a town museum be founded by the Leicester Borough Council (CM 1/4, 16/9/1846). That decision was based on the party politics then in operation in the Town, but it was also tied in to the distribution of power within the Town, the ‘radical’ ideas that were accepted by the holders of power, the fact that legislation existed that could be taken to provide legitimacy for the establishment of the museum, and a social rationality that supported the idea of providing beneficial services to the inhabitants of the town. As will be seen in this chapter, the same political dynamics have continued in place ever since 1846 and have served to make New Walk an entirely political institution even though many people have supported the notion that museums are, and should be, politically neutral sites (with Cuno, 2004, 2011 being simply one of the most prominent of these). This chapter will therefore deal with each of these dimensions of museum politics in turn to illustrate how the politics of New Walk have served to underpin the ways in which change has taken place in the Museum and the directions that these changes have taken.

Museum Change and Party Politics The establishment of New Walk as the town’s museum took place at a period of party political conflict at the national level – something that, thankfully, has yet to cease – but one of political quietude at the local level. The replacement of the deeply corrupt – financially, nepotistically, and electorally – Borough Corporation (see Elliott, 1979, 34–41) by a reformed Town Council in 1835 saw the wholesale replacement of the Tory councillors, who had directly benefitted from this

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corruption,1 by Liberal councillors (Simmons, 1974a, 149), and ‘in no other town was the transfer of power so total and long-lasting’ (Elliott, 1979, 37), with, as discussed in Chapter 2, this lasting until the rise of the Labour Party at the start of the twentieth century. The new Town Council was seriously affected by the level of debt that had been developed by the corrupt Borough Corporation – a great deal of which had been associated with ‘its heavy outlay in bribery’ at the 1826 general election to ensure the election of two Tory MPs – and it took ‘until some ten years after 1836 that large measures of town improvement were taken in hand’ (McKinley & Smith, 1958, 254). The establishment of the Museum was therefore amongst the earliest of these improvement measures helped by the close ties between the members of the Liberal Party, the Lit and Phil, and the dissenting religious faction within the Town. The lack of argument about the creation of the Museum can be contrasted with the serious disagreements that there were about the creation of the Welford Road Cemetery at the same time (Elliott, 1979, 46), with the debates about the latter being based on religious affiliation rather than simple party politics. The fact that there was no effective dissension about the establishment of the Museum can be partly explained by the alliance noted previously of party, religious dissent, and the middle-class Lit and Phil, but it can also be partly laid at the door of the idea that this creation could be used to show the radical and innovative stance that the Town Council was aligned with at that time. The fact that this municipal radicalism slowly changed as the result of divisions within the Liberal Party membership between ‘improvers’ and ‘economists’ (Elliott, 1979, 41–4), with the latter gaining the upper hand by the late 1860s, should not be taken to mean that reform in the Town ceased, only that the speed and direction of it changed. Instead of the Council favouring direct Town Council engagement with the provision of services, it moved to the traditional Liberal position of developing the conditions within which private enterprise could take the lead in service provision, with this changing back in favour of the ‘improvers’ in the face of the growth of the more radical and interventionist Labour Party in the later nineteenth century (the disagreements within the Liberal position over the role of the state both during and after this period are covered in detail in Greenleaf, 1983, 19–185). Regardless of this general process of change within the local politics of the Liberal Party, both nationally and in Leicester itself, the position of the party towards the Museum continued to be much the same – a form of benevolent paternalism coupled with a genteel neglect – that was not particularly disturbed by the declining role of the Lit and Phil in the affairs of the Museum or the declining significance of religious disagreements for political debate in the Town. This state of affairs in terms of New Walk could be seen to be the characteristic one, as far as party politics in Leicester is concerned at any rate, that has stayed in place since the establishment of the Museum in the 1840s. The fact that the Town and City Councils have developed a number of completely new museums during the twentieth century2 does not change this, and neither did the County Council interregnum during the 1970s to 1990s, even though the former of these demonstrates that there was a real commitment to the museum services, as a whole, that

Local Politics, National Politics, and the Local Museum 109 the City had. In effect, New Walk has simply not been a political football for the City’s political parties, with all of them more or less agreeing to let the Museum run itself through its professional staff, with the Council providing financial and moral support (and what is commonly seen as not too much of the former) and a degree of managerial oversight and control. Indeed, the biggest effect that the Council has had over much of the last 100 years has been in the shape of passing down a series of decisions about managerial practices and requirements and dictates from central government on much the same issues. Thus, the passing on of expenditure cuts following the financial decisions of central governments (see, in particular the discussion in Chapter 5) does not necessarily reflect the wishes of the local authority, only the lack of financial leeway that it has had available to it. Likewise, the occasional demands for admission fees to be introduced have usually followed the decisions, choices, and demands of central government – with these usually not being directly related to the museums sector – rather than being driven from below by the relevant Councils or Committees, or by the Museum itself, even if individual members of each might be in favour of such charges. If the preference were for a quiet life, then New Walk has been singularly blessed over the years with the Museum rarely forming anything of a point of debate either within the Council or amongst the public at large.3 In this it has been helped by the generalised, if extremely amorphous, support that the Museum appears to have within the City, and the fact that it has rarely done anything to stir up the sorts of large-scale controversy that have appeared in recent years at the Tate Galleries, for example, over their acceptance of sponsorship from petrol and energy companies. This quiescence could also be taken as a marker of the ability of the Museum to provide the services, exhibitions, and displays that meet what the public and the Council are actually happy with, in which case a lack of political upheaval is simply a reflection of the capacity of the Museum to do its job well. At this level, party politics is more an irrelevance to New Walk than it is anything else, as even on those rare occasions when party political control of the City and the County changed over the last 120 years, the incoming party in power did not have the Museum as a focus of attention at all, having other priorities to occupy them instead. Much the same has been true at the national level as well, with museums never forming a major item of discussion and debate at general elections, where the ‘high’ politics (Bulpitt, 1983) of every other state-provided service – such as, in recent years, health, education, and social care, as well as the perpetual concern with the state of the economy – has always been considered to be more important and more worthy of national political parties’ attention than have local (or even national) museums.4 At best, museums may be mentioned in terms of some generic service descriptor, such as ‘culture’ or ‘cultural services’, but even then this forms a very small part of the overall policy world of central government (as demonstrated in Gray & Wingfield, 2010), with museums forming a miniscule subset of the services that are covered by these labels. This lack of active interest in museums is largely driven by the fact that apart from the ‘nationals’, central government has no effective power over the country’s museum sector as a whole and working

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at best through the long-established ‘arm’s length’ principle (see Gray, 2000 on this) by making use of a variety of organisations as mechanisms for distributing grant money, providing encouragement and advice, and generally overseeing parts of the sector effectively independently of the government of the day. The reluctance of central government to become actively engaged with museums in general and local museums in particular has never stopped it from undertaking reviews of the sector. Starting with the Royal Commission on National Museums and Galleries (1929, 1930) and followed by Rosse (1963), it has become increasingly clear that either central government has no idea about what its relationship with the sector actually is or simply cannot decide what it wants the sector to do. Further reports in 1973 (Department of Education and Science, 1973: more generally known as the Wright Report) and 1979 (Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries, 1979: more generally known as the Drew Report)5 attempted to regularise the relationship of government with local and provincial museums but were largely failures as a consequence of a lack of clarity as to the purpose of the proposed reforms and an utter failure to adequately fund them. Similar (if not exactly identical) failings underpinned the later reports that were produced with a rather depressing regularity during the 2000s, starting with the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (2000, 2001) attempts to ‘attach’ (Gray, 2002), if not to positively instrumentalise (Gray, 2008), museums to a large range of other policy concerns but without providing them with the statutory or financial means to allow them to do this effectively and followed by attempts to establish priorities for the entire museums sector in England (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2005, 2006) but without the means to actually enforce these priorities on resistant museums given the lack of legal and financial muscle that was available to the centre. Using the Arts Council England (ACE) as the core ‘arm’s length’ body to persuade the museums sector into a more compliant mood did provide developments that attempted to re-shape the overall museums landscape in England, starting with the establishment of the Renaissance programme (Arts Council England, 2001) that was intended to provide a form of regional governance for the sector via the identification of central hubs of excellence, although the lack of adequate funding that was attached to this programme became the primary reason for its lack of effect. Later, Arts Council England reports (such as Arts Council England, 2013) demonstrated that the Arts Council was starting to move to a position where the museums sector, and individual museums, were to be treated as simply another potential bidder for the limited funds that were available. The changes in the funding arrangements that the Arts Council has developed means that unless a museum has been designated as either a National Portfolio Museum (a status that Leicester Museums Service gained in 2018–19) or a Major Partner Museum (a status that neither New Walk nor Leicester Museums Service has gained), the chances of acquiring Arts Council funding has become vanishingly small. The very latest national government report on the museums sector (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2017) (more generally referred to as the Mendonza Review) clearly followed the official line of the Department for Culture, Media,

Local Politics, National Politics, and the Local Museum 111 and Sport6 and steadfastly refused to develop any conclusions that might serve to change the position of the sector as a whole, particularly with regard to its financing, where ‘arm’s length’ funding sources remain the preference alongside local authorities. Given that central government funding is identified as having shrunk in real terms between 2007–8 and 2016–17 and local government funding as having shrunk over the same period by almost a quarter (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2017, 9; 23), the question of how the recommendations of the report are to be fulfilled becomes something of a moot point, particularly as there is no indication that any increase in central funding, except for the National Museums, will be given. The report also identified that in the East Midlands region (where New Walk resides), 91% of non-central government funding on museums comes directly from local authorities, and that of the £89 million of Arts Council planned expenditure on museums between 2015 and 2018, only 43% was intended for local authority museums – a grand total of £12.16 million a year to be spread between the 363 local authority museums in England (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2017, 20, 24, 26) (or slightly over £33,000 per museum per year). The role that the Mendonza Review sees for local authority museums is almost entirely a continuation of the ‘attachment’ strategy of the Labour government of 1997–2001, although with different policies for museums to attach themselves to. In the Mendonza version, the key role for museums should7 be to ‘contribute to local authorities’ (LAs) priorities’ (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2017, 17), with the expectation that these will include placemaking, community integration, educational attainment, economic regeneration, and improving health outcomes. The focus of these is quite clearly not identical with the functional roles that directly relate to museums as institutions and, instead, are more aligned to the role of museums as organisations (Gray & McCall, 2020): in other words, the focus is not on what museums are but on what they do. Given that central government cannot directly tell local authorities what their priorities should be, however clear and well-meaning these priorities might be, there is always the chance – if not the racing certainty – that not all local authorities will share the specific priorities that the Mendonza Review mentions or give them the same importance that the review does. Given the limited evidence base to demonstrate that museums actually have beneficial effects on the priorities that are mentioned (Gray & McCall, 2020), and the lack of knowledge that there is about the causal relationships that would need to exist to unambiguously show that it is museums that shape the anticipated positive policy outcomes that it is assumed are present (Gray, 2009), much of the review’s argument clearly rests on extremely shallow foundations. Overall, then, the role of central government as far as New Walk is concerned is distinctly peripheral, being largely concerned with vague acknowledgements of the roles that museums could potentially play in their local areas, exhortations to do their job better, and expectations that can either only be fulfilled with the support of other organisations (such as through the funding that the local authority provides) or through the efforts of the staff who work within it. None of the demands that national governments have made of the museums services that exist across the United Kingdom have drastically changed the landscapes of policy and practice

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that already existed within the sector and which had been in existence for many years before these demands were being made. At best, national governments are at least one step (if not several route marches) behind the museums sector, and the lack of legislative interest that the centre shows about local museums means that this position is unlikely to change in either the immediate or remote future. The distinct lack of interest that national governments have shown in the museums sector does not, however, mean that they are unaware of the reputational and political benefits that the sector can provide. The willingness of both national and local politicians to be associated with what is taking place within the museums under their purview should not be undervalued as a potential resource that museums can make use of. The treatment of the sector by national governments as being a matter of ‘low politics’ (Bulpitt, 1983) means that attention to it is largely restricted to treating it as an adjunct to other political concerns that politicians have, either collectively or individually. In this regard, politicians are perfectly willing to associate themselves with museum activities that either immediately reflect well on them in the short-term, or which they can claim a positive responsibility for in the long-term. As Margaret Thatcher put it (Thatcher, 1993, 632): ‘It mattered to me that culturally as well as economically Britain should be able to hold its head up in comparison with the United States and Europe’, with the benefits from culture being visible not only in terms of tourism but also as being representative of the countries’ ‘qualities’. As such, encouraging institutions such as museums was important, and she was very willing to accept responsibility for cultural successes – even if Thatcher’s preferred means of encouragement involved minimal direct state expenditure on the sector,8 and that her own view of museums was that ‘they were stuffy and above all uncommercial, and represented everything she was trying to lead the country to reject’ (Campbell, 2004, 413). Such a negative view of museums is not common amongst senior politicians at the national level, where there is generally little said about museums except where individual politicians have a direct interest in them, with even cabinet ministers rarely saying much about them unless it is to bask in the reflected glory that is assumed to come to them from the opening of a new exhibition at one of the Nationals. In this respect, there is little real difference in terms of party politics at the national level, although there are generally some distinctions that can be drawn in policy terms. The general view is that parties of the right tend to be less supportive of public organisations than are parties of the left, with this extending to the museums sector as well. Certainly the introduction of admissions charges to public museums (130–32) has always been driven by the Conservative Party, and the abolition of them for the national museums has always been driven by the Labour Party, but apart from this obvious example, the general tendency has been that, at the national level, neither party has been particularly engaged with the museums sector, with this meaning that change in museums through policy activity at the national level that is driven by party ideology is something of a redundant idea. At the local level, however, there is some evidence that politicians, both individually and collectively, do have some effect on their museums. In the case of New Walk, some of this effect is similar, if not identical, to that at the national

Local Politics, National Politics, and the Local Museum 113 level, with some local politicians being glad to accept the positive publicity that comes with what the Museum has done: one senior museums officer in the past even referred to her job as involving ‘“gentle flirting with older men” as a means to ensure that the museum service was appreciated by local elected politicians’ (Gray & McCall, 2018, 132) in the context of ensuring that these politicians were able to attend exhibition openings where they could gain public recognition in local media outlets. Such banal, if not actually venal, interest in their local museums is widespread in local government, and as noted before, active engagement with these museums normally rests with a small number of highly engaged individuals who develop close working relationships with senior staff inside the museums concerned. Given the single-party dominance that has been traditional in the case of the local authorities of Leicester from 1846 to 1909, from 1945 to 1974, and from 1996 onwards, the chance of serious party political disagreement about New Walk has been limited, particularly in the case of the earliest period, where the overlapping membership of local authority councillors and the Lit and Phil and their joint presence on the Museum Committee more or less ensured the existence of a single view of the Museum, its functions, and its purposes that was entirely untroubled by party political considerations. The fact that the Museum has never been a subject of intense party political rivalry – or even interest – has helped to maintain the relatively conflict-free zone that it has inhabited since the nineteenth century as there has been nothing about either the Museum or the Party composition of the Council that could serve as the basis for the creation of party friction. This is not to say that there have not been serious disagreements about the Museum over the course of time, largely concerning financial matters but also concerning the visitors to the Museum, but in terms of what the Museum does and how it does it there really has been a general tendency to leave things to the staff of the Museum rather than to provide active guidance and direction to them. Thus, dealing with the interests of visitors with various physical difficulties, ranging from mobility to blindness, has been encouraged by individual councillors from the 1930s onwards, but the solution to the concerns that are involved has been left entirely to Museum staff to resolve. Thus, in the case of New Walk, party politics has been of little, if any, importance for explaining or accounting for changes in how the Museum has functioned over the course of the last 170 years. This position is probably not matched by the experience of Museums in other parts of the country where local party rivalry is more entrenched and where questions about the role, functions, and purposes of the local museums concerned have the potential to spark greater party conflict. The fact that the parties that have been represented on the various local authorities that have had legal responsibility for New Walk have generally either been in harmony about the Museum, or have largely neglected or ignored it, or have been mutedly in favour of it, has clearly contributed to this state of affairs, and again, this is not necessarily the case elsewhere. This does not, however, mean that politics is absent from the Museum, only that the form that politics takes as it affects the Museum differs from the party political.

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The Other Politics of Museum Change Unless change is simply seen as an inevitable process that requires no positive interventions to allow it to occur and there is nothing to prevent it happening, then there needs to be some mechanism or set of mechanisms to exist to allow it to take place. In the case of politics, some combination of power, ideology, legitimacy, and rationality is required to establish the conditions for change to take place and to provide the motivation for, and direction of, the changes that then follow. In this view of change, there is nothing inevitable or automatic about it, and it is the choices and actions of an individual or groups of individuals that lead to it, either directly or indirectly in the form of the intended or unintended consequences of these choices and actions. In this respect, museum change requires actors, but it does not necessarily require them to have a specific programme of action to be pursued for it to occur. Often – indeed usually – the process of change does rely upon the conscious intentions of actors, but on occasion, external matters can be the basis upon which change is built. As seen with the examples of social and economic factors in Chapters 4 and 5, the museums sector has often been reactive to changes that have been taking place outside of the doors of the Museum, rather than having museums lead the processes of social and economic change themselves, and the discussion of party politics has implicitly reinforced this view, even if this type of politics has only had a limited effect on individual museums and the museum sector as a whole. The extent to which change arising from other political factors and types of politics operates in the same fashion and having the same limited effect forms the focus for the discussion in the rest of this chapter. In terms of power and power relationships, previous discussions have established the idea that museums are rather weak institutions, being dependent upon the decisions and choices that are made by other, external actors for much of what they represent and do and being reactive, rather than active, agents in the face of external activities and events. Even though elected politicians have only a limited role to play in the organisational operations that museums, and in this case, New Walk, carry out, with these being largely determined by internal members of the Museum staff, there is a continual need for museums to justify their existence to those who control the resources that museums rely upon if they are to continue to function at all, let alone to function efficiently and effectively. In this case, this means that even if elected councillors have adopted their own version of the ‘arm’s length’ principle in terms of their engagement with the practical dimension of museum service provision, they still have a vital role to play in ensuring that the legitimacy of the museum is made apparent and can be demonstrated to all the external and internal actors with an interest in New Walk as both an organisation and as an institution. This justification depends upon a number of distinct factors, but these can be briefly, if rather loosely, summed up as being concerned with questions of ideology and legitimacy, and the basis upon which justification rests is concerned with which form of rationality – social, legal, political, economic, and technical (Diesing, 1962) – is being applied to the Museum at any given time. The centrality of local councillors (and more recently in Leicester the directly elected

Local Politics, National Politics, and the Local Museum 115 mayor of the City9) to these processes derives from their democratic status as the only locally elected figures with a direct relationship with the Museum.10 A consequence of this is that power, insofar as it affects the Museum, is effectively split into two branches: that concerning the Museum as an organisation, where power largely rests with the operational staff who work within it or who are concerned with matters of technical rationality based upon professional values and rules, and that concerning the Museum as an institution, where power rests with those who are concerned with questions of social, economic, political, and legal rationality, and who are normally located outside of the Museum in physical and employment terms. While this is something of a simplification of the complex, if not extremely messy, reality of life in all museums, it does indicate that museum change will be driven by a variety of demands and expectations that cannot always be reconciled. Indeed, within museums themselves, there are quite often clashes between staff members where technical rationality can be trumped by other forms of rationality, particularly political rationality. Thus, technical rationality in the Weberian sense that depends upon established organisational rules and hierarchies as embodied in bureaucratic forms of organisation (Gray & McCall, 2018) can be undercut by the actions and choices of museum staff who do not feel bound by these rules and hierarchies and who work according to their own understanding of what is required by the organisation and the jobs that they have control over, in the classic form of ‘street-level bureaucracy’ (McCall, 2016; Lipsky, 1980). This is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7, where the role of the museum ‘professional’ in the life of New Walk is considered in much greater detail. The most obvious expression of this could be found in the ‘new museology’ from the 1970s onwards, where a shift from a concern with the internal mechanics of operating a museum to an externally facing, visitor-oriented focus was seen as essential for the survival of the museum as an institutional form (McCall & Gray, 2014). The idea that there is some form of dichotomy between the internal and external dimensions of a museum and that there should be a greater focus on the latter was not actually as radical as it seemed to be when the ‘new museology’ originated (see Vergo, 1989, for the ‘new’ argument, and Dana, 1999 [1927] and Poulot, 2009 for discussions of much earlier versions of the same ideas). Indeed, New Walk itself saw similar distinctions being drawn in the 1940s. Trevor Thomas (curator, 1940–47) drew a clear distinction, for example, between ‘two major categories of museum responsibility, (a) conservation, (b) utilization’, and between the museum functions of conservation, research and visual education, and visitor engagement and participation by means of socialised activities (CM 27/13, 30/3/1944; 31/5/1945). Implicit in such distinctions is a view that museums are concerned with different categories of visitors, something that had already been made explicit by Lowe in 1907, when he had divided the visitors to New Walk between the general public, students, collectors, and investigators (DE 3220/6: see Chapter 3). Given the overall policy control that the curators of the Museum have had over the course of time, it is hardly surprising to note the centrality that these members of the Museum staff have had on the exhibition and display practices of the Museum.

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Thus, the Museum as an organisation can clearly be understood to have power concentrated in the hands of the staff who have operational control over the dayto-day practices that are to be found within it. In this respect, the focus is not on the external dynamics of the social, political, and economic bases upon which the Museum rests and to which the Museum functions in a reactive fashion. Instead the Museum can be seen to have a distinctly positive role to play through the implementation of technical rationality in establishing and controlling what the Museum does, how it does it, the purposes to which these activities are put, and the people towards whom these are intended to be laid. As an institutional form, however, the staff of the Museum are in a much more dependent position, particularly as they have much less access to the sources of political, social, economic, and legal rationality and much less of a role to play in determining what shape these rationalities will take and how they will be employed in the museum context. In practice, the technical, professional rationality that is made use of by Museum staff has implications for all the other forms of rationality that are employed in the institutional realm, but these are largely secondary to the dominant forms of these rationalities that derive that non-museum sources. Thus, the various requests to consider the introduction of admission charges were dependent upon the acceptance of a form of economic rationality that saw the generation of internal sources of revenue as being of far greater importance than had previously been the case. In turn, this version of economic rationality was closely allied with a changing political rationality that was shifting the focus of public services away from the social dimension of service provision towards the economic dimension, with this spilling over into how museums as an institutional form were considered. Staff within museums as organisations had no control over these much broader political changes in ideology and belief and were, again, in the position of being reactive to change, and the lack of an independent source of political status and power necessarily makes museums, as both an institutional and organisational form, weak. While this discussion of politics as being concerned with the exercise of power has been influenced by the role that rationality plays in affecting this, it has also touched on the reasons why the justification of museums matters. This is as much a matter of ideology and legitimacy as it is of crude forms of power and the distribution of power within societies and serves to demonstrate how changing patterns of political life serve to affect both museums in general and New Walk in particular. The early establishment of New Walk as a local authority museum took place in a historical context, where public museums of any sort were only gradually being established as developments from the earlier cabinets of curiosity and other private collections (Impey & MacGregor, 2001 [1985]), and those that were introduced generally took a national form, as with the British Museum (which was itself founded on the basis of a private collection) (Delbourgo, 2017; Wilson, 2002), with the exception of the early university museums (originating in Basle and followed shortly after by the Ashmolean in Oxford) and the United States, where a number of local museums pre-dated the establishment of the Smithsonian (see Maroevic, 1998; Alexander & Alexander, 2008; and more briefly, Garwood, 2014). While the early impetus behind the development of local museums could be found in

Local Politics, National Politics, and the Local Museum 117 simple curiosity, it rapidly developed into a combination of enhanced educational provision – which museums were assumed to be, at least in part, a contributor to (Greenwood, 1996 [1888]) – a statement of civic pride, a social mechanism to ‘broaden the mind’, and a device for the aggrandisement of middle-class virtue and status (Hill, 2005, 32, 45). This combination of worthy ideas showed that museums were far more than simple entities that stole the cultural possessions of other peoples (a proposition discussed in Mason et al., 2018) or which were employed solely for the purposes of reforming the social behaviour of the masses to convert them into replicants of the middle-class (Bennett, 1995), even if both of these were and are a part of how museums functioned in their early and, sometimes, in their present days. Indeed, justifying museums on the basis that they were intended to pillage other countries and/or demonstrate the unworthiness of large parts of the local or national populations of the host country would hardly be considered to be effective means for doing so in current conditions, let alone in earlier periods, where other dimensions of museum activity – such as their educational and social cohesion functions – were often seen as being far more important than where their collections came from (Murray, 1996 [1904]; Jevons, 1883), and their ethical and moral responsibilities had been fully recognised by the 1920s (Marstine, 2011, 7). The creation of appealing ideas that would demonstrate how and why museums were beneficial organisations, and a worthwhile institution in their own right, were far more likely to provide the support that would be required to establish such benefits in the first place, and similar sentiments have continued to be made use of by the supporters of museums ever since. These types of positive argument not only serve to justify why museums might be considered to be ‘a good thing’ but also serve to legitimise their continued existence as they can be represented to produce public benefits that are not available through other means. The legitimation of museums extends, however, beyond this rather trivial exercise in justification. Legitimation also encompasses the idea that museums not only provide benefits to individuals and communities but also that they are in some sense the ‘right’ sort of thing that societies require if they are to be considered responsible for the welfare of their populations. Given the sheer variability in the distribution of museums around the world and the differences that exist in terms of how they are valued by different populations, this claim to a public welfare benefit arising from the simple existence of museums is, at the very least, debatable and rather depends upon who controls the narrative around the legitimacy of museums. In the terms of New Walk, those who are in this advantaged position are a combination of museum staff, who derive their legitimacy from their expertise and the underlying technical rationality that this rests upon; local councillors, who derive their legitimacy from the fact of their elected status and hierarchical authority with these resting upon differing forms of political rationality; and the general population, which derives its legitimacy from forms of social rationality that privilege its position as a contributor to the public good. This combination provides a widespread basis for the legitimacy of the museum that leads to the view that museums are not necessarily an imposition on the pockets of local taxpayers

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but are, more importantly, a sign of the status of the City through the support that it gives to such a valued and trusted community asset, as well as to something that provides a variety of benefits, from those of education to those of entertainment. The fact that, in party political terms if no other, New Walk is not the subject of continual political argument and debate could be taken as one measure of the extent to which its legitimacy is deeply entrenched within the City. The general lack of opposition from local groups and local media sources to what the Museum does, how it does it, and why it does it, again reinforces the idea that it is seen and accepted as being an important element of the City’s identity. The fact that New Walk has remained in the same location since the 1840s and has not been extended since the 1930s serves as something of a symbol of stability and continuity that can also be considered to be a part of the legitimacy that the museum has. While this may seem to provide a rather conservative form of legitimation, as it depends upon nothing major happening to the form and shape of the Museum, it has served to undercut the forms of argument and debate that have been associated with major architectural changes to museums in other places (MacLeod, 2011, 379–81) and has helped to keep New Walk out of the publicity spotlight that has been shone on these other museums, often in deeply critical ways (as seen with the rebuilding of the Royal Ontario Museum [Ashley, 2020]). This form of legitimacy is rather a negative one as it does not require a positive assertion of the worth and significance of the Museum but simply requires it to be left in place, and it does assume that for much of the population of the City, the Museum can be left to its own devices as everybody knows where it is and what it looks like, and nothing needs to be done to change this. Even so, it does contribute to the overall view that New Walk has a deep-rooted legitimacy as far as the members of the general public in the City are concerned. The final element of the impact of political factors on changes to New Walk rests on matters of ideology. While ideology can be seen to have multiple dimensions to it (Gray, 2015, 13–18), the general version of it is that it is concerned with core sets of values and beliefs about the museum as both an organisation and an institution. Ideology in this respect can become something of a manipulable tool that individuals and groups can avail themselves of to underpin not only the legitimacies and justifications that exist in the museum context but also how power can be used and the ends to which it can be directed. At a rather crude level, these uses of ideology can be divided into the external and internal, with the former being exercised by agents and actors outside of either the museums sector altogether or outside of any individual museum, and the latter being exercised by those functioning within the museums sector or individual museums. In some respects, the general points concerning how the rationalities, justifications, and legitimacies that museums are associated with are made use of by different actors equally apply to the ideological realm. The distinction between the external and internal dimensions of each of these factors is a commonality, but unlike the case with the exercise of power, their effect in influencing changes in the Museum, and museums more generally, are far more diffuse. While party politics has had only a small, if not minimal, effect upon the entire museum enterprise in

Local Politics, National Politics, and the Local Museum 119 the United Kingdom, this effect, when it has taken place, can be clearly associated with particular differences between political parties and their policy choices. Such clarity is much less easy to discern in the case of the other three political factors being considered here, particularly as they are much more closely aligned with each other than is the case with the exercise of political power, with a version of joint reinforcement between them serving to create and maintain a common front to be employed in discussions and debates about museums. In the case of ideology, this common front is visible not only in the view of museums as being a ‘good thing’ but also in terms of the underlying arguments that promote such a view, with these arguments being a great deal more complicated than the simple division between Liberal, Conservative, Social Democratic, and Socialist versions of ideology as they are applied to political parties would imply. As the ideological arguments that can be applied to museums are closely tied in with the provision of justifications and legitimations for their existence, it is not particularly surprising that such arguments are overwhelmingly positive ones. This has remained the case even when the dominant ideologies that are made use of undergo the periodic changes that they are subject to. Reference has already been made to the shift towards the arguments concerning the ‘new museology’ and museum activism that developed from the 1970s onwards within the museums sector and the gradual acceptance of this shift within the realm of museum practice – even though precursors of such arguments can be traced back a great deal further. Perhaps the more significant shift has been in terms of what changing conceptions of the roles, purposes, and functions of museums have meant for the operational practices of museum staff – something that is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7 – with few of these changing ideas originating anywhere other than from within the museums sector itself. The largely stable ideological conception of museums over time in a general sense does not mean that this stability equally applies in different social, economic, professional, and political settings. The translation of sets of ideological beliefs and values into social practice is by no means straightforward, particularly as broader ideological positions regarding, for example, the relationships between states and citizens can also change, with consequent policy implications for museums that are relatively divorced from the underlying museum ideologies that exist (Gray, 2015, 15–16). In practice, ideological change tends to be a matter of Braudel’s (1972, 20–1) ‘longue durée’ rather than a matter of the more rapid shifts that can be seen in the realm of management trends and managerial languages. In this regard, the changing ideas underlying museological thought – from largely inchoate beginnings through to ‘proto-scientific’, ‘empirical-descriptive’, and ‘theoreticalscientific’ stages (Maroevic, 1998, 74) – have had very little actual effect on the underlying principles and values of the museum field as a whole, even though they have definitely changed how museums are researched and analysed and have also had some effect on the practices of museum staff. The idea that there is some sort of solid bedrock underlying museum ideologies implies that there will be little within it that can be used to explain change inside the museum. For this, a shift in focus towards the broader societal contexts within which museums function

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is necessary, implying, once again, that museums are largely reactive rather than active agents in terms of their own existence.

Conclusions While museums are quite clearly political institutions in their own right, their relationship to the practice of politics is somewhat harder to specifically identify. The fact that museums make use of particular forms of legitimising, ideological, and justificatory arguments and employ particular rationalities, whilst different forms of political power are made use of both externally and internally, are all self-evident. Demonstrating how these apply to specific examples of change in the case of New Walk is somewhat more difficult. In terms of the exercise of political power, the practice is that this is applied to the museum, rather than the museum making positive use of it itself. While this is an overstatement given that the making of all choices has a political element to it and involves the exercise of power, the sorts of subjects to which political power is applied differ significantly depending upon which wielders of power are being considered. In terms of the general running of the museum through the provision of financial, accommodation, and human resources, the balance of power lies resoundingly with elected politicians at both the local and national levels. In terms, however, of making choices about what the museum does and how it does it, the balance lies almost entirely with the museum staff. Both of these can be seen in terms of who is responsible for making the choices that are entailed in these activities, with clear demarcations being drawn between the sets of active agents who are given the power to decide on these matters. At this level, members of the museum staff are in the position where they can make real, effective decisions that can change the focus and direction of museum activity and are thus, for once, not simply reactive to demands and pressures from outside, even if the macro-decisions about funding, for example, are largely outside their control. In terms of the other political factors – legitimacy, ideology, and rationality – however, it is much less apparent how these relate directly to the processes and practices that underpin change in the museum. Given the long-standing nature of each of these factors, and the limited amount of change that is associated with them in museum terms, where the contents of them and the arguments about them have hardly changed since the nineteenth century, a direct link between them and change in the museum is less easy to discern. Again, the distinction between internal and external sets of actors can be put forward as explaining who was responsible for introducing changes in museum practice, but this is certainly not the same as being able to explain the shape, speed, direction, and content of these changes in the first place, and linking them directly to ideology, legitimacy, and rationality is by no means straightforward. In general terms, the best that can be said about the relationship of these factors to actual changes in the sphere of museums is probably a limited one. That they affect museums is apparent (Gray, 2015), but the changes in emphases in operational terms that make up the bulk of museum change are, at the very best, marginal ones when compared with what would be

Local Politics, National Politics, and the Local Museum 121 needed to indicate significant changes in museum ideologies and legitimacies. Even shifts in the underlying rationalities that affect how museums function – as, for example, with the development of the economic rationality that affected the provision of public services across most of the Western world from the 1980s to the 2010s – could be considered to have clear linkages to the earlier conceptions of efficient and effective management that were in place in New Walk from the 1850s to the 1870s, when the ‘economist’ wing of the Liberal Party was in the ascendency on the Town Council (see Elliott, 1979, 41–4). There have clearly been changes in New Walk since the 1840s that are associated with political factors. The most important of these have clearly been in the ways in which power has been exercised over the Museum by external actors in both national and local government circles and, secondly, in terms of the rationalities that have been applied to the operational dynamics of the Museum. The roles of ideology and legitimacy in affecting change have been of much less importance although, given the intersecting and entwining nature of these with, in particular, the rationalities of the Museum, they cannot be entirely neglected as potential effectors of change. In terms of the models of change that have been applied to the discussions in Chapters 4 and 5, it would appear that the idea of path dependency would only be applicable in broad terms through the seeming stability of the dominant ideologies and legitimacies that are evident in the case of New Walk. The continued support of the Museum through all the periods of social and economic change that Leicester has gone through over the past 170 years is matched by the stability of the versions of benevolent neglect that this support has taken. The major political changes in the City from the early 1900s to the mid-1940s, with the replacement of the Liberal Party dominance of the City by the Labour Party hegemony that later followed, did not have a major effect on the Museum or how it functioned, with this being far more affected by the staff who were employed within it than by anything else. In this regard, path dependency falls sadly short of providing an effective explanation as the manner in which the Museum functions today is wildly different to how it worked in the nineteenth century, even if there are deep consistencies in the values and principles across this time. The fact that these changes in practice have occurred can largely be traced back to the technical rationality that has dominated the day-to-day operations of the Museum and the ways in which this rationality has itself altered over the course of time. While there are some clear continuities within the transitions that make up the course of this alteration of rationality, this is not the same as demonstrating that museum professionals have been trammelled by the past in their development of management practice. As will be seen in Chapter 7, there has always been a tendency for changes in museums to be propounded as something radically different to what had gone before, and this belief has had a significant effect on how museum practice has been changed and the arguments that have been put forward to justify and explain it. The difference between such claims and the reality of museum practice is something that will be discussed at a later point to identify the

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extent to which change has really occurred as opposed to change being simply in terms of how it has been talked about. Punctuated equilibrium would also appear to be of limited utility for explaining the relationship between politics and museum change. While there have clearly been significant changes taking place in both national politics of the United Kingdom and the local politics of Leicester, their effect on the Museum has been distinctly muted. The continuities in how politicians have treated museums in general in institutional terms, and New Walk Museum specifically in organisational terms, have tended to be far more important for explaining the nature, shape, and direction of change in the Museum than have ideas of the importance of key moments of significant upheaval. Indeed, it is difficult to point to any changes in the museums world that would qualify as being anything other than gradual or marginal refinements or amendments to the existing position – except in the case of internal management procedures and practices where real change has occurred, and even these changes have had minimal effect upon the values and principles upon which the Museum is based. Overall, the most effective model of change for dealing with politics and museum change is probably that of advocacy coalitions, where the combination of highly committed councillors and museum staff can be seen to have had an important role in influencing the shape of museum policy and practice over the course of time. The key role of individual councillors in acting as positive advocates for the Museum and the initiative and effectiveness of individual curators and other Museum staff can both be pointed to as being central to the development of the museums service in Leicester, particularly in the twentieth century. If either of these sets of actors had been missing, it is unlikely that New Walk would have achieved the high status that it had in the museums world or gained the support (muted as it often was) for its place as a symbol of civic pride amongst local City councillors. The latter is important as the experience of New Walk while a part of the County Museums Service from 1974 to 1997 showed that the general respect for the Museum in the City could be lost when other parts of the service were deemed to be more important, as seen with the drive to establish a county-wide network of museums that inevitably shifted attention – and resources – away from New Walk in terms of the priorities that the County had. The return of the museums service to the City may not have led to significant changes for New Walk in terms of the financial resources that were made available to it, but it did make a difference in terms of esteem.

Notes  1 Suspicions about financial corruption were never far away from all local authorities across the country during the nineteenth (and, indeed, the twentieth) century, even if these were nowhere as obvious and as blatant as in the unreformed Leicester Town Corporation: see Elliott (1979, 46, 154) for further possible (and one certain) Leicester examples.  2 Currently, the City has New Walk, the Jewry Wall (covering the Roman to Viking periods), Newarke Houses (City social history and the Museum of the Leicester Regiment),

Local Politics, National Politics, and the Local Museum 123 the Abbey Pumping Station (the City’s Industrial Museum), the Guildhall (covering medieval Leicester), Belgrave Hall (eighteenth century hall and gardens).  3 A position summed up by C. P. Snow (1964, 332) (who was himself born in Leicester) with his view of the lack of excitement in local government in comparison with the inner workings of central government when he referred to one trivial matter being raised in a committee meeting as ‘it might have been a borough council, assembled out of duty, for a discussion of something not specially earth-shaking, such as a proposal for a subsidy to the civic theatre’. Substituting ‘museum’ for ‘civic theatre’ would not have changed this sentiment.  4 In which respect the dearth of articles and books in the political science literature on such topics as the Parthenon/Elgin marbles or, indeed, on museums at all (Hammond, 2018) is indicative of how little regard there is for museums as a subject for serious political research.  5 Summaries of the main findings and recommendations of the reports up to and including Drew can be found in Lewis, 1989. The Drew Report of 1979 (Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries, 1979) should not be confused with a second report also chaired by Sir Arthur Drew on the operation of Area Museum Councils, which concluded that more money should be spent by national governments on supporting local museums: see Museums and Galleries Commission (1984).  6 The report proudly proclaims that it is ‘independent’, but it is anything but this: its ‘objectives’ were dictated by the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, and its conclusions are derived directly from the department’s own perceptions about what the museums sector requires as well as accepting at face-value the recommendations contained in 2016 Culture White Paper (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2016). Reading it is a salutary experience in the light of the chances that were missed, the questions that were not asked, and the well-meaning but utterly unoriginal opinions that it contains.  7 The emphasis here is important: with the best will in the world, nobody has ever been able to compel museums to do anything that they do not wish to. At best, museums can be persuaded to toe the line through a combination of financial incentives and penalties, and/or appeals to bureaucratic, hierarchical rules, and principles. Neither of these are, however, guaranteed to succeed (see Gray, 2014, 2016; Gray & McCall, 2018; McCall, 2016).  8 Thatcher recognised the reputational value of the United Kingdom’s cultural sector but seemed to be affected by cognitive dissonance in terms of how the sector had become so valuable, which was through a combination of public, private, and charitable expenditure and policy initiatives, and not through the workings of the invisible hand of the economy by itself. This was a similar problem to that which underlay all of her governments’ policy activities and which adversely affected the whole of the British economy and British society and which is still adversely affecting them today.  9 The Town and City has always had a ceremonial mayor who represents Leicester on official occasions and has a large role to play in charitable activities for the Town and City. Alongside this person, there is also a directly elected mayor with overall responsibility for establishing policy priorities and budget allocations for the City Council. Their work is overseen by the City’s elected councillors, who can revise, amend, and ultimately, ignore these priorities and allocations if they so wish. In the case of Leicester, the single-party dominance of the local Labour Party of both councillors and the mayor has meant that there are generally only minor amendments introduced, usually as a result of compromises rather than imposition. 10 Different systems are used for the election of councillors (a relative-majority system) and the mayor (an absolute-majority system). Different electoral systems have quite distinct consequences for cultural policy (Gray, 2012) even if these are not evident within the present mixed system that Leicester has.

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Introduction Since the establishment of the Museum in the 1840s, there has been a shift in museum practice, leading to it becoming an increasingly professionalised service – and New Walk has had a major national effect on this process from the late nineteenth century onwards. The consequences of this professionalisation of museums has had a major impact on how they are expected to function – through the establishment of professional codes of practice and standards of delivery – and how decisions about these are expected to be made, through a shift from overt party political and interest group control (in the case of New Walk through the intersecting memberships of the Lit and Phil and the Liberal Party and their role in choosing the Honorary Curators of the Museum up to 1872 to indirect and direct professional control of decision- and policymaking choices about museum services. The relationship between increasingly professionalised control of the Museum and the wider social, political, and economic environment of the city, as well as that of the world of the museum profession itself, will form the major focus of this chapter, stressing the role of museum staff and professional organisations in influencing precisely how and why the Museum is expected to, and actually does, operate. Even though questions have been raised about the significance of the museum profession in providing a meaningful basis for museum management given the preference over the last 40 years for the introduction of generic management approaches to running public services (Hatton, 2012), it is still the case that the acquisition of professional qualifications is something of a necessity for those with a responsibility for overseeing the provision of museum services on a day-to-day basis, even if it has not yet become a compulsory requirement for employment. Originally, employment in the Museum was dependent far more upon a form of gentlemanly (and this is factually accurate until the twentieth century) interest and enthusiasm and a desire to classify and catalogue the material that the Museum acquired, than it did upon the acquisition of particular technical capabilities that would today be seen as necessities for the attainment of senior managerial positions. The shift away from the older restricted view of what working in a museum entailed, and the associated demands for labelling, conservation, and display that went with it, towards the wider forms of expertise that became necessary as the DOI: 10.4324/9780429292491-7

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Museum developed, and the expectations and demands on Museum staff changed, forms an important part of the history of New Walk that is closely related to the development of museum management in general. This development in turn can be seen to shift the focus of the Museum away from what could be labelled as the ‘museum as organisation’ view of management to that of the ‘museum as institution’, where the former is concerned with the ‘core’ and ‘intrinsic’ functions of museums and the latter with the ‘use’ and ‘social/community’ functions that they have (Gray & McCall, 2020, 16–21). This chapter therefore focuses primarily upon the internal workings of New Walk and, secondarily, upon the development of the technical rationalities (see Chapter 6) that have underpinned these workings over the course of time. In both of these cases, it will become apparent that the picture of New Walk that has been generated by a consideration of social, economic, and political change and the Museum, where the Museum is taken to be largely reactive to external pressures, expectations, and demands, has only been a partial one, and that in some areas at least, New Walk has proved to be not only a positive participant in the process of museum change but also a leading actor in determining what would become the accepted frameworks for managing museum work and the accepted forms of knowledge that it was believed museum staff required to carry out their work efficiently and effectively. While management is often seen as having a low status within the museums field in the United Kingdom (Holmes & Hatton, 2008), it was recognised from quite early on in the development of public museums that an effectively managed and well-planned museum was likely to be far more efficient in achieving the goals of those with a responsibility for them than a museum with haphazard displays and poor organisational arrangements (see Jevons, 1883; Wallace, 1900 [1869]; Greenwood, 1996 [1888]; Murray, 1996 [1904]; Flower, 1996a [1889], 1996b [1893]; and the edited readings relating to the ‘new museum’ idea that emerged from both the United Kingdom and the United States from the 1880s onwards that are contained in Genoways & Andrei, 2008, 111–45).

Organising the Museum The complaints about over-crowded, poorly arranged, and poorly illuminated museums that were common during the formational period of public museums were not restricted to those local museums that were operating within the bounds of tightly controlled local authority budgets but extended to the growing number of ‘national’ museums after the expansion of these following the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the later fragmentation of the British Museum that was a part of this process (ffrench, 1950, 283–6; Auerbach, 1999, 199–200; Stearn, 1981). Such concerns were not restricted to the United Kingdom and the United States but were also being expressed in Continental European countries such as France and Germany, where these concerns were also allied with the developing ideas concerning heritage and heritage management that were being established at this same time (Swenson, 2013). Indeed it is now commonly accepted that the major actors in terms of museum organisation and arrangement in the early phase of

The Professionalised Museum: Changing Museum Managements 129 discussions about museum management were to be found in these two countries1 (Forgan, 1994, 152), even if their direct impact on British museums was not actually directly felt at the time but seeped in gradually over the course of around 50 years. Rather than developing coherent theories and philosophies of museums and museum displays, the normal approach in the United Kingdom in the early years tended towards the strictly practical, being concerned with what lessons could be learned from other museums about the most appropriate and effective lighting and styles of display cases for the presentation of museum collections. These concerns can be clearly seen in the amount that the Museum spent on display cases and upkeep of the building – with these taking 85% and 81% of Museum expenditure in two three-month periods in 1849 shortly after the museum opened (CM 1/5, 20/6/1849; 1/1/1850) – and the willingness of the Museum Committee to send their new curator William Harrison (1872–80) to London to examine details of exhibition design, the display of collections, and methods of ‘preservation’2 (CM 27/1, 10/12/1872), even if the development of electric lighting took 21 years to occur from the time of its first proposal to its actual installation. The London visit of Harrison clearly had an impact on the Museum as shortly after it, the ‘archaeological’ collection was rearranged according to ‘a new system of classification which is chronological and educational’ – raising questions about what the previous display had been based on (CM 27/1, 1/4/1873) – and an invitation for a reciprocal visit by staff from the British Museum was accepted when ‘they most kindly went over every article in the Ethnological Department . . . giving the correct names and localities of every specimen, of which the majority were previously incorrect’ (CM 27/1, 14/10/1873), again raising questions about the capacity of the Honorary Curators to be effective in their Museum work. Against these doubts, however, it should be noted that Frederick Mott (both a town councillor and an Honorary Curator) proposed to reform the Museum’s natural history displays to move away from the focus on local exhibits that ‘all the best authorities agree’ should be the standard in ‘a Provincial Museum’, and ‘to develop comparative displays’. The argument for this was that as no local museums were organised in this comparative fashion, ‘the Leicester Museum so arranged would be a unique and very important Institution’ (CM 27/2 21/9/1880). The next reported specific visit to other Museums came in 1914 when it was ‘resolved. That the Chairman and Curator be requested to inspect Museums and Art Gallerys (sic) in London and in provincial towns’ in the obvious context of the outbreak of the First World War (CM 27/7, 12/11/1914), leading to a resolution against increasing the Museum’s insurance policy to cover the risks arising from ‘aerial raids’ (CM 27/7, 27/4/1915). This decision can be usefully located in the entirely different communications systems that were dominant in the museums field at that time, where apart from letters and telegrams, the occasional use of telephones, and the developing professional exchanges through the annual conferences and relatively infrequent publications of the Museums Association,3 physical visits were by far the most effective means of sharing information and ideas about developments and techniques in museum practice.

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In this context, it is not surprising that the transfer of knowledge and practice between British museums was rather sporadic and that the establishment of a coherent set of principles for museum exhibition, display, management, and organisation was slow to develop. The idea that local museums, in particular, are ‘shaped by the circumstances of their establishment, their subsequent history, sympathies within their governing local authority at any time, and the energy and enthusiasm of their staff’ (Wilkinson, 2014, 53) meant that a great deal rested upon local actors, particularly during the period when a museums profession was at something of a nascent stage within the United Kingdom, even if it was more fully developed at an earlier stage than was the case in the United States (Di Maggio, 1981). The early issues of the Museums Journal – the house publication of the Museums Association – were commonly used by staff in local museums to share their experiences of how to organise what eventually became standard activities in all museums, with an early contribution from Ernest Lowe (1903), before his move to New Walk, being concerned with specimen registration. This followed soon after a paper on the design of table-cases based on the experience of the Torquay Natural History Society (Jukes-Browne, 1903), with this reflecting the fact that museums as organisations were both not widespread at this time and that the amateur could still have something to teach the museum professional. Lowe’s early engagement with the Museums Association marked the start of a long period when the curators of New Walk served as active members of the association, taking leading positions on the board and on the various committees that the association made use of. Indeed Lowe was both a one-time president of the association and an active member of the Education Committee that established the first national diploma course in the United Kingdom in museum work in 1932 (alongside Charles Squire, who was also to become the president of the association in 1936: CM 27/12, 15/7/1936) (Lewis, 1989, 54, 80). This course marked an important step on the road to establishing a fully-fledged museums profession in the United Kingdom and was something that future curators/directors of the Leicester Museums Service, Thomas and Walden, continued to be actively engaged with, with each serving on the Education Committee at different times (CM 27/13, 19/12/1941; DE 3277/171, 3/2/1956), and with M. B. Hodge (curator, 1947–51) having been the chair of the Committee before becoming the curator and director of the Leicester Museums Service. This close relationship of New Walk staff with the work of the Museums Association was particularly important in the early years of both the association and the twentieth century, when the basis for the increasing professionalisation of museums was being established. Given the importance that has been attached to professionalism as the major factor for explaining the day-today organisation and functioning of museums around the world (Gray, 2015), and given the relative indifference shown by both local and national governments when dealing with museums, the manner in which the staff of New Walk are engaged with its activities must be assumed to be rather important for explaining not only the development of but also changes in this organisation and functioning. This role of the staff of the Museum was not specific to New Walk but was, instead, a widespread phenomenon across the country, particularly when the

The Professionalised Museum: Changing Museum Managements 131 outside world started to more actively impinge on museum activities in the post– Second World War period. Wilkinson (2014, 79), for example, pointed out that in the period after 1979, the success of museums ‘depended upon having access to politicians, being able to demonstrate results that were in tune with the political priorities of local politicians and on managers’ personal effectiveness in an environment where competition for resources was intense’. Given that the demonstration of results had, and still has, no objective basis to measure policy success and/ or failure against, the ability of museum staff to manage how the story was told to their local committees and councillors became of greater significance during this period than it had been beforehand. The most effective mechanism for telling a version of a ‘good news’ story in these circumstances necessarily depended upon museum staff controlling the technical resources that museums relied upon for doing their job as they had little real influence over any of the other resources that were required to do so. This version of politics relies for its effectiveness on the strength of the technical resources that museum staff can make use of and given the large imbalance in the possession of these resources between museum staff and elected politicians, there have been clear advantages for the former over the latter. Of course, the existence of an accepted justification for the existence of the Museum, and the absence of overt party political conflict concerning it (see Chapter 6), has allowed New Walk to survive in the face of sporadic and usually ill-argued opposition when other museums elsewhere in the country have been much less fortunate. These developments also encouraged a shift at the most senior levels of the museum world away from the internal dynamics of museum functioning towards a more externally focused approach to management. While this has always been a part of the operational environment of museums across the world, the more recent shifts towards a preference for forms of generic management has served to make the museums sector a much conflictual place than it was 100 years ago as the often conflicting demands of general management nostrums run up against the quite specific requirements of managing museum functions. The shifting patterns that have become apparent within the world of the museum profession – or professions as it has increasingly become the case – have also contributed to this development as the previously inward-looking model of professional expertise has been challenged by a range of externally focused activists with a basis in both the profession itself and in a broader constituency of interests. Indeed, much of the re-orientation of the museums service, both nationally and locally, could be seen to have been generated by forces internal to the museums world (as in the case of the ‘new museology’, McCall & Gray, 2014), even if it has been spurred by external ones (such as the changing political and economic rationalities and the changing external ideologies that have affected the museums sector over the last 60 years). Some of the effects of these pressures on museums and their staff can be seen in the changing staffing of New Walk. As pointed out by Wilkinson (2014, 100), ‘the first member of staff in a local authority museum with a particular remit to work on displays is thought to have been a Technical Assistant (Design) appointed to the Leicester Museum in 1951’. This appointment could be seen to be an off-shoot of

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the influence of Trevor Thomas on the Museum through his interest in, and commitment to, improving the visual quality of museum exhibitions and displays, both of which were evident even before he joined New Walk (Thomas, 1935, 1939). The concern with how the Museum’s collection was exhibited and displayed actually extended even further back than this with the first specialist staff appointment being made in 1880, when a taxidermist was employed, largely as a result of the new curator’s (Montague Browne) passion for natural history and his wish to mount more effective ‘natural’ displays.4 To reinforce the view that external actors also affected what the Museum did, it is worth noting that the second specialist appointment at the Museum was of a meteorological assistant in 1882, largely to provide data for the Town Council, which paid 50% of the assistant’s salary through the Town’s Sanitary Committee (DE 6435/34/1). On the death of this assistant in 1888, the job of data collection devolved onto other Museum staff and was eventually abandoned as it ate up too much staff time for little, if any, financial reward. The concern with display practices and techniques also extended to the use of new technologies in the Museum with Lowe (1930) identifying how films could be used in museums in ways that are almost identical with how they are currently being used in museums – both national and local – for display purposes across the country, demonstrating a degree of prescience that is commonly overlooked by those who see museums as simply dead places for dead souls (Forgan, 1994). Concern with the staffing of the Museum extends, however, beyond the employment of new members of staff with new skills and technical competencies: there is also a concern with what happened to longer established ‘traditional’ skills and competencies. Wilkinson (2014, 220), for example, notes a ‘loss of dominance’ in the 1990s of curators across the museums sector such that ‘by 2001, curators were just one type of professional within a multidisciplinary working environment’. In this context, the decision to downgrade the centrality of curators within New Walk in favour of an enhanced role for education and interpretation staff in 2019 is not a reflection on the City Council losing faith with the Museum (although it did lead to an overall reduction in staff costs for the museums service) but is, instead, the consequence of a reappraisal of the roles and functions of the Museum within Leicester in the face of cuts imposed by the current national government on the City Council (Leicester Mercury, 7/3/2019). The delivery of museum services does not necessarily entail a particular set of staff positions to be in place, only having the staff resources that are necessary, however titled, to allow the job, whatever it is, to be done. While there are well-established sets of activity that are seen to be necessary if museums are to be able to undertake their roles efficiently and effectively (as seen in the International Council of Museums guide to museum management: see Ambrose and Paine, 2012, for the last printed version of this), a number of these do not necessarily depend upon professionally qualified museum staff for them to be delivered, instead demanding non-museum professional qualifications to be made use of. To this extent, there could certainly be seen to be support for the case that the shift to ideas of generic management away from those of specific museum management has had consequences for the shape of museum services both nationally and locally. In 2019, in addition to the loss of

The Professionalised Museum: Changing Museum Managements 133 four curatorial positions, five staff vacancies were also deleted, which would have left the City’s Museum Service the equivalent of nine staff members down – except that by finally becoming a National Portfolio Organisation from 2018–19 onwards, seven posts were to be funded by Arts Council England instead.5 The changes that have taken place in the sphere of museum management have clearly had two sides to them – the internal, where shifts in employment patterns follow marginal changes in the technical rationality that underpins service delivery, and the external, where decisions that are being made outside of the museums sphere feed through into the workplace. Both of these have clearly had an effect upon how the work of New Walk has been organised at the level of the expectations that there are of what staff resources are required to deliver the Museum’s services. Their impact, however, on perceptions of what functions staff need to undertake to deliver these services is less clear. Thus, while there was an agreed need to hire new staff to form a specialist art conservation and restoration unit – establishing a new functional unit within the Museum and hiring the staff to fulfil this function – external financial pressures led to the establishment of the unit being delayed (DE 3277/174 17/11/1972; 19/1/1973), implying that the need for this unit was not actually central to the delivery of the Museum’s services as a whole. Given that there are still ‘no statutory requirements or standards for the Service’ (DE 7971/33, 10/1/1975) almost 50 years after the Wright Committee reported in 1973 (Department of Education and Science, 1973), decisions about the staffing and activities of the Museum necessarily devolve onto local actors who are always operating within the parameters that are laid down for them by external actors and the financing limits that they set.

Changing Rationalities, Changing Museums The argument that the technical rationality that underpins how the museums sector in the United Kingdom functions is central to understanding what is done in the Museum, how it is done, and technically, why it is done formed a central part of the case presented in Chapter 6 about the politics of museum change. The professional basis of this technical rationality has never remained entirely stable, with new ideas and arguments informing the underlying assumptions and claims about the museums sector that this professional realm encompasses. Just as ‘the processes by which national and local government policies shaped museums were more cyclical than linear’ between 1960 and 2010 (Wilkinson, 2014, 212), so the world of the museum professional has equally been affected by recurring themes and issues over the course of time. In some respects, the changes in professional ideologies and beliefs have been as much driven by the external world within which museums exist as it has been by philosophical and intellectual changes in thinking about the role that museum professionals can play within their societies. While in some cases there can be a presumption that the external world acts in a negative sense by, for example, instrumentalising the work of museums and museum staff (Gray, 2008), leading to a neglect of the core values and practices that are believed to be enshrined within the museum’s walls, more generally there

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is a tradition of fashion-following within the sector, and it is where this fashion leads to, and how following it is assumed to affect the work of museums, that are the central features of museum change. Change does not simply occur within the museum world, it is always the result of a series of conscious choices and the often unintentional consequences of these choices, and both of these need to be considered if the role of museum professionals in the processes of museum change is to be given due weight and meaning. As has been argued in Chapters 4, 5, and 6, New Walk has more often than not been acted upon rather than being active itself in the context of social, economic, and political changes, and the peripherality of the Museum to what has been occurring within these other spheres of action has clearly contributed to the largely secondary and reactive position that the Museum has found itself within. The professional nature of the museums service, however, is of a different order to this, with control of the key ideas, values, and practices that underpin working within the sector resting primarily in the hands of the staff themselves, rather than with a range of external actors. While these actors can affect the broader sets of belief and practice that museum staff are operating within through their control of societal ideologies and their preference for legal, social, political, and economic forms of rationality, rather than the technical rationality that professionalism rests upon (Diesing, 1962), there is no simple, direct linkage between the external and the internal in these terms. The increasingly fragmented world of museum work, leading to the developing multidisciplinarity that Wilkinson (2014, 220) identified as a characteristic of the field, means that it can be difficult to refer to only a singular realm of professionalism in terms of museums, with different sets of museum professionals having their own variants of what it means to be a museum professional. While there are underlying commonalities between these variants, there have also been developing tensions and contradictions between them as well. In some cases, this has led to conflict within the museums field about the priorities that could, and should, be accorded to different ways of approaching museum work, with this conflict being assigned different labels at different times. The most common of these labels generally refers to some sort of division between what McCall and Gray (2014) referred to as the ‘new school’ and ‘old school’ wings of the profession, with the former including outreach and education staff, and the latter collections-focused curators. The general view implied in this, and strongly argued by some museum staff members, is that the radical, innovative branches of the profession are outwardly focused, ‘people-centred’ staff, while the ‘old school’ branch is at least conservative, if not positively staid, and inward-looking. While this view creates a rather stereotypical image of ‘types’ of museum staff, there is no doubt that there are elements of such views spread across all museums and all branches of museum work, with some education staff being entirely hide-bound, and some ‘classic’, ‘old school’ curators actually being wildly experimental in the work that they undertake: the perils of generalisation can be only too apparent given the sheer variability that there is between both museum staff and areas of museum work. The tradition within New Walk, and one that has been held for many years, is that the Museum as a whole has been well in advance of much of the rest of the

The Professionalised Museum: Changing Museum Managements 135 museums field certainly in the country, if not internationally as well, if not actually leading the vanguard of innovation and originality in the organisation and provision of museum services. This tradition largely rests upon the fact that the curators at New Walk, certainly from the time of William Harrison (1873–80) and the installation of the City-appointed and paid-for curator in the position of overall authority and control for the Museum in the 1890s, were deeply engaged with making the Museum somewhere that people not only wanted to visit but also somewhere that could serve to encourage people to learn, to think, and to question the world around them. Some of this was seen to lie in the quality of the displays that were made available to the public, with Montagu Browne, in particular, being scathing about local museums that ‘now have a little of everything and very much crowded up and incomplete at every point’ (quoted in Brown, 2002, 8). This could be seen as a criticism of New Walk itself, as one of the Honorary Curators had been seemingly proud to note, shortly before Browne became the curator of the Museum, that ‘about 2,000 fossils’ had been cleaned and placed in floor cases (CM 27/2, 26/8/79), indicating a preference for exhibiting everything regardless of the sense or meaning of the displays themselves. This tendency in favour of showing as much as possible was a particular complaint of many observers of museums in the later nineteenth century, from both the educated, general visitor (Jevons, 1883; Wallace, 1900 [1869]) and, increasingly, from museum professionals and experts as well (as with the example of Browne noted previously, and Flower, 1996a [1889], 1996b [1893]). While it took many years for this complaint to be fully relieved, it was certainly the case that a gradual winnowing-out of the numbers of items on display was well in hand by the time that the first and second editions of the ‘Guide to the Museum’ were published in 1914 (4D 56/77/5). While the collection that was available to the Museum was displayed in a reasonably coherent fashion, with items intended to be organised into discrete blocks of material such as ‘natural history’, ‘geology’, ‘antiquities (large)’, and ‘antiquities (small)’ by 1873 (4D 56/453/2), it was not really until the succession of Museum extensions were opened in 1879, 1892, 1913, 1930, and 1932 that the shift from cramped to breathing room for the displays was completed and more ‘modern’ and ‘professional’ patterns of display could be created. The organisation of the displayed material from the collection was originally based on a fairly simple descriptive set of distinctions around either the material of which the object was made (such as the distinction drawn between ‘Implements, Ornaments, Utensils (General) Bone’ and ‘Implements, Ornaments, Utensils (General) Metal’ [4D 56 108/8; 4D 56 108/20]), or what sort of material the object was (such as ‘Paintings, Drawings, Engravings’ or ‘Tokens’ [4D 56/108/3; 4D 56/108/44]), or which biological grouping the object represented (such as ‘cetaceans’ or ‘water birds’ [4D 56/108/47; 4D 56/108/112]). While this categorisation of the collection served a general purpose of identifying individual specimens, it was not particularly useful for organising the display of the items concerned. Again, it was the establishment by Lowe in his foundational statement (DE 3220/6) that provided a general means for organising the collection as a whole such that display would not simply take the form of a disaggregated collection of individual

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items loosely drawn together by general categories. Instead, Lowe had developed a collections philosophy to allow displays to take their place as a record of separate spheres of scientific and social interest and concern based around ‘cosmology’, the ‘physical history of the earth (geology)’, the ‘history of “life” on the earth (biology)’, and ‘Man’s (sic) activities, history and pre-history’ (with this ordering then being used to establish an order for what would be displayed in the Museum). Of course, any system of organisation such as Lowe’s is open to criticism and complaint, particularly on the grounds of cultural insensitivity, as it assumes a certain level of universality around the core components of the listing that is far from being shared in all social systems or understandings of the world and the wider universe (Mead, 1983; Kreps, 2003; McLeod, 2004). While, however, it formed the basis for organising the underlying principles upon which the Museum’s displays would be founded, it said nothing by itself about how display would take place. Lowe did have a clear view of this, saying, ‘Personally, I am very desirous of making all the collections aesthetically pleasing. . . . To do this involves the careful consideration of such apparently trivial matters as form, style and proportionate size of labels, colour of backgrounds, design of cards, etc. etc.’ (DE 3220/6). In other words, he saw a clear relationship between the material being displayed and the professional presentation of it, something developed much further at a later date by Thomas (1939). While matters of presentation and display had been the subject of some debate at the turn of the twentieth century in terms of museums and their curators, it is noticeable that they remained something of a constant in professional circles as time passed on. A comparison of the papers published in the Museums Journal (taken as being the mouthpiece for the Museums Association and its individual and corporate members) between 1930–55 (Smith & Waters, nd) and 1956–66 (Waters, nd) shows that there was only a marginal change in the percentage of papers published on display between these dates (from 13.32% of all papers published in the Journal between 1930–55, to 13.76% between 1956–66). In comparison, the number of papers published on administration rose from 2.29% of all papers in the first period to 15.32% in the second, with no other area of publication showing a similar rise. The stability of the number of papers published on display in the Journal is, of course, only one indicator of the shifting currents of concern within the world of museum professionals – as the growth in the numbers of papers published on administration indicates. The development of the Museums Association Diploma following its inauguration in 1932 can be seen as another signal of change, expanding from a basic requirement to demonstrate a knowledge of museum methods and techniques to more detailed training in a range of curatorial practices (Lewis, 1989, 54), with this being mirrored in the development of the ICOM ideas of the necessary practical skills that museum workers require to enable them to do their jobs effectively (Ambrose & Paine, 2012). In general terms, the idea of what it means to be a museum professional has changed over time and has certainly moved a long way from how Montagu Browne saw ‘the perfect curator of the future’ in 1894, whom he saw as ‘a really well-educated man (sic) of good manners; he would have to be an artist, an anatomist and

The Professionalised Museum: Changing Museum Managements 137 a modeller, and have learnt to use his hands, eyes and brains in these directions’ (quoted in Brown, 2002, 9). This focus on practical abilities has clearly moved to a more wide-ranging set of expectations about the role of staff, indicated by Thomas’ division of curatorial responsibility between the conservation of the collection and its utilisation, and where display should be separated from study (CM 27/13, 30/3/1944), indicating that there was no longer a single model of the museum but one which recognised the multi-functional and multi-faceted nature of museum work. Certainly the effort that Thomas put into active engagement with the local Leicester population, and particularly local schoolchildren, during and after the Second World War was noticeable and was strongly believed to have positive longterm benefits for the Museum (Brown, 2002, 21) – although without any effective evidence to back the claim up. While New Walk was an active agent in helping to set the scene for changing ideas about the social and educational role of the museum in society, it was not the only actor in this field. The development of a much stronger local museums network across the United Kingdom and the increased opportunities that this provided for museum staff to share ideas about their work through a variety of formal and informal networks both contributed to a re-thinking of the role of individual professionals within the museum as both an institution and as an organisation. In some ways, this has reflected more general trends in the field of professionalism, where increasingly there is seen to be a distinction between ‘organizational professionalism’ as a form of work-based, top-down control formed around occupational training, the standardization of work practices, and demands for formal accountability and ‘occupational professionalism’, which is more collegial in form and depends upon discretionary decision-making based on shared standards and ethics of practice and is largely self-regulating (Evetts, 2006, 140–1). As the museum profession has never been at the stage where membership of it is a pre-requisite for employment in the field, as it is for doctors and lawyers in most countries, it has always been a relatively weak form of occupational group. This has therefore allowed ‘organizational professionalism’ to outrank and overrule museum staff in many ways. While the ‘occupational professionalism’ of the job has continued to be an important feature of museum work in the United Kingdom and has contributed to the general acceptance that the day-to-day running of museums can safely be left in the hands of qualified museum staff, this is not necessarily the safety net for professional autonomy that might be either expected or wished for. If anything, it could be argued that the relative weakness of the museum profession has contributed to the continued existence of the reactive strand to museums that has underpinned the arguments in Chapters 4, 5, and 6. The extent to which changes in the professional world of museum workers has made their work equally as reactive as it has made their response to social, economic, and political changes reactive is not necessarily something that can be answered in a straightforward fashion. While some of the changes that have been introduced into museums, either individually or collectively, have clearly been a reaction to larger-scale societal changes, not all of them have followed the same path. The existence of active agency on the behalf of museum staff when

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translating policy demands into policy practice has consistently allowed them to exercise forms of ‘occupational professionalism’ that would not have been available without the collective strength that their professional training, values, and ethics have given them. Kavanagh (1991) has identified a succession of phases that marked changes in the nature of the museums profession over time, from the nascent beginnings between the 1880s and 1914, when new ideas and practices were entering the museums field; followed by the 1914–18 period, when these new ideas became entrenched and where the value of museum work started to become recognised by national governments. The period from 1918 to 1930 was seen as one ‘of retrenchment and lost opportunities’ (Kavanagh, 1991, 46), and the period from 1930 to 1939 as one of generational change and ‘the instrumental period in the formation of a profession’ (Kavanagh, 1991, 47). The Second World War and the 1950s provided ‘gradual growth and consolidation of curatorial practice’ (Kavanagh, 1991, 47) before a boom in museum and staff numbers in the 1970s saw a fragmentation of the profession into a multitude of individual disciplinary specialisms, which were effectively bound together only by a sense of professional values and ethics and the relevance of their work for society as a whole. Hill (2011, 132), however, casts doubts on such a seamless and evolutionary view of museum professionalisation taking place across the museums world, arguing that the importance of individuals and their decisions and choices ‘belie the idea that a straight-forward process of professionalization was taking place over the course of this period’ (from around 1850 to 1950). The fragmentation of museum professionalism from a singular model to the multiple and divided one that has been a part of the recent history of museums in the United Kingdom has equally driven the changing nature of the technical rationality that has been proposed as a central feature of how New Walk has functioned. This professional fragmentation has provided the opportunity for museum staff to develop an increasing range of justifications for both their own roles within the museum and for the role that the museum plays in society. Part of this reordering of the professional world has seen a shift in focus away from simply the collection itself and towards how it is actually utilised by both the museum and by those who visit it. This is something of a return to the view of Trevor Thomas in 1944 that the Museum needed to be made more closely linked to the lives of the people of the City through the better display and explanation of what the Museum possessed. Indeed, in some ways this fragmentation marks something of a later stage in the continuing argument in the world of museum professionals – and those outside of the doors of the museum – about what the function of the museum should actually be. While museums are inherently multi-functional (Gray & McCall, 2020), there is always a tendency for there to be claims that either some functions are more important than others or that museums actually only have a singular function and that all other museum activities should contribute to this sole purpose. For example, in the course of arguments about the roles, purposes, and functions of museums, a dominant theme has always been that museums are primarily educational institutions, with this being given central importance in both the Miers (1928) and Markham (1938) reports – and strongly argued against by museum

The Professionalised Museum: Changing Museum Managements 139 professionals who saw education as only one part of what museums did and provided, as when Ruth Weston reported that a representative of the British Museum ‘stated emphatically that he thought the museum’s function was not to follow behind a number of educational schemes but to concern itself with its own type of work, ie. the provision of specimens and their adequate exhibition’ (CM 27/12, 3/3/1939). Nevertheless, the fact that there have always been arguments about what the function(s) of the museum might be, and that these arguments have never been conclusively finished, has meant that museums have always been able to find multiple justifications for their continued existence that effectively play one set of arguments off against other sets and allowing control of museums to remain firmly in the hands of the staff employed within them. This variant of the attachment argument (Gray, 2002) is based on the premise that control of the core ideas and activities of museums (whatever these are taken to be) rests firmly in the hands of museum professionals and that these ideas and activities are not stable entities but shift according to both external demands and pressures and internal reappraisals of their relevance and value for the delivery of museum services. Once again, changes in museum organisation and practice can be seen to be multi-causal in nature, even if the weight of argument in terms of technical rationality rests firmly on the internal workings of the museum profession itself. While this profession does not have the advantage of being able to ring-fence work in museums through making membership of a professional body a pre-requisite for employment in the field, it does have, through the professional training and credentials that it provides (see DiMaggio, 1981), the ability to establish common codes of practice and ethics, shared values, and claims to expertise. The development of these enables museum staff to justify what it is that they do, how they do it, and why they do it by reference to these commonly accepted behavioural norms and equally allows them to modify these norms in terms of their own beliefs, ideologies, and values, rather than having change imposed on them from external sources.

Professional Strengths and Political Weaknesses? Much of the discussion in this chapter has been of a general nature about museum professionalism rather than being specifically about New Walk itself. Even so, it is clear that the Museum has had within it a long succession of staff who have taken on board professional values and practices and, indeed, have often been in the forefront of arguments about the nature of the professionalism that museum work entails and about how the profession could and should develop into the future, particularly through its early commitment to staff training and education in museum practice as one of the early locations providing the Museums diploma training laid down by the Museums Association in the early 1930s. This led to the national recognition of New Walk as a training centre to the extent that it was one of only six ‘centres’6 designated by the Museums Association for demobilisation training in museums work following the Second World War (CM 27/13, 20/7/1945).

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As a means for providing greater autonomy from potential interference in the work of the Museum, the development of a strong and detailed professional ethos has proved to be a valuable resource, allowing for the creation of a varying list of justifications for the work that has been undertaken within the Museum and providing the possibility for changing this work in the light of both developments in staff (and professional) thinking and in the external expectations and demands that are made of it. The fragmentation of the museum profession has been helpful in this as it has widened the range and type of arguments that can be made use of in this justificatory exercise. By operating on a basis of practical expertise and knowledge that is not freely available outside of the doors of the museum, a form of professional mystification can be established that makes it difficult for the technical rationalities that form a part of this expertise and knowledge to be countered. Indeed, the only way in which it can be managed by non-professional actors is by the application of other rationalities that museum professionals do not have control of. The classic example of this would be the ability of elected politicians to appeal to the fact of their democratic credentials and the superiority of these to other forms of rationality. In the case of New Walk, this clash of rationalities has perhaps been most obviously seen in those cases where a combination of economic and political rationalities have enabled local councillors to enforce cuts in expenditure onto the Museum, where technical arguments about service provision have failed to sway the case (see Chapter 5). It is telling that expenditure restraint has been one of very few issues that has seen professional technical rationality being overridden by other actors. In general the day-to-day activities that have taken place inside the Museum have been left to the professional staff to organise and provide, with this independence of action being assisted by the actions of key individuals – as pointed out by Hill (2011, 132) – such as committed councillors like Squire and Trotter, who could act as a bridge between potentially clashing rationalities. Given the generally low priority that has been assigned to New Walk over many years, the occasions when it has been directly, and usually adversely, affected by the decisions of councillors have been very few in number, and the lack of political debate about the role, function, and activities of the Museum is indicative of either simply this low status or the willingness of the Council to let professional rationalities rule the Museum roost (see Chapter 6). While it is clear that the Museum comes very low in the service-providing hierarchy of the Council, and has been so more or less since it was established, this could actually be an explanation for why the professional ethos of the Museum has been able to become so well-entrenched: the fewer the occasions when New Walk has become a symbol of political conflict, the more it has been able to rely on the professionalism of its staff to justify its independence. By continuing to provide services in such a fashion that it does not generate public outrage or comment, the Museum has effectively been left to its own devices. The consequence of this is that for as long as the professional commitment and capabilities of the staff at New Walk enable it to perform its functions, the stronger its professional basis appears to be. The fact that it and its services are not political footballs means not that it has such political strength that nobody wishes to challenge it but simply that it

The Professionalised Museum: Changing Museum Managements 141 is so weak that nobody thinks it worth the time and effort to challenge it. Such a view certainly underestimates the political strength of the Museum as a symbol of civic pride and virtue, but symbolic power is not the same as the power of a coherent professional underpinning that can justify this status. New Walk, therefore, does have real professional strength associated with it, but it has limited political power to go alongside this. The professional strength of the Museum is effectively underwritten by the fact of high quality service delivery, and this could be taken to provide a vital counterbalance to its overall political weakness.

Conclusions The changes to New Walk that are associated with the technical rationality that museum professionalism rests upon could be argued to be either the result of internal changes in how museum professionals undertake their and the Museum’s service-providing role or to the impact of external, environmental changes in how external actors perceive the Museum. Given that the other changes that have affected the Museum – social, economic, and political – have generally been of the sort that leads New Walk into a reactive position, it has become evident that in the case of how service provision within the walls of the Museum takes place, most of the impetus has been derived from internal sources. Such a view would not be a surprise to the staff of the Museum. It should also not be a surprise to the external world either, as in many ways this is simply a reflection of the fact that controlling the technical work processes upon which an organisation depends usually leads to a control of the organisation itself – at least in terms of occupational professionalism. In terms of organizational professionalism, however, the picture is different, with externally imposed, or at least externally supported, changes in management practices as a consequence of the shift towards generic models of management from the 1970s onwards, being of much greater significance in terms of organisational reporting and control than have been those deriving from changes in professional practice. Clearly changes have been driven from different directions, for different purposes, and with different outcomes. This leads to a mixed, if not positively confused, picture of change in the context of the working practices and traditions that the Museum has made use of, with some being entirely based upon the technical rationality that staff make use of and others being based on the political rationality that other organisational members can make use of. Explaining the changes that have taken place in this area is difficult to summarise through the application of the models of change that have been used so far. This is largely because none of them is particularly effective in making sense of the direction and content of the changes that have been introduced into the working patterns of the Museum. This is partly because ‘change in museums has been the product of determined effort but has also been fragmentary and ad hoc’ (Wilkinson, 2014, 222), but also because there has been some tendency for similar solutions to problems to be re-invented over the course of time. This is not the result of some form of institutional isomorphism – where different organisations adopt similar solutions to common problems (as argued in a number of the contributors

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to Powell & DiMaggio, 1981) with these solutions spreading between organisations engaged in the same field of work – but, instead, is more a consequence of institutions forgetting what it is they have done in the past in similar circumstances or taking on board new ways of doing the same old things. Given that the changes are operational rather than organisational in nature, it is not surprising that the same tropes get repeated over the course of time. Thus, despite considerable technical changes over the last 50 years in, for example, how cataloguing is done within museums as a result of the development of information technology, the need to maintain a register of what museums have in their collections has been accepted as a necessity from the start. Thus, New Walk now has a computerised catalogue, but this is simply a modern equivalent (and a better organised one) than the original catalogue that the Lit and Phil made use of in the 1840s and 1850s (4D 56/108/1–190). In a similar vein, the exhibition and display of the collection itself has undergone changes from the ‘show as much as possible’ views of the mid-nineteenth century to the selectively displayed version of today, via such intermediate stages as the arrangement by chronology and type of article of 1873 to provide an educational arrangement of the Museum’s archaeological material (CM 27/1, 1/4/1873), the development of comparative displays of natural history material shortly afterwards (CM 27/2, 21/9/1880), the removal of ‘the plaster statuary’ to free space in the galleries (CM 27/3, 11/9/1888), and the request from the Museum Committee for the paintings in the Art Gallery ‘to have the name of the artist, the title of the picture, with the date of birth of the artist, and in the case of deceased artists, the date of death, placed upon all pictures, also the name of the Donor in the case of presented pictures’ (CM 27/4, 1/9/1892). The shortness of time between each of these steps demonstrates that the art and craft of display have been, again, something of an ever-present in the history of the Museum (and the rearrangement of the displays from 1914 to 1933 showing similar patterns of marginal change can be followed in the guides that the Museum produced during this period: 4D 56/77/5/1–8 as discussed in Chapter 3). The fact that the changes in display styles in the Museum have tended to be rather conservative in comparison with some of the more populist/outré/fashionable/trendy developments of recent years (see Balzer, 2015 for a critical view of many of these, and Obrist, 2011, for a much more accepting one) is partly a reflection of the mainstream nature of New Walk as a museum, and partly a consequence of the space limitations that the Museum itself imposes on what is possible in display terms. It is possible to see the changes in New Walk that have arisen as a consequence of changes in the professional practices of the staff involved, and in the technical rationalities that are a part of these, as being largely marginal and incremental in their nature. Over the course of 170 years, there have clearly been developments in each of these areas, but they have also clearly not been sizeable enough to merit a view of them as being the equivalent of the significant changes that would be needed to make the development of the Museum as representative of any version of punctuated equilibrium. If anything, New Walk has been an active participant in influencing the development of museum professionalism in general, and this development has had some effect upon the work that is undertaken in the Museum, but neither of these

The Professionalised Museum: Changing Museum Managements 143 have been of such a scope or scale as to make it the case that New Walk has been the primary motivating force in either dimension, and neither does it make the changes that are involved large-scale. While the shift of power towards the paid curators and away from the Honorary Curators between 1870 and 1895 could be seen as being important for the professionalisation of the Museum, it was, in practice, simply a part of the gradual movement of responsibility for the Museum from the Lit and Phil to the Town and its local authority. In this regard, the real meaning of the change lay in the shift of responsibility for the Museum to the elected representatives of the people of the Town, following the shifting political rationality that had been in play from the 1830s onwards, and not in the changes in technical rationality that the professionalisation of the Museum contributed to. In effect, the changes that are involved in affecting the Museum are multiple and cross-cutting, and the professional ones are of a largely secondary order in comparison with the previously discussed social, economic, and political changes that have also affected the Museum, even if less directly than has been the case with professional change. Given that none of these changes have themselves provided examples of punctuated equilibrium, it is unlikely that professional change, being of lesser importance, could be seen as a better example. Neither is it the case that the changes in professionalism and professional practice are representative of anything approaching path dependence. The inevitability of the direction of change that path dependence implies – the view that change can only really take place within the limits that have been established by prior events, structures, and practices – underplays the importance of the shift in overall control of the Museum from the Lit and Phil to the Town Council. While this shift does not represent an example of punctuated equilibrium in terms of the Museum, it did provide the framework within which the professional status of the Museum could be established and enforced, and it could also be seen as something of an inevitable consequence of the shifting pattern of political responsibility and control at the local level that had been taking place during the nineteenth century. This inevitability (if this is what it was) had nothing directly to do with the manner in which the Museum was managed and controlled – these were derivatives of the broader pattern of change that was represented by the politicisation and professionalisation of local government during the nineteenth century. In this respect, professionalism in the museums field could be seen as a by-product of larger-scale political and social changes rather than being anything unique to museums themselves. This would, again, imply that what occurred inside the Museum was simply reactive to external pressures, which, in this case, would be something of an overstatement. The precise causal nature of the relationship between the politicisation of local government, the professionalisation of British society (Perkin, 1989), and the development of an autonomous museum profession is by no means clear – to put it mildly – but each did have an independent role to play in how New Walk’s professional basis was established and developed. Certainly, museum professionals have clearly had an effect on the organisation and management of the Museum and its practices, and this effect is not simply the result of external pressures. Indeed, in many ways the staff of New Walk served to actually create the dominant patterns of professional museum work in the United Kingdom throughout the

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twentieth century, acting as an important part of the network of individuals and groups who made the profession what it was. Whether the multi-causality of influences on the professionalisation of New Walk qualifies as simply the identification of the factors that served to create the conditions for path dependency to develop is, however, impossible to determine, leaving a major question mark over whether path dependency is an adequate description of the changes that professionalism has bought to the Museum. Despite the weaknesses of the path dependency argument, it still operates as a potential means to explain what professionalism has meant for the Museum. The multiple streams and advocacy coalition arguments are, if anything, even weaker than both path dependency and punctuated equilibrium in explaining this, as both of them demand the identification of clear sets of actors and individuals who steer and control the direction and speed of change, and this is something that cannot, with comfort, be applied to the professional dimension of museum work, particularly in the light of the fragmentation of museum professionalism into discrete sets of activities over many years and the shifting nature of many, if not most, of the people who have been engaged in the field. While key individuals – such as curators and councillors – can be identified at particular moments, it is hard to see them as being a part of a coherent coalition of actors pushing for particular policy solutions at any given time as there has been a tendency for there to be a clear separation between the internal and external dynamics of museum professionalism in the case of New Walk. This is largely a consequence of the fact that groups have always been more significant in the world of professionalism than have individuals, and these groups have been made up of a shifting set of actors who do not necessarily share common interests or intentions about the nature of museum work. This lack of group cohesion is partly tied to the fact of museum differences, with the interests of the ‘nationals’ usually being quite separate from those of local authority or trust or independent museums, and the interests of large museums being rather different to those of small ones. This differentiation between museums is equally matched by differences between disciplines within the museum, with the concerns and interests of education staff being rather different from those of conservation staff, and each differing from those with responsibilities for display, even if on some matters – such as pay and working hours – there are shared interests between them all. While the Museums Association acts as a general co-ordinator of interests for the museums profession as a whole, it is itself rather hamstrung by the lack of much in the way of common interests across the entirety of the profession. This lack of commonality means that the ability of the Association to act as a single voice for the profession is rather restricted, as seen by the fact of museum staff being commonly underpaid when compared with those with similar roles in other work-places (see Chapter 4) demonstrating the weakness of the association when faced with one of the few areas where there is a clearly defined common interest for its membership. Overall then while there are some possibilities for making sense of change in the Museum by applying the different general explanatory models of change that are being used, these are not particularly powerful. The overall picture is one where the distinction between occupational and organizational professionalism carries

The Professionalised Museum: Changing Museum Managements 145 far more weight in dealing with change than do ideas, for example, of punctuation or dependency. In occupational terms, the museums profession has clearly had a major effect on the day-to-day functioning of New Walk by establishing and developing sets of ideas and principles that can be readily applied to the work of the staff employed by the Museum. In organizational terms, however, the impact of the profession has been of far less significance than have ideas and practices derived externally to the field, particularly those associated with generic management models. While these generic ideas have been subject to modification as a result of the ability of professional staff to appeal to arguments derived from technical rationality (Gray, 2014, 2016; Gray & McCall, 2018; McCall, 2016), it has not been possible for museum staff to simply ignore them, meaning that, like it or not, they must be made use of in some form or another. Thus, while the Museum is still reactive to external pressures and demands, it has more scope for independent action than has been seen to be the case when looking at social, economic, and political change and the Museum.

Notes 1 In the case of Germany, the work of Winckelmann was important for the development of the German museum field, particularly in his emphasis that objects ‘had to be properly displayed and preserved’ (Sheehan, 2000, 13). In France, Lenoir (Poulot, 2008) and Quatremere de Quincy (Ruprecht, 2014) were early commentators on museums, whose work was important for the development of French museums and, in the case of the latter, helped to lay the groundwork for later discussions of museum ethics in terms of the sources of museum collections. 2 In modern terms, this is equivalent to conservation practices and techniques. 3 The most important, and frequent, of which was the Museums Journal, which originated as a monthly publication in 1901 before becoming a quarterly in 1962 (Lewis, 1989, 16, 66) and reverting to a monthly publication in 1989. 4 His biggest impact on displays could be seen to be what he did when a travelling circus had two tigers and an elephant die in the same week whilst visiting the town. The tiger display was seen as something of a triumph of the taxidermist’s art (and Montague Browne himself was a skilled taxidermist): see Brown, 2002, 9, for a grainy photographic image of this display. 5 The Leicester Mercury report on this funding issue can be taken to show the continuing positive view of the Museum that the local Leicester media still holds and the liking of local papers for a good shock-horror story headline that is followed by a more nuanced report that the reader needs to examine in detail to uncover a somewhat less horrifying reality than the headline would imply. 6 The others being Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, and Manchester, with both Bristol and Manchester also being early promotors of diploma training.

References Archive Material CM 1/5 Borough of Leicester Common-Hall Book 9th November 1847 to 20th day of March 1850. CM 27/1 Museum Committee Minutes 30th November 1871 to 28th August 1877.

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CM 27/2 Museum Committee Minutes 11th March 1879 to 14th December 1886. CM 27/3 Museum Committee Minutes 11th January 1887 to 19th February 1895. CM 27/4 Art Gallery Committee Minutes 21st April 1880 to 11th May 1903. CM 27/7 Museum and Art Gallery Committee Minutes 17th January 1911 to 7th October 1919. CM 27/12 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 12th November 1935 to 2nd May 1939. CM 27/13 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 16th May 1939 to 14th October 1946. DE 3220/6 Administration Policy 1882–1954. DE 3277/171 Museums and Libraries Committee Minutes 28th May 1954 to 17th July 1959. DE 3277/174 Museums and Libraries Committee Minutes June 1967 to February 1974. DE 6345/34/1 Moore, R (nd), Leicester Museums, 1835–1974. DE 7971/33 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes June 1973 to May 1975. 4D 56/77/5/1–8 What to See in the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery (editions 2–9, December 1914 to August 1933). 4D 56/108/1–190 Bundle of Notes on the Provenance of Museum Specimens Extracted from the Literary and Philosophical Society, Minute Books, Account Books etc. Also Rough Notes for Inventories etc. 4D 56/453/2 Leicester Museum Floor Plan 1873.

Other Sources Ambrose, T & C Paine (2012), Museum Basics (3rd Ed, Abingdon, Routledge). Auerbach, J (1999), The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (New Haven, Yale University Press). Balzer, D (2015), Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else (London, Pluto). Brown, C (2002), Cherished Possessions: A History of New Walk Museum & Leicester City Museums Service (Leicester, Leicester City Council). Department of Education and Science (1973), Provincial Museums and Galleries: A Report of the Committee Appointed by the Paymaster General (London, HMSO) (the Wright Report). Diesing, P (1962), Reason in Society: Five Types of Decisions and their Social Conditions (Urbana, University of Illinois Press). Di Maggio, P (1981), ‘Constructing an Organizational Field as a Professional Project: U.S. Art Museums, 1920–40’, 267–92 in W. Powell & P. DiMaggio (Eds), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Evetts, J (2006), ‘Short Note: The Sociology of Professional Groups’, Current Sociology, 54, 133–43. ffrench, Y (1950), The Great Exhibition: 1851 (London, Harvill). Flower, W (1996a, [1889]), ‘Museum Organisation’, 1–29 in Essays on Museums and Other Subjects Connected with Natural History (London, Routledge/Thoemmes Press). Flower, W (1996b, [1893]), ‘Modern Museums’, 30–53 in Essays on Museums and Other Subjects Connected with Natural History (London, Routledge/Thoemmes Press). Forgan, S (1994), ‘The Architecture of Display: Museums, Universities and Objects in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, History of Science, 22, 139–62. Genoways, H & M Andrei (Eds) (2008), Museum Origins: Readings in Early Museum History and Philosophy (Walnut Creek, West Coast Press). Gray, C (2002), ‘Local Government and the Arts’, Local Government Studies, 28/1, 77–90 (DoI: 10.1080/714004133).

The Professionalised Museum: Changing Museum Managements 147 Gray, C (2008), ‘Instrumental Policies: Causes, Consequences, Museum and Galleries’, Cultural Trends, 17, 209–22 (DoI: 10.1080//09548960802615349). Gray, C (2014), ‘“Cabined, Cribbed, Confined, Bound In” or “We are not a Government Poodle”: Structure and Agency in Museums and Galleries’, Public Policy and Administration, 29, 185–203 (DoI: 10.1177/0952076713506450). Gray, C (2015), The Politics of Museums (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan). Gray, C (2016), ‘Structure, Agency and Museum Policies’, Museum and Society, 14/1, 116–30 (DoI: 10.29311/mas.v14i1.629). Gray, C & V McCall (2018), ‘Analysing the Adjectival Museum’, Museum and Society, 16/2, 124–37 (DoI: 10.29311/mas.v16i2.2809). Gray, C & V McCall (2020), The Role of Today’s Museum (Abingdon, Routledge). Greenwood, T (1996 [1888]), Museums and Art Galleries (London, Routledge/Thoemmes Press). Hatton, A (2012), ‘The Conceptual Roots of Modern Museum Management Dilemmas’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 27, 129–47 (DoI: 10.1080/09647775.2012. 674319). Hill, K (2011), ‘Whose Objects? Identity, Otherness and Materiality in the Display of the British Past c1850–1950’, Museum History Journal, 4, 127–37. Holmes, K & A Hatton (2008), ‘The Low Status of Management Within the UK Museums Sector’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 23, 111–17 (DoI: 10.1080/09647770802011948). Jevons, W (1883), ‘The Use and Abuse of Museums’, 53–81 in Methods of Social Reform and Other Papers (London, Macmillan). Jukes-Browne, A (1903), ‘A Design for the Tops of Table-Cases’, Museums Journal, 2, 227–28. Kavanagh, G (1991), ‘The Museums Profession and the Articulation of Professional SelfConsciousness’, 39–55 in G. Kavanagh (Ed), The Museums Profession: Internal and External Relations (Leicester, Leicester University Press). Kreps, C (2003), ‘Curatorship as Social Practice’, Curator, 46, 311–23. Leicester Mercury (2019), ‘All of Leicester’s Museum Curators are Being Made Redundant’, Leicester Mercury, 7/3/2019. Lewis, G (1989), For Instruction and Recreation: A Centenary History of the Museums Association (London, Quiller Press). Lowe, E (1903), ‘The Registration and Numeration of Museum Specimens–Plymouth’, Museums Journal, 2, 258–66. Lowe, E (1930), ‘The Cinema in Museums’, Museums Journal, 29, 342–45. Markham, S (1938), A Report on the Museums and Art Galleries of the British Isles (Other than the National Museums) (Edinburgh, T & A Constable). McCall, V (2016), ‘Exploring the Gap between Museum Policy and Practice: A Comparative Analysis of Scottish, English and Welsh Local Authority Museum Services’, Museum and Society, 14/1, 98–115 (DoI: 10.29311/mas.v14i1-678). McCall, V & C Gray (2014), ‘Museums Policies and the New Museology: Theory, Practice and Organisational Change’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 29, 19–35 (DoI: 10.1080/09647775.2013.869852). McLeod, M (2004), ‘Museums without Collections: Museum Philosophy in West Africa’, 52–61 in S. Knell (Ed), Museums and the Future of Collecting (2nd Ed, Farnham, Ashgate). Mead, S (1983), ‘Indigenous Models of Museums in Oceania’, Museum, 138, 98–101. Miers, H (1928), A Report on the Public Museums of the British Isles (Other than the National Museums) (Edinburgh, T & A Constable).

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Murray, D (1996 [1904]), Museums: Their History and their Use (London, Routledge/ Thoemmes). Obrist, H (2011), A Brief History of Curating (Zurich, JRP|Ringier & Les Presses du Réel). Perkin, H (1989), The Rise of Professional Society: England since 1880 (London, Routledge). Poulot, D (2008), Une Histoire des Musées de France (Paris, La Découverte). Powell, W & P DiMaggio (Eds) (1981), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Ruprecht, L (2014), Classics at the Dawn of the Museum Era: The Life and Times of Chrysostome Quatremere de Quincy (1755–1849) (New York, Palgrave Macmillan). Sheehan, J (2000), Museums in the German Art World: From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism (New York, Oxford University Press). Smith, V & B Waters (nd), Technical Index to the Museums Journal 1930–1955 (No place of publication, Midlands Federation of Museums and Art Galleries). Stearn, W (1981), The Natural History Museum at South Kensington: A History of the British Museum (Natural History) 1753–1980 (London, Heinemann). Swenson, A (2013), The Rise of Heritage: Preserving the Past in France, Germany and England, 1789–1914 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Thomas, T (1935), ‘Costume Display’, Museums Journal, 35, 1–9. Thomas, T (1939), ‘Penny Plain Twopence Coloured: The Aesthetics of Museum Display’, Museums Journal, 39, 1–12. Wallace, A (1900 [1869]), ‘Museums for the People’, 1–15 in Studies Scientific and Social: Volume II (London, Macmillan). Waters, F (nd), Technical Index to the Museums Journal 1956–1966 (No place of publication, Midlands Federation of Museums and Art Galleries). Wilkinson, H (2014), Negotiating Change: Curatorial Practice in UK Museums, 1960– 2001 (Leicester, PhD Thesis, Leicester University).

8

The Instrumentalised Museum Whose Interests Does the Museum Serve?

Introduction The relationship between the internal decisions of museum staff and the external decisions of a wider range of actors working through a number of distinct organisational settings allows for the identification of the relative effectiveness and weight of each in terms of determining what the Museum will be expected to be doing and how it will be expected to be doing it. The changing nature of the relationship between internal and external actors and organisations will be used in this chapter to identify which factors can be understood to have had the greatest impact on Museum practices over the course of the last 170 years, and which circumstances have the greatest likelihood of effecting change in the Museum. As all museums are instrumental in nature – as they are all expected to achieve some goal or another – what determines the precise nature of these instrumental ends is of central importance for understanding the role of museums within societies, and changes in these ends over time can be used to identify how a balance between competing demands can be, and has been, reached at different times. Thus, the question of whose ends the museum is expected to fulfil forms an important focus for this chapter and will build on the arguments of Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 to provide a summary picture of the changing distribution of power between different social, political, economic, and professional actors and the consequences of this for where the effective control of the Museum in policy and practical terms is to be found.

What Is the Museum For? Given the importance of the particular ends to which New Walk is directed for making sense of the role of the Museum within Leicester (and the wider British and international societies within which it is located), a reasonable starting point for the discussion in this chapter is to be found in establishing which ends and which functions New Walk can be seen to have been associated with over the course of time. Identifying these ends and functions will then provide a basis for assessing who has been responsible for assigning them to the Museum and indicating why and how they have changed. Needless to say, New Walk has been associated with a large number of individual functions that have been attached to a wide variety DOI: 10.4324/9780429292491-8

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of ends, with each of these being associated with particular intentions and meanings by their proponents and supporters. While some of these can be argued to be inherent to the very nature of museums – such as being associated with a visiting public – many of them are, instead, imposed on the Museum by a variety of actors, both internal and external to the Museum, and need not be present at any particular time or place. The fact that particular ends and functions can be either inherent to all museums or particular to each single museum example, agreed and accepted, or opposed and imposed – or, indeed, all these at the same time – means that there is no absolute necessity about which combination of them will be in place at any given time and that there is likely to be a continuing process of change associated with them as older ideas are replaced by newer ones, older technologies are complemented by newer ones, and as generational change takes place amongst the proponents of particular mixes of ends and functions. Some of the latter can be quite clearly seen in the shaking-ups of the Museum that were instigated at different times by Ernest Lowe and Trevor Thomas. Lowe arrived at New Walk having already developed a quite clear museums philosophy (as spelled out in DE 3220/6), which he proceeded to implement in terms of the arrangement of the material that was on display in the Museum, the relationships that he saw as a necessity for the Museum, and the professionalisation of the staffing of the institution, much of which was in quite clear distinction to what had been in place before he arrived. Thomas shared some of Lowe’s ideas but was particularly interested in making the Museum accessible to the public – and especially to children – in ways that expanded beyond what Lowe had left in place, with a particular emphasis on the quality of display techniques ‘to make the materials attractive to view and comprehensible to the average intelligence’ (CM 27/13, 30/3/1944), something that he had already thought through in his previous museum employment in Liverpool (Thomas, 1939). Thomas also introduced the first visitor questionnaires for the Museum, covering both individual exhibitions (CM 27/13, 6/6/1941) and other Museum activities (such as the lunchtime music concerts that had been taking place in the Museum since the nineteenth century: CM 27/13, 16/7/1943), with these being radically innovative for their time when an interest in what visitors actually made of what was on display in museums was decidedly unusual. The introduction of new ideas into the work of the Museum has already been noted with the establishment of the guide-lecturer (originally labelled as a ‘guidedemonstrator’) position in 1924 (CM 27/9, 6/5/1924) and the early acceptance of the formal museum ethics statement introduced by the International Council of Museums (DE 7971/38, 2/1/1987); both of which were well in advance of any other British museum – and, indeed, most other museums elsewhere in the world at the time – and both of which were concerned as much with an improvement in the standards of service delivery that New Walk provided as it was with making a statement about the relationship of the Museum with its visitors and with the changing social expectations about what the Museum represented to the people of Leicester, Leicestershire, and the wider world that they were embedded within. The development of the Schools Museum Service in 1931 (Leicester Museums

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Service, nd, 2) was, again, something of a Leicester innovation in the context of the United Kingdom, even if it was based on the earlier American examples of such services that Lowe had reported on in 1928 (Lowe, 1928a, 1928b). This latter innovation also had an effect in terms of new technologies, with the earliest specific reference to technology that exists in the written records of the Museum being found in the example that with reference to the Schools Loan Collection, ‘it is interesting to note that other authorities are adopting similar methods, even to the extent of having their portable cases and carriers made by the same Leicester firms’ (Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, 1938, 7). While this is hardly comparable to the impact that new information technology resources have had on, for example, cataloguing and digitising the museum collection, it is indicative that even in the more technologically unsophisticated past, the Museum was still capable of leading developments in this area, and this at a time when display technology in the shape of cabinets and cases was still largely operating in the terms that had been established in the eighteenth century, if not even earlier. Each of these developments and changes were firmly rooted in the world of the Museum itself, being concerned with how the Museum operates and with how it relates to the outside world. The opposite case of how the outside world affects the Museum can also be identified from the earlier discussion in Chapters 3 to 7 with reference to the expectations and demands that are made of the Museum by a variety of external actors. In some ways, there are actually very few direct attempts to influence what the Museum does or how it goes about doing it. More common are the indirect impacts that the outside world has on the Museum and how Museum insiders – the staff and local councillors with a responsibility for the Museum – either directly react in a positive fashion to these events or simply make use of them in undertaking their own activities. While some of these indirect effects are quite clear, as in the case of the cuts to Museum expenditure that the Museum has faced from the 1920s onwards – with these necessitating either delays to Museum developments, as with the continuing saga of attempts to establish a new Art Gallery for the City that is physically separate to the Museum, or to limitations on what activities the Museum can undertake in both the short- and long-term as a result of staff recruitment problems, as seen in the immediate aftermath of World War II, when out of a total staff complement of 20 there were eight unfilled vacancies, largely as a result of there being better-paid jobs elsewhere (DE 3277/169, 23/7/1948). Neither these long- or short-term effects were deliberately intended by those in central or local governments, who were imposing cuts on the Museum as the responsibility for managing such cuts lay with senior Museum staff and the councillors on the Museum Committee, but they clearly had an effect. Other effects, however, are less obvious on the surface of Museum life but are real nonetheless – as with the changing status of both women and migrant communities within the City, as discussed in Chapter 4; both of which have had an effect upon how the Museum functions. The combined effect of these internal and external factors on the life of the Museum are thus both widespread and indeterminate. In both cases, however, their effects are almost entirely dependent upon how they are managed and made

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sense of by the Museum staff themselves rather than being laid down by nonMuseum actors as necessities that must be pursued, and this is largely based on the privileged position that occupational professionalism (Evetts, 2006, 140–1) has allowed Museum staff to develop over time, as discussed in Chapter 7, allowing them to escape from detailed control by non-Museums staff and councillors of many of the operational aspects of their work. In combination with the relatively benign neglect of the Museum and its activities that the Council has generally shown towards New Walk more or less since its establishment in the 1840s, and the early importance and dominance of the Honorary Curators system originating in the Lit and Phil, this control of the operational detail of the Museum has allowed it to mark out an independent sphere of action that is largely free from external interference. Given that national governments have had even less concern with the actions of local museums, this independence from direct interventions by elected politicians into the work of New Walk has been considerable, even if not as complete as some fervent supporters of museum independence might wish it to be. The division between internal and external sources of direction and control can be extended to take into account the functions that New Walk has been expected to undertake during the course of its existence and those which it has actually undertaken, bearing in mind that these are not necessarily the same thing. Not surprisingly, the functions that have actually been undertaken in the Museum have been primarily those established by the staff, with these, in turn, being primarily associated with the Museum as a museum. In other words, the dominant focus of museum functionality as it has been directed in the case of New Walk has been derived from the museum as an institution, rather than from the Museum as an organisation. The functions that are involved in this respect could be described as forming the ‘classical’ idea of the museum – with some additions – incorporating as they do the activities of collection acquisition and conservation; collection exhibition, management, interpretation, labelling, classification and care; and the use of the collection for the purposes of research, communication, scientific study, education, and amusement (Gray & McCall, 2020, 17). This array of activities is clearly based around the premise that ‘the collection’ lies at the heart of any museum (as discussed in Chapter 3) and should form the core part of what a museum does. Wider sets of functions concerned with the uses to which the collection can be put and the social and community roles that museums can contribute to (such as providing a representation of local identity and acting as a guardian of place or contributing to social inclusion, social identity, and health improvement, Gray & McCall, 2020, 19–20), are more concerned with the ‘museum as an organisation’ whose actions and outlook are inseparable from its location within a broader social context than the ‘museum as an institution’ idea allows for. In practice, this distinction between the museum as institution and as organisation is much more flexible, if not positively fluid, and museum staff rarely draw a hard-and-fast line between the two. The awareness that museums are more than simply the sum total of their collections has a number of implications for the activities and foci that are employed by museum staff in undertaking their roles, and the collection

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itself can often become a means to an end rather than an end in itself during the process of translating principles into practices. This emphasis on how the collection is made use of was prefigured by the distinction drawn between ‘conservation’ and ‘utilization’ by Trevor Thomas in 1944 (CM 27/13, 30/3/1944) with the major limitation on the latter being seen as the limited display space that the Museum had available to it not only in wartime conditions but also in terms of overall capacity. The gradual development of other ideas about the role and values of museums in society over the last 50 years have also served to emphasise the distinction between conservation and use and have equally served to demonstrate that professionals and their values are not the only actors and ideas that need to be considered when looking at the functions museums provide. The translation of external demands and ideas into the internal practical arrangements that the Museum makes use of is, however, by no means straightforward, as is commonly shown when descriptions of this process descend into such vague and fluffy terms as being concerned with ‘the climate of opinion’ about museums rather than anything more definite. This vagueness in linguistic usage, often tied up with the use of distinctly ambiguous phraseology when discussing specific museum, as well as more general cultural, policies (see Gray, 2015), does provide an opportunity to make a link between museums and the wider social, political, and economic environments within which they are operating, even if it does not tie the discussion down to anything that has a real explanatory benefit when talking about museum change itself. Despite this, it is possible to identify gradual shifts in what the Museum is seen to be undertaking through its activities, with these shifts rotating around a consistent bed-rock made up of common opinions and beliefs, even if these are expressed in different ways and with different emphases at different times. These opinions and beliefs are concerned with the ultimate purposes that the Museum is thought, by staff in particular but also by local councillors, to be concerned with, with these being based on a number of central functional activities. Unlike the focus on the collection and its usage, these activities consist of much more practical areas, even if how this practice is to be made real is a matter of considerable debate. Gray and McCall (2020, 17) have divided the potential range of museum functions into four categories – core, intrinsic, use, and social/community – with these being open to control and management by a range of social actors. Each of these sets of functions have served as a focus for the work of New Walk at different times, with their importance being determined by a combination of individual and group attitudinal opinions and beliefs about museum services derived from a combination of internal sources; the physical demands and possibilities that the Museum has available to itself; and the expectations of museums that are derived from external sources, not only to the Museum or even to museums as a whole, with these sources being related to a wider set of policy concerns that are not only prioritised over Museum concerns, but are also seen as an essential necessity for a wide range of organisational types, not simply museums, to act upon. In the case of the first of these potential sources for determining museum importance, it could be pointed out that in the case of New Walk, as well as many other

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museums around the world, particularly, as might be expected, ‘public’ museums, a first order of significance was always attached to the public benefit that could be assigned to it by its engagement with the local population of Leicester, with this gradually expanding to wider and wider geographical areas over the course of time. As was said in the original ‘memorial’ of the Lit and Phil when proposing that the Town establish a public museum: The formation of a Public Town Museum is highly desirable, it being an important means of refining the public taste, of yielding amusement and instruction to all orders of society and especially of inducing habits of thought and study amongst the working classes. That the increased population, the advanced state of public intelligence, and the general thirst for knowledge (in no place more conspicuous than in this large town) clearly indicate that such a museum would be duly appreciated by the inhabitants. (CM 1/4, 16/9/1846) Not only did the geographical scope of the Museum increase over time, but so also did the range of people that the Museum sought to engage with through an active policy, for example, of encouraging organised visits by schoolchildren, with this being firmly in place by the early 1900s (Leicester Town Museum and Art Gallery, 1905, 18). This early commitment to public engagement may have taken a rather different form to those which have been developed more recently (see Black, 2005, for some of these), but the same underlying functional principle of an active encouragement of visiting the Museum was clearly in place at an early date in the history of New Walk. The rather cyclical view of museum functionality that this implies, with the same subjects becoming a central focus of policy activity on a seemingly rotating basis over time, matches the view of Wilkinson (2014, 212) about ‘the processes by which national and local government policies shaped museums’ from 1960 to 2001, which were also seen as ‘more cyclical than linear’. An explanation for this could be that there are only so many functions that museums are capable of undertaking for strictly museum purposes so that the changing expectations and demands about what museums could and should be doing that are held by museum staff and, in the case of local authority museums, the councillors to whom they are accountable have only a limited range of things that can actually engage with. This limited optional palette does not, however, mean that precisely the same results will arise from a reappraisal of museum activities: changing ideas and beliefs will also play a part in this, and these can be drawn not only from museum practitioners and managers but also from the worlds of academia and public opinion – or, at least, from those parts of these groupings that actually have an interest in museums and their management. In much the same way as in the case of visitor encouragement, the recent views that museums can, for example, function as contributors to social identity (Dewdney et al., 2013) and social inclusion (West & Smith, 2005) whilst also being catalysts for social change (Dodd et al., 2002) and contributing to human dignity (International Council of Museums, 2019) can all also be

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found in the ‘Memorial’ that the Lit and Phil laid before Leicester Town Council in 1846. In general terms, this indicates that while there may be, and are, changes in the precise content of what will be done in the Museum and the exact manner by which this will be done, there is actually a large degree of consistency in terms of the functional expectations that New Walk has been operating with since its establishment. In terms of the physical space that New Walk occupies, there are clear limitations affecting what can possibly be done in museum terms – something that has been regularly noted by both staff and visitors since the nineteenth century. The expansion of the museum space through the extensions of 1879, 1892, 1913, 1930, and 1932 and the major rebuilding work of 1955–58 and 1966–67 have still not solved the problems for the display and exhibition of, for example, the art collection that the Museum possesses and which financial strictures on the Town and City Council have not helped to resolve – and it is probable that this will continue to be the case for some time to come. Clearly this physical factor is of a different order to those which can be more directly manipulated by either museum insiders or outsiders and is largely over-looked in many examinations of museum change (although see MacLeod, 2011, 2013 where this forms a prime focus for discussion), but it has an effect both upon which functions can conceivably be undertaken within New Walk and how they might be carried out by establishing physical boundaries within which the Museum effectively must operate. In the case of the impact of non-museum actors and non-museum policy concerns, the demand that National Portfolio Organisations, those that are funded, in part, directly by Arts Council England, have a digital policy and strategy to enable them to ‘make savings, transform business models and reach audiences’ (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, 2018, 34) adds a functional requirement to New Walk that is premised on a belief that one particular version of digital activity is a necessity in the brave new world of information technology. The fact that museums have been developing quite different types of digital activity over many years (Parry, 2007), and which are specifically designed for their utility to museum functionality, is not relevant to this new demand, which is premised on quite different logics of engagement. In this case, a shift in technical rationality away from the ideas of museum professionals towards those of digital experts changes not only the focus of some aspects of museum work but also the balance of power between the groups that contribute to the policy world that museums operate within. This external demand has expectations about the consequences of its introduction even though these are rather pious ones and are based upon ideas of organisational operation that many National Portfolio Organisations are distinctly uncomfortable with and which are so vague as to be positively ambiguous (Gray, 2015). Unlike the contexts that affect museum functions that are derived from either internal sources or the physical possibilities that New Walk has available to it, the externally derived pressures to change what museums do, and how and why they should be doing it, raises the recurring idea that external demands and pressures produce forms of an instrumentalisation of museum work that shifts the focus

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of this work away from simply museal matters towards those that are largely, if not entirely, non-museum-focused in nature (Gray, 2008), in effect making the museum a tool that can be manipulated for any number of a variety of purposes rather than it having a core purpose of its own. The idea that museums can be simply separated from the entire social, economic, technical, and political contexts within which they are located and function may be a nicely romantic one that stresses the independence of museums and their staff from the mundane concerns of the quotidian world, but it is also a deeply political idea in its own right that denies the possibilities of anybody except museum staff having anything relevant to say about museums at all. Given that museum staff have themselves actively pursued bottom-up policy attachment (Gray, 2002, 2017) strategies that have the same end result as the top-down instrumentalisation of museums does – an engagement with policy issues that are not, in themselves, directly related to museums – there is something of a confusion of argument taking place in this respect: either museums and their staff should be kept isolated in some sort of policy cordon sanitaire, or they should be actively engaging with the world outside of the doors of the museum to find ways in which they can contribute to a wider form of public benefit than museums by themselves can provide. In these terms, the range of potential functional demands that can be placed on museums from either internal or external sources becomes a matter of not only the functions themselves, or even the uses to which museum functionality can be applied, but one of the purpose of museums, as both an institutional form and as individual organisations, in the first place.

Museums, Purposes, and People In practice, the purposes of museums are necessarily tied in with the subject-matter of who they are deemed to be working with and for. It has already been argued that questions of accountability and responsibility have a direct connection with both of these concerns: those to whom museums are answerable are generally assumed to have some interest in what they are doing (otherwise why would they wish to have any museum role at all?), whether in terms of broad policy or narrow personalisation. In the case of the former, the fact that museums are multi-functional organisations (Gray & McCall, 2020, 8, 44–49) means that they could be expected to participate in any activities at all that those in positions of authority over them wish them to pursue. In the case of the latter, museums could be expected to serve any individuals or groups that they might be directed to as long as no ethical boundaries are overstepped in the process. Inevitably these two distinct concerns overlap when matters of practice are concerned as no policy is without an intended audience or expected human target, and a concern with ‘the public’, however this is defined, demands that there be some activity that is aimed at it if it is to have any meaning attached to it at all. While there have been examples of both of these reasons for the Museum to be engaged with particular policy matters and/or particular groups of individuals, the motivations for introducing them vary between them. In brief, engagement

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with policy matters is generally either directly introduced by external actors or is created by internal actors who can see which way the wind is blowing. In either case, the Museum would appear to be reactive to external events, demands, and issues rather than being a leading force in undertaking policy development on non-museum matters. How these externally derived policy demands are dealt with is also generally left to the abilities of Museum staff to create effective responses to them. When internal actors do take the lead in reacting to external pressures and demands before they are forced to, this is more normally driven by a wish to control the outcome of activity on their own terms, rather than having these things imposed upon them. Examples to demonstrate the policy niceties that these differences represent can be found throughout the history of New Walk, and what follows are simply some selected cases to illustrate the argument. Something of an extreme event that demonstrates the complexities involved in trying to assign direct responsibility for the actions that the Museum has undertaken in the past can be seen in the response to threats to the security of the Museum building and collections. While insurance policies have been a longstanding concern of the Museum (as the decision to ‘increase’ the insurance coverage on both to £5,000 [equivalent to £505,000 in 2014 prices] in 18721 makes clear [CM 27/1, 20/11/1872]), these have simply been the standard practice of any public institution and have generally been more concerned with accident and theft than anything else. The consequence of more direct dangers to the Museum and its collections through hostile acts has, however, occasionally been the subject of detailed action by the Council and the staff of the Museum. While air raids during the First World War took place in some parts of the country, they did not reach Leicester (Wilson, 1986), and the Museum Committee had already decided, even before such raids became more frequent, ‘that the insurance against aerial raids be not effected’ (CM 27/7; 27/4/1915), displaying what turned out to be justified optimism, even if shortly after this date the Committee did agree to pay ‘a premium of more than £60 upon an Insurance against air raids’ (CM 27/7; 12/7/1915).2 By the 1930s, however, people had become far less sanguine, largely as a result of the bombing raids on civilian targets during the Spanish Civil War (Thomas, 2001).3 Following a Museums Association meeting in 1938 regarding ‘precautions to be taken for the protection and safe-guarding of pictures and other objects at museums in the case of air-raids’, it was resolved by the Museum Committee that special cases be made for the most valuable items, a search should be launched for ‘premises remote from the town’ to which items could be removed, and what the best means for protecting objects that could not be moved would be (CM 27/12; 30/3/1938), although none of this seems to have been done until after ‘the state of emergency last week’, when the Munich conference had handed Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in Germany in September 1938 (CM 27/12; 13/9/1938 and 4/10/1938). Even so the perils to the Museum were not restricted to those arising from mainland Europe: a bombing campaign in 1939 by the Irish Republican Army after it had ‘“declared war” on England’ (Patterson, 1997, 84) led to the National Gallery expressing concern about the safety of the pictures which it had loaned to New Walk ‘in the light of the recent bomb outrages’ (CM 27/12; 7/2/1939). The fact

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that safety precautions had been agreed upon meant that when the Second World War did begin, the Museum was in a position to put into practice what it had planned at a very early stage, with almost everything in place two days after the declaration of war (CM 27/13; 5/9/1939). One result of the outbreak of war was that the cost of insuring New Walk, and the parts of the collection that had been retained within it, rose dramatically, with the £5,000 insurance coverage in 1872 increasing to £146,023 by 1941 (equivalent to £65,841,771 in 2014 prices4) (CM 27/13; 23/5/1941), not helped by the Museum having suffered ‘slight damage’ of £5 (equivalent to £247 in 2014 prices) when an incendiary bomb hit the Museum during a German air-raid in November 19405 (CM 27/13; 3/12/1940). The policies that were made use of during the period from 1914 until 1945 were in some respects, in the case of the insurance of the Museum and the collection for example, simply a continuation of well-established practices that did not require any startling innovations to take place. Responsibility for this aspect of the Museum rested firmly on the shoulders of the councillors on the Museum Committee and, through them, the Council as a whole. The practical implications of external events, however, devolved quite straightforwardly onto Museum staff, with the responsibility for the care of the Museum and its collections during wartime being left entirely to them. While the Museums Association had discussed the subject, there is no evidence of direct instructions being given to museums about what should be done with their assets to protect them, with the sole report on the subject being written on the behalf of the national museums (British Museum, 1939) and being rather thin on anything other than self-evident generalities (see Lewis, 1989, 58). A consequence of this is that it is almost impossible to precisely identify the source of any of the activities that New Walk – or any other museum in the country for that matter – undertook in the face of armed conflict. At the same time, it is evident that there was a general acceptance within the museum world that something needed to be done. This was clearly not a matter of ideology, legitimacy, or power, although technical rationality may have had some effect, but is an ample demonstration of the effect of external influences on what took place within both the museums world in general and New Walk in particular. The focus of the activity that was generated was equally as clearly on the preservation of museums as collections. The question of who would benefit from this preservation would appear to belong in the realm of self-evident truths: the beneficiaries would be anybody and everybody who would have the collection available to them after hostilities ended. This fits neatly into the idea that museums are a form of public good, providing benefits to everybody – whether they visit museums or not – simply by the mere fact of their existence, and this does rest firmly on the ideological and legitimising underpinnings that museums make use of. In this respect the question of who, precisely, are the beneficiaries of having New Walk in existence becomes largely irrelevant as it is the case that everybody derives benefit from it. To some extent, this chimes in with the evident belief that the Museum is a general one, providing exhibits and displays that would either directly appeal to somebody or which would open up the world to them by

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showing something that they had not considered before. Given that the control of the content of the exhibitions and displays that the Museum provides rests squarely with its professional staff, and that there is no particular community of interest which is seen as having a special place that necessitates direct provision of material for them, then the Museum remains a collective endeavour rather than a specific one. This does have a necessity of its own – the assumption being that the interests of the people of Leicester as a whole will lead the way in terms of what is shown – which could be taken to mean that the Museum is essentially a white, middle-class citadel of privilege with much of the collection having little in common with, or of appeal to, large parts of the population of the City (see Chapter 3). This concern once again takes the question away from New Walk itself to a broader concern with the social, ethnic, sexual, religious, gender, political, and economic structures that exist within British society as a whole. At best, this implies that New Walk serves simply as a reflection of these structures rather than being actively engaged with them – either to change them or to buttress them up. As seen in Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7, it is hard to find any evidence that there have been self-conscious decisions to do either of these things as, in general, the Museum has been largely a reactive rather than proactive organisation, even if more critical visitors may assume that a lack of deliberate intention to change things is a form of acquiescence to the way things currently are and that this demonstrates the political and social conservatism of those with responsibility for the Museum. Such a bleak view of the Museum is certainly possible but it can only be accepted if a teleological view of New Walk is taken on board – that there is one overriding purpose of the Museum and that is the standard to which it must be held and the end by which it must be understood and assessed, and anything else is mere puffery that denies the centrality of this purpose. The certainty of such a position denies the validity of any other interpretations and understandings of the role of the museum in its multiple contexts. The view that this could generate is one where New Walk is simply a tool that has been, and is, manipulated by a range of non-museum interests for non-museum ends. This rather stark position casts the Museum in the position of being something of a cat’s paw with no real authority or power of its own. A slightly less bleak view would be that the Museum is more of a collaborator with those who have power and authority, going along with what is demanded of it rather than being a positive contributor to the making of museum policies and practices. A much more positive take on things would see New Walk as an active partner in these policies and practices on the basis of the technical rationality that the staff of the Museum are able to appeal to to justify and legitimise what takes place within it. The reality would appear to be some combination of each of these interpretations of the status of the Museum, with which version is in force at any given time being dependent upon what the issue is that is being examined. This may be something of a failure to attempt to be definitive about the role of the Museum as an entity, but it is an accurate reflection of the sheer variability of Museum activity over time and across cases and the multiple forms that this activity has taken. In effect, the purposes to which the Museum has been put has always been contingent upon the combination

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of agents who are directly or indirectly involved in determining what it is there to do and the structural advantages and disadvantages that they have either available to them or which they actively make use of (Gray, 2008, 2014, 2016). To some extent, this is simply a restatement of the long-standing idea that there is always some mix of structure and agency behind all the activities that humans undertake, with this deriving from the argument of Marx (1973, 146) that people may well make history but certainly not of their own free will, and definitely not in circumstances that they have themselves chosen. The alternative to accepting this indefinite picture of the Museum is to assume that what happens is simply the result of blind fate – or dumb luck – both of which deny any agency to the Museum at all, and both of which fly in the face of the argument that has been developed here.

Choices, Structures, and Agents Ultimately the question of what purposes New Walk is designed for can only be answered by examining the historical context within which it is to be found. Over time there have certainly been some purposes that have had a more overt status than have others: the educational possibilities that the Museum has afforded to the inhabitants of Leicester, for example, has been a continuous concern since the opening of New Walk, even if what these possibilities might be have changed over time from a rather vague enlightenment ideal in the mid-nineteenth century to a much more prosaic engagement with the demands of the National Curriculum for schools since the late 1980s, and current expectations about the role of the Museum in terms of social engagement and the development of community identity and cohesion can equally be traced back to nineteenth-century versions of the same ideas. The fact that the same labels can be attached to the activities that the Museum has undertaken at different times does not mean, however, that these activities are identical with each other. Standards, expectations, and beliefs about Museum activities have undoubtedly changed over time, and these have, in turn, led to changes in the precise activities that have been and are undertaken within its confines. Examining the history of the changes that New Walk has undergone and undertaken over time demonstrates that there is no continuous, common thread that ties them all together. Instead, there has been a continuing process whereby individual changes have taken place that are driven by different sets of actors for different sets of purposes, with these changes being located in quite distinct social, economic, political, and technical settings. While some sets of actors who are involved in the processes of making or contributing to changes – such as Museum staff and local authority councillors – have remained consistent across the board, other actors have had a more transitory association with Museum change – such as national politicians and a range of external organisations, such as the Museums Association, the International Council of Museums, and more recently, Arts Council England. In much the same way the structural constraints (or limits) that the Museum has been operating within have varied between the continuing (as in the case of the dependency on local taxation income for much of the funding of the

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Museum) and the variable (as with the diverse policy agendas that the Museum has been expected to contribute to over time). In both these continuing and variable cases, there have also been a large number of changes taking place with their own effects on what the Museum does and how it can do it. The extent to which this kaleidoscope of change is anything other than an expression of a vibrant and active society and organisation is a different order of concern. Certainly the absence of any coherent pattern behind the changes that have taken place in the case of New Walk would suggest that the story of the Museum can, indeed, only be made sense of in the decontextualised form of history as the story of ‘one damn thing after another’, where the meaning and significance of individual events gets lost in a continuing succession of other events occurring at both the same and at other times and driven by entirely different motivations. Indeed, the fact that there can be a certain perception that what appears to be ‘change’ is simply a new labelling of already existing practices and ideas as a result of policy fashion demanding that something needs to be done about an issue regardless of whether what is currently being done works or not, could indicate that it is not simply claims about making change that matters so much as the size of the changes that are actually being made. In the cases of policy instrumentalisation and attachment, there has certainly been some evidence that museum staff have continued to do what they believe is appropriate and effective whilst claiming that they have actually made changes in practice and, equally, that they simply state what it is that they are doing in new language that is designed to show that they are following the new demands and expectations that have been given to them. In neither case is ‘change’ any more than window-dressing that is intended to show a willingness to buy into whatever is the latest policy fashion being introduced from outside (Gray, 2002, 2008, 2017). In terms of the purposes and functions of the Museum over time, this question of the ‘size’ of change raises a number of concerns about the role of different actors and the impact of different structural factors in influencing what it is the Museum does and how and why it is doing it. Many of the original activities of the Museum were so generic in nature – collecting specimens and educating and amusing the local population (CM 1/4, 16/9/1846), for example – that it would be something of a surprise if they ceased to be of relevance at any stage in the Museum’s history regardless of what else has taken place since then. Clearly, there have been changes in terms of the actors who have been assigned responsibility for managing and providing these activities, principally in terms of the increased professionalisation of the museum staff since the 1840s, even if this marks a change in the type of staff who are engaged in this rather than their replacement by another category of actor altogether.6 Even if museum professionals were downgraded in terms of their status within local government as a whole, particularly since the 1960s, they have still retained a core position within museums themselves where their control of museum practice has remained in place, certainly in the case of New Walk even if not necessarily across the country as a whole. The consistency with which the Museum has been dealt with by its local authorities – the Borough, Town, and City Council between 1846 and 1974, and

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from 1997 onwards, and the County Council between 1974 and 1997 – has been marked by what could be termed complacency, or benign neglect, or just about adequate support, but hardly anything remarkably beyond this, as the continued saga of constructing a new Art Gallery demonstrates. The discretionary nature of museum services within local government makes this unsurprising, particularly in circumstances where increased demands on, and decreasing budgetary resources for, statutory services are in place, and the relevant local authorities with responsibility for New Walk deserve credit for maintaining the Museum as well as they have: the fact that local councillors have largely been operating with one hand tied behind their backs in financial terms ever since the establishment of the Museum indicates that while the Museum has not necessarily been a central component of attention for councillors, it has been consistently supported and has not been unduly burdened with expenditure or staffing cuts any more than any other City service. The pressures placed by national politicians on the local councils that have had responsibility for New Walk have had little direct effect upon it, being more concerned with broader policy matters than simply museum ones. While there have occasionally, if extremely rarely, been expectations of the role that local (and national) museums might be expected to play within British society (most clearly expressed in Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2000, 2001), these have never been supported with the resources that would be required to allow these roles to be effectively and efficiently fulfilled. As such, the expected reactive role of museums in this respect is far less evident than might have been anticipated. The fact that, as argued in Chapter 6, museums have been able to demonstrate how they were already doing most of the things that national governments wished them to do, or could relabel their activities to let them fit in with these ‘new’ expectations, actually demonstrates that the centre, in this case if no other, is actually in a relatively weak position in terms of museums and their services. This relative weakness is particularly evident in the fact that there are a distinct lack of either carrots (incentives) or sticks (penalties) that can be used to get the country’s local authority museums to fall in with national government expectations, as well as it being the case that the preponderance of technical expertise rests firmly within the museums sector rather than national government itself.

Conclusions The relative lack of national government capability to control what it is that local authority museums do and exist for demonstrates that while these museums are often driven by external currents to the extent that all they can do is react to external pressures and events, this is not always the case. On many occasions, museums such as New Walk can make their own choices, particularly in terms of the actual implementation of policy decisions that have been made elsewhere. This freedom is largely based on the technical rationality that is employed by the Museum’s professional staff to justify and legitimise the choices that they make and demonstrates that the Museum is not simply a policy puppet that is blown

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about by whatever winds of policy fashion happen to be in force at any given time but is, instead, capable of acting as an independent agent in setting its own policy agendas. Certainly this is most evident in the standard, ‘core’ museum functions of acquisition, conservation, exhibition, labelling, and interpretation (Gray & McCall, 2020, 17) as it is equally the case in the overwhelming majority of British museums, whatever may be the case elsewhere in the world where external actors can sometimes, if not often, trump the choices that have been made by museum professionals (see Knell et al., 2011; Knell, 2016) on the basis of their control of other rationalities than are not available to museum staff. Making sense of continuities and changes in the purposes and intentions of museums, and identifying who are the key actors and what are the underlying structural conditions that affect these, is clearly not a straightforward task, particularly as change and continuity are not independent of each other. In the case of New Walk, at times it is evident that there are large-scale continuities in how the Museum functions that can be cut across by smaller-scale changes in individual elements of this functioning. Thus, the decision to originate and develop the Museum’s expressionist art collection represented a change in the Museum’s collections policy,7 particularly given that the Art Gallery failed to take advantage of the ‘sale of pictures rejected from the German Galleries’ that took place in 1939 (CM 27/13; 6/6/1939), as did the decision to hand over the Museum’s collection of hunting paintings to the County Council as part of the agreed division of the spoils after the City Council re-established its own museums service following local government reorganisation in 1997 (DE 7971/47, 8/1/1999, Appendix K; DE 7088/2, 9/2/1998), but these did not affect the fact that both the City and the County had detailed collections policies in place (in the City’s case dating back to the foundation of the Museum). Much the same combination of continuity and change can also be seen in other areas of the Museum’s work such as recordkeeping, where the shift from handwritten cataloguing of specimens and items (as seen in the records of the Lit and Phil from 1849 to 1901: see 4D 56/108/1– 190) to a computerised system that was developed from the late 1970s onwards (DE 7971/34, 3/3/1978, Appendix N) marked a technical rather than a functional change in this area. This resurrects the problem identified in Chapter 1 that there is no means available to determine whether these changes are big enough to be labelled policy punctuations marking a new equilibrium point for the Museum, or whether they are simply adjustments to already existing practice. As neither of these changes led to anything resembling a reappraisal of the ‘ultimate’ purposes of the Museum, they could easily be classified as being merely marginal changes in practice, even though each could also be seen as marking significant sea-changes in either how the Museum undertook its work in terms of cataloguing the collection, and what the focus of this work was deemed to be in terms of what the collection would in future contain. This raises the point that change is not made up of a series of one-off events of greater or lesser size, significance, and importance but is, instead, more like a continuing process of activity and choices that only attain their meaning – and their significance and importance – when viewed over a long period of time.

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Given the largely static nature of the purposes and functions that have always been a part of what New Walk is, this long span of time could be taken to mean that the Museum itself is simply a bastion of conservatism (as has already been given as a possible label to attach to the Museum), but this would be to severely underestimate where ‘change’ can be seen to exist and to what it can be attached. In the case of New Walk, ‘change’ is to be seen in the practices and policies that the Museum makes use of; the people who it is either answerable to or who it seeks to attract and provide services for; and the economic, political, and social environments within which it resides. In each of these areas, it would appear to be the case that the effective decisions are primarily driven by the staff of the Museum, with a secondary status being assigned to the local authorities which have democratic responsibility for them. The motivating factors that either directly lead to these decisions or which have an indirect role to play in the taking of them can be found the environments and contexts within which the Museum operates, but none of these have actually led to changes in the underlying functions and purposes that the Museum exists to fulfil. While punctuated equilibrium would appear to be largely ineffective in explaining these concerns, the idea of path dependence may be more successful. The idea that there are limits within which choices are made and that these limits are not only difficult to overcome but also serve to trammel the range of possible choices that could be made could be used as a metaphor for the seeming stability that New Walk displays, even in the face of the considerable political, economic, and social changes that have taken place within Leicester City itself over the last 170 years. Such stability would appear to be a consequence of the Museum as an institution rather than anything else, with the dominance of particular museal ideologies affecting how New Walk is understood and made to function by the key actors in the field. The image of an ideologically constrained set of parameters within which choices are made that this argument forms a part of could be seen to apply to any museum rather than just to New Walk, and this would fail to account for the sheer variety of the choices that are, and have been, made around the world in terms of museum practice, as a comparison of New Walk in the nineteenth century, for example, with the experience of local museums in France at the same period (Sherman, 1989) would show – let alone the range of developments that have been introduced more recently (as seen, for example, in Black, 2005; Message, 2006). Thus, whilst there may be an element of path dependence at the institutional level, there is no evidence that this is carried across to the level of organisational practice, with different museums around the world exploring radically different approaches to undertaking the same functional requirements (as seen, for example, in the Chinese context as discussed in Varutti, 2014). Again, there is little, if any, real evidence that either the multiple streams or advocacy coalition approaches to dealing with change have much relevance for explaining the purposes and functions that New Walk has been engaged with. At the institutional level, as discussed previously, there have been almost no changes of note in terms of either of these framing devices, even if there have been changes at the organisational level in terms of how these purposes and functions are put

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into practice. These changes have formed the subject of previous chapters where the explanatory potential of the multiple streams and advocacy coalitions frameworks for making sense of them has already been dealt with. The limitations of both approaches in the face of the institutional stability, if not stasis, of New Walk’s functions and purposes indicates that neither is particularly applicable to the alternative concerns that this chapter has been dealing with. Overall, then, while it has proved possible to discuss a range of changes in organisational practices in this chapter, it has run into something of a brick wall in terms of institutional meaning with stability forming the core of what the Museum is held to be there for and what the activities are that are seen to be involved in allowing it to do that job. The range of approaches that have been examined to explain change have been shown to be largely unfitted to the task of dealing with such a combination of stability of purpose and change in practices, with those that are applicable to the former falling rather short of applicability to the latter, and vice versa. Whether this is merely a difficulty for this particular dimension of the Museum or whether it is a matter of wider analytical concern forms a part of the discussion in the final chapter.

Notes 1 As an example of the inflation that has affected museums over time, the valuation of the assets of the Museum and Art Gallery in 1889 (excluding the actual New Walk building itself) was £10,464 (equivalent to £12,012,672 in 2014 prices) in comparison with the £2,000 insurance valuation in 1872 (equivalent to £202,000 in 2014 prices) of the Museum’s assets: 4D 56/5; 4D 56/6. Even allowing for an expansion in the number of items in the collection, a 60-fold increase in valuation is, to put it mildly, something of a considerable growth. 2 Although it should be noted that Kavanagh (1994, 27) claims that New Walk ‘in 1915 paid a premium of £57, a not inconsiderable sum’ (equivalent to £12,326 in 2014 prices), the minute (CM 27/7; 27/4/1915) makes it clear that the insurance quote would not be met, and it was at a later meeting (12/7/1915) that payment was agreed. 3 The closest that the Museum came to active involvement in this war was when a local girls’ school offered some drawings to the Museum with the sum paid for them (15 guineas) ‘to be devoted to the Spanish Medical Fund’ (CM 27/1; 29/10/1937). 4 In both cases, the cost of replacing the building was higher than the cost of replacing the entire contents of the collection. 5 This is clearly a trivial amount of damage in comparison with that suffered by, for example, the museums in Bristol and Hull, which were largely flattened: see Pearson (2017). 6 The shift towards a generic management model from the 1960s onwards (Maud, 1967; Hatton, 2012; Wilkinson, 2014, 63) had an effect on the training that Museum managers received and saw less emphasis on specific museum skills, but this still did not lead to the replacement of the trained museum professional by a new breed of museum managers with no background knowledge of museums available to them. 7 This can be traced from the first ‘communication with Mrs Tekla Hess’ (CM 27/13, 1/4/1941), to the mounting in February 1944 of the ‘Mid-European Art Exhibition to be organised and arranged by the Leicester Branch of the Free German League of Culture in Great Britain’ (CM 27/13, 12/1/1944), to the purchase of pictures from the exhibition shortly afterwards (CM 27/13, 17/3/1944). This collection has grown through purchase, donation, and gift to be the best collection of expressionist art in the United Kingdom.

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References Archive Material CM 1/4 Borough of Leicester Common-Hall Book 9th November 1844 to 20th October 1847. CM 27/1 Museum Committee Minutes 30th November 1871 to 28th August 1877. CM 27/7 Museum and Art Gallery Committee Minutes 17th January 1911 to 7th October 1919 CM 27/9 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 1st January 1924 to 5th April 1927. CM 27/12 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 12th November 1935 to 2nd May 1939. CM 27/13 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 16th May 1939 to 14th October 1946. DE 3220/6 Administration Policy 1882–1954. DE 3277/169 Museums and Libraries Committee Minutes 13th November 1946 to 5th May 1950. DE 7088/2 Leicester City Council Arts, Leisure Services and Museums Committee Minutes 12th of June 1996 to 8th of June 1998. DE 7971/34 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes July 1975 to July 1978. DE 7971/38 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes April 1986 to February 1988. DE 7971/47 Leicestershire County Council Arts, Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes May 1997 to February 1999. 4D 56/5 Borough of Leicester Inventory and Valuation, 25th March 1889 Museum Specimens etc. 4D 56/6 Borough of Leicester Inventory and Valuation, 25th March 1889 Art Gallery. 4D 56/108/1–190 Bundle of Notes on the Provenance of Museum Specimens Extracted from the Literary and Philosophical Society, Minute Books, Account Books etc. Also Rough Notes for Inventories etc.

Other Sources Black, G (2005), The Engaging Museum: Developing Museums for Visitor Involvement (Abingdon, Routledge). British Museum (1939), Air Raid Precautions in Museums, Picture Galleries and Libraries (London, Trustees of the British Museum). Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2000), Centres for Social Change: Museums, Galleries, Archives for All (London, Department for Culture, Media and Sport). Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2001), Libraries, Museums, Galleries and Archives for All: Co-operating Across the Sectors to Tackle Social Exclusion (London, Department for Culture, Media and Sport). Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (2018), Culture Is Digital (London, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport). Dewdney, A, D Dibosa & V Walsh (2013), Post-Critical Museology: Theory and Practice in the Art Museum (Abingdon, Routledge). Dodd, J, H O’Riain, E Hooper-Greenhill & R Sandell (2002), A Catalyst for Change: The Social Impact of the Open Museum (London, RCMG). Evetts, J (2006), ‘Short Note: The Sociology of Professional Groups’, Current Sociology, 54, 133–43.

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Gray, C (2002), ‘Local Government and the Arts’, Local Government Studies, 28/1, 77–90 (DoI: 10.1080/714004133). Gray, C (2008), ‘Instrumental Policies: Causes, Consequences, Museum and Galleries’, Cultural Trends, 17, 209–22 (DoI: 10.1080//09548960802615349). Gray, C (2014), ‘“Cabined, Cribbed, Confined, Bound In” or “We are not a Government Poodle”: Structure and Agency in Museums and Galleries’, Public Policy and Administration, 29, 185–203 (DoI: 10.1177/0952076713506450). Gray, C (2015), ‘Ambiguity and Cultural Policy’, Nordic Journal of Cultural Policy, 18/1, 61–75. Gray, C (2016), ‘Structure, Agency and Museum Policies’, Museum and Society, 14/1, 116–30 (DoI: 10.29311/mas.v14i1.629). Gray, C (2017), ‘Local Government and the Arts Revisited’, Local Government Studies, 43, 315–22 (DoI: 10.1080/03003930.2016.1269758). Gray, C & V McCall (2020), The Role of Today’s Museum (Abingdon, Routledge). Hatton, A (2012), ‘The Conceptual Roots of Modern Museum Management Dilemmas’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 27, 129–47 (DoI: 10.1080/09647775.2012. 674319). International Council of Museums (2019), Museum Definition (At: https://icom.museum/ en/activities/standards-guidelines/museum-definition/ (Accessed: 30/9/2019). Kavanagh, G (1994), Museums and the First World War: A Social History (London, Leicester University Press). Knell, S (2016), National Galleries: The Art of Making Nations (Abingdon, Routledge). Knell, S, P Aronsson, A Amundsen, A Barnes, S Burch, J Carter, S Hughes & A Kirwan (Eds) (2011), National Museums: New Studies from Around the World (Abingdon, Routledge). Leicester Museum and Art Gallery (1938), Thirty-Fourth Report to the City Council (Leicester, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery). Leicester Museums Service (nd), Leicester Museum and the Schools: An Illustrated Account of the Work of the Schools Service Department (Leicester, Leicester Museums Service). Leicester Town Museum and Art Gallery (1905), Fifteenth Report to the Town Council (Leicester, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery). Lewis, G (1989), For Instruction and Recreation: A Centenary History of the Museums Association (London, Quiller Press). Lowe, E (1928a), A Report on American Museum Work (Dunfermline, Carnegie United Kingdom Trust). Lowe, E (1928b), ‘Notes on American Museums’, Museums Journal, 27, 208–17, 238–46. MacLeod, S (2011), ‘Towards an Ethics of Museum Architecture’, 379–92 in J. Marstine (Ed), The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics (Abingdon, Routledge). MacLeod, S (2013), Museum Architecture: A New Biography (Abingdon, Routledge). Marx, K (1973), ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon’, 143–249 in Surveys from Exile: Political Writings, Volume 2 (Harmondsworth, Penguin). Maud Report (1967), Report of the Committee on the Management of Local Government (London, HMSO). Message, K (2006), New Museums and the Making of Culture (Oxford, Berg). Parry, R (2007), Recoding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change (Abingdon, Routledge).

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Patterson, H (1997), The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, Serif). Pearson, C (2017), Museums in the Second World War: Curators, Culture and Change (Abingdon, Routledge). Sherman, D (1989), Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). Thomas, H (2001), The Spanish Civil War (4th Ed, London, Penguin). Thomas, T (1939), ‘Penny Plain Twopence Coloured: The Aesthetics of Museum Display’, Museums Journal, 39, 1–12. Varutti, M (2014), Museums in China: The Politics of Representation After Mao (Woodbridge, Boydell). West, C & C Smith (2005), ‘“We are not a Government Poodle”: Museums and Social Inclusion Under New Labour’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 11, 275–88 (DoI: 10.1080/10286630500411259). Wilkinson, H (2014), Negotiating Change: Curatorial Practice in UK Museums, 1960– 2001 (Leicester, PhD Thesis, Leicester University). Wilson, T (1986), The Myriad Faces of War (Cambridge, Polity Press).

9

‘Semper Eadem’? Stability and Change at New Walk

Introduction Using the motto of Leicester City (which translates as ‘Always the same’1), this chapter brings together the argument that has been developed through the course of the book as a whole. Changes in museum practice over the course of more than 170 years in the context of New Walk Museum and the relationship of these changes to a variety of social, political, professional, and economic factors can be used to answer questions about the choice and imposition of museum practices over time, the internal and external sources of change over time, and the relationship between stability and change in museums. The consequences of these for a consideration of how change in the museum can be understood, in both general and particular forms, forms a focus for the discussion and what these consequences imply for museums in the future, as well as for New Walk itself, will be identified and explained.

Change, Choice, and Imposition Clearly there have been numerous examples of change in terms of both the Museum itself and the City in which it is located, with some running in parallel with each other, some occurring independently of each other, and some being simply sui generis. The idea that there may be some overriding genius loci (or ‘spirit of place’) that presides over what takes place in particular locations and which serves to differentiate one place from another depends upon there being sufficient differences between areas to make the idea applicable and, secondly, that there are no other explanations available to make sense of those differences that do exist. To identify which changes are being considered and how they are being considered both need to be clarified before the act of explanation – and comparison between places – can be effectively undertaken. So far this book has dealt with the question of which changes at a rather generic level by making use of the broad labels of ‘social’, ‘economic’, ‘political’, and ‘professional’ change. Alongside these, the status and contents of the Museum’s collections and the purposes and functions that the Museum has been associated with have also been examined to identify other types of change that DOI: 10.4324/9780429292491-9

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have affected the Museum. It has become evident that the relationship between what takes place at the level of the Museum and what takes place in each of these other areas of change is by no means straightforward, and the role of the Museum in either leading, participating in, or simply reacting to changes that are taking place outside of the doors of New Walk varies considerably in terms of each of the subject of change, the time at which change takes place, and the time span over which change occurs. There are rarely – if ever – specific instances at which change suddenly appears out of nowhere. Instead, change appears to percolate its way across the organisational firmament at different rates, with some instances occurring fairly quickly in comparison with others that are much slower to take effect. Given that change also takes place at different rates in different areas – with social change, for example, usually being somewhat slower than has usually been the case with professional change – identifying the effects of one type of change on another becomes even more complicated. As has been stressed before, there is no continuous stream of change feeding through all areas of social life at the same time. Instead there are a series of discrete changes taking place at different speeds in different areas of existence. While these individual changes can be considered to be independent events in their own terms, in practice they are never entirely independent as a consequence of the overlapping nature of their occurrence. Given that there can be a self-reinforcing of change in one area as a result of changes that are taking place in other areas, the spill-over effects of change are always likely to be considerable. The outcome of this is that, except for ease of analysis, there is not a lot of point in simply concentrating on a single arena of change by itself, particularly as there are also geographical differences in terms of the effects of any individual change: what happens in Leicester is not necessarily the same as what happens in Derby, Coventry, and Nottingham (Leicester’s nearest big-city neighbours), and neither is it likely to be the same as what occurs in Carlisle, Penzance, and Margate, which are not only geographically rather farther-flung English locations but are also considerably smaller places. The particularity of every individual case of change that this points to does not mean that general conclusions cannot be drawn about the bases of change, the motivating factors that underpin it, how it is dealt with, and what the consequences of it are. This is important insofar as while the idea of the activist museum has become increasingly popular in the museums world, the evidence base to demonstrate that museums actually are significant social actors is rather thin on the ground: to use an expression that drives some people mad with frustration, museum academics often ‘talk the talk’ about museums being positive social agents, leading the way in managing change, but there is little except anecdotal evidence to show that museums actually ‘walk the walk’ in this area, with museum professionals often being deeply cynical about such claims and their utility for anything except the generation of positive publicity for their institutions. If museums, therefore, are far more reactive to instances of change than they are proactive in creating or dealing with it, then something of a reappraisal of their role within society may be called for.

‘Semper Eadem’?: Stability and Change at New Walk 171 Certainly the argument that has been developed to here is that museums have almost zero effect in leading the way in terms of social, political, and economic changes in society. With social and economic change, museums are always dependent upon what happens in society and the economy: society and the economy as a whole are not dependent upon what happens in museums. At best, museums can act as contributors in dealing with the consequences of social change, for example, by using their exhibitions and displays to indicate how societies can, and do, confront underlying social conditions, and through this, they can point to forms of social action that can be used to manage such conditions – as was done with the ‘Motherhood and Infant Welfare’ exhibition in 1915 – but they are hardly in a position, where by their own efforts, that can do much more than this. Middleton (1998, 27), for example, identified six major social trends that would be likely to have an effect on museums at the start of the twenty-first century – the emergence of post-industrial society, changing government attitudes, trends in information technology, changes in education, marketing, and performance measurement and monitoring – and it was definitely in the direction of social change affecting museums, rather than the opposite, that formed the basis of the discussion. Indeed, it is hard to see how museums could meaningfully take the lead in setting the agenda for any of these social changes given the lack of impact that they have had in other areas of social change over the last 170 years. In terms of economic change, on the other hand, the Museum is far more subject to the vagaries of grant allocation from the various funding pots that it has access to than it is an active agent in contributing to such change. While it is possible for museums to mount interesting and informative exhibitions about the consequences of economic change – the small New Walk exhibition about the development of the tourism industry following the lead established by Thomas Cook in the nineteenth century, demonstrating the growth of new markets and new items for consumer purchasing, being a case in point – it is hard to mount any effective and persuasive argument based on empirical evidence that museums, either individually or as an economic sector, lead the way in this area.2 In terms of political change, the generally depoliticised status of museums within the British political system has always meant that they have been, at best, peripheral to any real political debates – with even the contested status of the Parthenon/Elgin marbles being something that generates occasional political heat but very little light and which is never as central to British as it is to Greek political life (Beard, 2004; Sylvester, 2009, 33–53). In this respect, it is hardly surprising to find that British museums are generally, at best, commentators on, rather than contributors to, political change. While, again, individual exhibitions and displays are entirely political, in a broad sense, and museums themselves are inherently political organisations and institutions (Gray, 2015), this does not mean that they lead the political discussion that takes place within society in any meaningful way and, indeed, would usually be attacked if they did so. Despite these limitations on the role of the Museum as a consequence of its often reactive status in the face of change, it is still the case that it is in a position where it actually has a responsibility to make choices about how change will be

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either assigned meaning or given embodiment in what the Museum does and how it does it. In this respect, the role of professional change acquires importance as it has usually been the staff of the Museum who have taken the lead in managing the consequences of social, political, and economic change within both Leicester and the wider world. Given that change is not something that simply happens but is something that requires active agency to be given meaning and effect, then the way in which choice is exercised in this process is rather central to the matter. Clearly the management of change, on the basis of the evidence that is available, has been something that has devolved upon two key sets of actors, the staff employed by the museums service and the councillors with overall democratic responsibility for the Museum, with secondary contributions being found in the wider world of museum professionalism in the shape of the Museums Association, and in the decisions and choices of national governments in terms of the legislative context within which the Museum has functioned. Taking these in reverse order, the legal position of local authority museums in general, and New Walk in particular, has not only been established by specific ‘museum’ legislation, as with the Museums Act of 1845 (and its replacement by amending statutes in 1850, 1855, 1866, 1868, and 1885) and the Museums and Gymnasiums Act of 1891, but has also been affected by other ‘non-museum’ legislation, such as the Education Act of 1918, Public Libraries Act of 1919 (see Miers, 1928, 10–13 for a discussion of all these earlier legislative Acts), and in the case of New Walk and the Leicester Museums Service, the Leicester Corporation Act, 1956, each of which made provision for specific changes to existing museum legislation as addenda to more wide-ranging statutory concerns. Indeed, the lack of detailed legislation that is specifically concerned with museums has become something of an expectation in recent years, even if other legislation that has a direct effect on museums has expanded. None of these legislative Acts would have been enacted unless it received parliamentary approval, but none of it was actually deeply contentious in party political terms. Even when there was opposition to either principle or practice, it was muted, particularly when viewed in the light of far more divisive legislation that went through Parliament at the same time. Indeed, it could be argued that the essentially non-divisive nature of museum legislation is itself reflective of a general parliamentary consensus about museums3 over time. Given the absence of an effectively organised national professional representation for museums and their staff until the establishment of the Museums Association in 1889 (Lewis, 1989, 8), it would be difficult to see the earliest legislative development of the museums sector in Britain as being derived from any internal sectoral sources and, indeed, even much later legislation that had direct implications for the role and status of museums found that ‘the Museums Association was to prove entirely ineffective in defending museum’s interests’ (Wilkinson, 2014, 62, discussing the legislation concerning local government re-organisation in the 1960s). If this position of national ineffectiveness were to be repeated at the operational level of individual museums, then claims that professionalism – and, in particular, professional values and ideologies – are important in managing change within the museums sector would be rather debatable. The fact that these internal

‘Semper Eadem’?: Stability and Change at New Walk 173 concerns, insofar as they affect specific museum practice, appear to be almost entirely dominated by professional interests, even in the face of the development of generic management nostrums from the 1960s onwards, demonstrates that there is, at the very least, something of a division between the profession being of minimal national importance and high local significance in its effects. Local councillors have also varied in their role and effect in terms of museum change. At times they have appeared to be simply a mechanism for translating demands that have been made by either other councillors or by national governments – usually for the exercise of financial stringency – while at other times individual councillors have served as valuable mediators between the museum and the wider council, defending the position of the Museum and arguing strongly for improvements for both the staff and the position of the Museum and its collections. The value of the Museum as a symbolic statement of what the City is held to be, and how it presents the City to the wider world, has formed an important element of this, as demonstrated in the recent Radio 4 broadcast concerning the Museum, where its collection is seen to embody a living portrayal of the status of the City as a ‘city of sanctuary’ (MacGregor, 2022) through the use of the expressionist art collection that the City has. Such a position of the Museum has relatively little to do with questions of change and is much more a standard matter of how and what the collection is and the purposes for which it is used. In practice, the answers to these questions are the joint responsibility of both the councillors and the staff of the Museum, and the mutual support of both sets of actors is required for the meaning of the symbolism with which it is associated to be given effect. Finally, the actions of the staff of the Museum are the ultimate source for the management of the changes that take place both within society and within the museum itself. The status of the staff is underpinned by the technical rationality that they can appeal to to justify and legitimise the decisions that they make. While this form of rationality can be set aside in favour of other forms of rationality – particularly economic and political rationalities (Diesing, 1962) – interventions into, and direct interference with, this technical rationality has been extremely rare in the case of New Walk. Even when variations in approach towards the Museum and its collections have taken place, these have generally been the result of staff decisions rather than being driven by any wider sets of interests and concerns, including those of party politicians. At times these politicians have participated in, and contributed to, the decisions that are then made by Museum staff, but by and large, the role of councillors has not tended towards the executive end of the spectrum – although allowance can be made for individual councillors such as Monica Trotter and Charles Squire, both of whom were actively engaged with the Museum over a number of years. Each of these groups of actors have a direct relationship with museum change through their actions – and, at times, their inactivity – either through the choices and decisions that they made or through their acquiescence in the choices and decisions that were being made by other actors. In the case of the latter, these have often had little direct relationship to the Museum but have had indirect effects and unintended consequences through changing the wider environments within

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which New Walk functioned and continues to function. Given the lack of focus on the Museum, or on museums and the museums sector in general, that these indirect and unintended actions and consequences are concerned with, it is consequently difficult to clearly establish the role that they have played in influencing the choices and decisions that more centrally engaged actors have made. The indicative evidence that has to be relied upon as a result of this makes it clear that the Museum has never been a central concern of governments, both national and local, and has rarely, if ever, been a central topic of discussion and debate in the City as a whole. Even the agreement to establish the Museum was over-shadowed by the far more bad-tempered, if not positively rancorous, arguments that were taking place at the same time about who could be buried in the new Welford Road Cemetery (Elliott, 1979, 46), with this argument itself being part of a much larger religious and political divide within both the Town and the Council itself (Simmons, 1974a, 167–73). The establishment of the Museum was seen to have nothing to do with these divides, even though the membership of the Lit and Phil itself was closely aligned with them, and could be seen as something that allowed for a spirit of unity to be expressed that was otherwise in rather short supply when other policy matters were at stake. The fact that the Museum from the outset has not been a matter of strong political feeling is itself informative of why it has been both largely reactive to external events and decisions and largely independent of any particular groups and individuals. The largely depoliticised status that the Museum has had from its earliest days has led to something of a cocooning effect for it, something that has been reinforced by the long periods of single-party dominance within the Council leading, in the main, to conditions of group solidarity and policy uniformity for long periods of time, and where other subjects and concerns could take priority in policy terms as far as the Council was concerned as the Museum did not ring political alarm bells that demanded action. Allied with this local lack of centrality for the Museum is the almost total disregard for museums that has always been in place at national governmental levels. While national governments have had some direct responsibility for the funding of the national museums and has been tending to move towards a more hands-on approach to establishing the priorities and functions of them in place of the more traditional ‘arm’s length’ attitude that used to dominate in all areas of cultural policy (Taylor, 1997), the lack of direct political control of, and power over, local museums has tended to leave these in something of a policy limbo. Despite attempts to lay down priorities for local museums (along with local libraries and archive services) (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2001, 2006, 2017), the failure to back these ambitions up with financial and policy commitments meant that they rather fell by the wayside.4 This line of argument also makes it clear that there has been relatively little in the way of policy imposition from outside as far as New Walk is concerned. The overwhelming majority of policy initiatives that the Museum has been associated with were either internally generated by the Museum itself (as with the development of the schools service in the 1920s and 1930s), or were shared with other museums as part of the professional climate of shared opinions and practices both

‘Semper Eadem’?: Stability and Change at New Walk 175 across the field and internationally (as with the very same creation of the schools service, which was informed by Lowe’s [1928a, 1928b] American experiences on the behalf of the Carnegie Trust), with most of them taking the form of the former, rather than the latter. The outcome of all this is that while certain types of change – notably social and economic ones – had indirect effects upon the Museum and led to the establishment of rather reactive approaches to dealing with such changes, other changes – particularly those associated with the exercise of technical rationality and the role of the museum professional – allowed for the development of a much more positive and largely proactive approach to managing the Museum and its activities and, indeed, positively encouraged invention and innovation in these areas. The extent to which the impact of these various mechanisms behind change has led to the creation of a continuingly renewing Museum, adopting new approaches on a regular basis, or to the creation of a largely static Museum whose purposes and functions are more a matter of continuity than change, is a matter deserving some attention, and it is to these considerations that attention now turns.

Stability and Change in the Museum While it is apparent that there have been a large number of changes taking place in the Museum over time, the significance and meaning of these has been rather variable, to put it mildly. The development of new approaches to the exhibition and display of the collections that New Walk has available to it has to be considered alongside the fact that the City’s museums services have themselves developed and changed over time. During the course of the twentieth century, the city has opened entirely new museums5 dealing with social history, the pre-medieval history of the City (and County), and technology, each of which now houses parts of the collections that the City has available to it. The subjects that these new museums deal with means that what is available to show at New Walk is drawn from a subset of the entirety of the collection. Alongside changes in display practices and techniques, this means that the Museum is now much less cluttered than it was in the nineteenth and early twentieth century (as shown in the Museum guides [4D 56/77/5/1–8]) as a consequence of the choices that have been made over a period of years by Museum staff as to what should be displayed and where it should be displayed. To some extent, however, this is potentially a rather trivial example of change in the Museum given that with certain rare exceptions (the Wallace Collection in London, for example, was prevented from adding to its collections or loaning and borrowing any items to or from other museums until extremely recently), museums regularly look to expand their collections with appropriate specimens and examples to build upon what they already have, even if they rarely develop entirely new areas of collection, particularly in the current climate of economic stringency.6 Given that New Walk has only developed one entirely new area of collection since the 1920s (the expressionist art collection, originating in 1944) and has displayed only one entirely new collection since then (the Attenborough Collection of Picasso ceramics, loaned to the Museum in 2007, and bequeathed

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to the City in 2018), it has been more the case of the Museum staff shuffling the collection rather than anything more startlingly innovative, even if the exhibition and display of the collection has taken new forms over the years. In much the same way, the dominant objectives of the Museum in terms of collection, display, education, and amusement have remained remarkably stable since its establishment in 1848. While some of the language may have changed over time, the basic intentions of having a museum within the City have not. Even during the County Council interregnum between 1974 and 1997, there were only minor changes in evidence from what was already being undertaken in terms of acquisitions, with these changes reflecting wider professional concerns over such matters as museum ethics (with the original Museums Association policy and approach to this having been written by the director of Leicestershire’s museum service in 1976–77: DE 7971/33; 9/5/1975, Appendix E; DE 7971/34; 11/11/1977) and museum collections disposal policies rather than a radical (or even minor and modest) reappraisal of what the museums service should be aiming to represent and achieve. This stability, if not positive stasis, has been argued to be a consequence of the dominance of a particular museal ideology that has become embedded in museums as an institutional form just as much as it is to be seen in museums as individual organisations. If museums are characterised by stability in terms of their overall purposes and functions, with this being reflected in the specific organisational policies and practices that they are expected to undertake by those who have the responsibility for their maintenance and very existence, then discussions of change can only effectively be associated with questions of museum practice. In this respect, there is little doubt that New Walk has been subject to change through the development of new services (such as Guide-Demonstrators and the Schools Service), new approaches to exhibition, education and display, new relationships with the visiting public (stemming back to the basic questionnaires pioneered by Trevor Thomas in the 1940s: CM 27/13, 6/6/1941; 16/7/1943), and the creation of new standards for museum ethics and collections disposal. Once again, much of this development was generated through the efforts and intentions of the Museum’s own staff, with some impetus being provided by changes in the wider world of the museum profession. The lack of direct managerial control that is available to national governments in this regard leaves the balance of power firmly in the hands of the Museum. While the relevant local authorities can, and have, exercised specific forms of management control through the introduction of new reporting and evaluation procedures,7 particularly following the shift towards more generic management practices, this has been largely possible because of the relative absence of well-developed management practices that are specifically oriented towards museums, and this has resulted in many conflicts between museum staff and organisational managers in many museums around not only the United Kingdom (Holmes & Hatton, 2008; Hatton, 2012) but also around the world. While this conflict can exist, it does not necessarily have to, and in many museums, there has been a more general acceptance of the right of line managers to exercise their control and oversight functions, even if this can sometimes lead to a subversion of

‘Semper Eadem’?: Stability and Change at New Walk 177 these functions through the exercise of ‘street-level bureaucracy’ and the decisionmaking autonomy that derives from the exercise of technical rationality (Lipsky, 1980; Gray, 2016; McCall, 2016). In practice, there are multiple sets of relationships between museums and their managers, with these becoming even more complex if and when there are differences in the perspectives that are adopted by different sets of actors in the process of running and taking responsibility for museums themselves (Gray, 2011). While it is rather unrealistic to expect that the practice of managing a museum will remain exactly the same over time, it is also rather unrealistic to think that changes in management practice would only stem from a single source. The interplay between the demands of multiple actors and the expectations that they have of what museums could and should be doing with and for their communities ensures that it would only be extremely rarely that a single model of management could be imposed on any one museum or on museums as a whole. In the example of New Walk, it has actually been the case that museum professionals and other local government managers have both contributed to the development of management standards and practices over time with neither being entirely dominant over the other. Change in managerial terms has more or less, then, been a result of joint enterprise rather than anything else, with each party to change having a variable role in the process. Thus, while change has taken place, it has not been a simple case of imposition but, instead, is more of a negotiated settlement between the demands of multiple actors.

Conclusions Over the course of the last 170 years, New Walk Museum has undergone numerous changes, which is only to be expected over such a long time span. What has been evident is that these changes have not followed some clear-cut evolutionary path, being far more sporadic than this, and involving a series of both deliberate and unintended choices and consequences. Equally, these changes have not always been in the form of entirely original developments but have often been the reappearance of activities that had fallen into abeyance or the revival of things that have always been in existence but which have been assigned a greater or lesser priority at one time rather than another. The sources of the changes that have taken place have been equally as varied, with no one set of individuals or structural factors having dominance over all others over the course of time. While it is clear that the introduction of changes, particularly in the case of changes in operational practices, has usually rested firmly in the hands of the professional staff of the Museum, it has not always been the case that these have been the most important agents in the overall processes of change that the Museum has been subject to. Certainly the social and economic changes that have affected the Museum have had sizeable implications for what it has done, how it has done it, and why it has done it, even if it has proved extremely difficult, if not impossible, to identify clear-cut causal relationships between external change and internal practice, even if such external changes have proven to be extremely important for the Museum.

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Attempts to explain the changes that New Walk has undergone through the application of four major models that have been applied to examples of policy change – punctuated equilibrium, path dependence, multiple streams, and advocacy coalitions – have had only limited utility when viewed across the entire history of New Walk. While each can be seen to have some relevance for explaining some elements of the sources and processes of change, none of them has proven to be consistently applicable and each of them, indeed, has failed to make much, if any, sense at all of at least some of the examples of change that have been examined. Part of this failure is tied in with the entire nature of the change process itself, with the multiple causalities, actors, and structures that exist in any given case making it at least difficult to develop fully coherent accounts of what has been taking place. Thus, in the case of social change and the Museum, the direction of change has been decidedly from society to the Museum, rather than the reverse, with a similar picture being found in the case of economic change and the Museum. In both cases, the Museum has been in a clearly reactive position to external pressures and forces with there being minimal, if any, evidence to show that the reverse has been the case, but even so, it is difficult to discern a consistent pattern to the ways and directions in which these externalities have taken effect. In the case of professional change and the Museum, the picture is effectively reversed, with Museum staff clearly being active agents in leading the direction and speed of changes in practice, with minimal influence being exercised by nonprofessional actors and groups. In the case of more general changes in management practice, other groups, particularly from inside the wider local government arena, have had a clear, and real, effect on the Museum, even if a great deal of this activity can be seen to be in the form of either extensions to already existent Museum practice or the revival of activities that have had precursors in the dim mists of the Museum’s history. Much the same pattern can be found in the case of following the shifting patterns of who it is intended that the Museum serve and which purposes and functions the Museum is required to serve. In this case, there is a long-standing stability of both dimensions of museum activity, with these being largely (if not entirely) derived from the dominant museum ideology and the well-established technical rationality that are core features of the museums world (Gray, 2015). Neither of these has been subject to serious stress and strain from the demands of non-museum actors, partly as a consequence of the open-ended nature of both, which allows them to subsume and transmute external pressures and demands, and partly as a result of the strength of both in providing effective legitimisation and justification for what it is that museums have been doing and currently do. In each of these areas of change, the major models that have been made use of have had their greatest potential on a case-by-case basis over a relatively short span of time rather than in terms of the long arc of time that is covered by the entirety of the history of New Walk. Indeed, the time element of change has its own significance when examining what has occurred within the Museum, particularly when considered in the light of how change is seen to have taken place and who the central actors and factors behind change are seen to be. In effect, the

‘Semper Eadem’?: Stability and Change at New Walk 179 discussion of change in the case of New Walk is largely concerned with the distinction between what Braudel (1972, 20–1) considered to be the medium-term history ‘of groups and groupings’ where change can be relatively gradual, and l’histoire événementielle, where change is associated with individual action and can be relatively rapid, with the longue durée of slow change in the relationships between societies and their environments being more appropriate to considering the overall picture of change and the Museum. Thus, social change has been largely a medium-term event in the cases of both the changing population structure of the City as a consequence of inward migration and the gendered employment position of women within not only the Museum but also within the City Council and society as a whole. These changes are most particularly to be seen at the group level even though individuals can be significant actors in managing these processes of change. In neither the case of inward migration nor gendered employment have the implications of these changes for the City and the Museum been fully worked through, even though both the City and Museum have clearly been affected by the changes that have so far taken place. With economic change, on the other hand, the consequences of this have been seen far more in the short-term, particularly in the context of cuts in Museum financing, which have tended to be an annual event when they occurred (see Chapter 5), and even here the role of individuals in both demanding and managing these cuts is limited, and the role of political parties at both the national and local levels was far more significant than were any particular individuals with a particular linkage to the Museum in affecting the outcome of the process. In the case of professional changes affecting the Museum, their revival and reintroduction of past ideas and practices reinforces the image presented by Wilkinson (2014, 212) of the cyclical nature of the policy processes that underpinned the attempts of both national and local governments to shape the museums sector from the 1960s onwards. Such cyclical development also raises the idea that simple fashion may also have a role to play in influencing change in the Museum, with common practices and norms falling in and out of favour in a parallel manner to that seen with ideas of an issue-attention cycle in other policy areas (Downs, 1972). These differences between types of change demonstrate the difficulties of attempting to draw boundaries around ongoing processes of change and attaching labels to periods of time, and Braudel’s labels are as much attempts to differentiate between the underlying causal factors affecting change as they are to do with attempts to be both specific and precise about time spans. In this context, change in New Walk once again becomes a variable process that is connected with numerous actors operating at different societal levels over different periods of time. Not surprisingly, attempts to produce a singular explanation of the changing museum have proved to be impossible in the case of New Walk. Such a finding is equally applicable to the history of every museum in the world where the chances of finding a single underlying causal factor that can explain the multiplicity of changes that take place over any time period other than the extremely short-term is unlikely to exist. This conclusion demonstrates the significance of New Walk as a particular case: the long history of the Museum allows conclusions to be drawn that are not

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constrained by either a limited time span of attention or to particular examples of change. Instead the 170-plus years that New Walk has been in existence allows for the identification of similarities and differences that would otherwise not be possible if a shorter history were to be the focus of attention. New Walk is an extremely good museum – and this is an example of understatement – that has managed to weather the winds of change in a positive fashion for over 170 years. The Museum’s staff have, at different times, been both locally, nationally, and internationally important for their activities in introducing new approaches to museum work, establishing new standards for museums to work towards and continuing to provide the various publics which they have served with innovative displays and exhibitions. The significance of these achievements must be set against a local, national, and international climate that has not always been productive for museums, particularly when questions of finance are considered. The ability of the Museum’s local authorities to maintain it in the face of competing demands that have often been seen as far more important socially, politically, and economically points to the value that New Walk is seen to hold and embody for the City that supports it, and while change in the Museum is never going to cease, long may this continue.

Notes 1 The City motto was shared by Queen Elizabeth I, which could be taken as something of a pedigree. 2 Despite the claims about the economic contribution that museums make to their local economies, to economic regeneration, and to their local communities, the evidence for this is thin, at best, and is normally based upon invalid arguments that fail to take on board some of the prime fundamentals of economic analysis in the first place and are dealing with something that has been effectively impossible to measure anyway (see Gray & McCall, 2020, 107–28; Selwood, 2002). 3 Generally made up of a complete lack of interest in the subject on the behalf of all except very few members of Parliament. 4 Part of this failure could also be found in the fact that all the priorities that were being set were already things that local museums were, by and large, actively engaged with. If national governments wanted to show that they had been successful in getting their priorities met, then choosing priorities that were already being acted upon rather absolved them from having to commit any new resources to the sector and allowed them to claim success despite, rather than because of, their own activities. 5 And has also shut one of these new museums: the Costume Museum that was located in the city centre and housed in a fifteenth-century building opened in 1974 and was finally shut in 1992, when much of the costume collection was moved to the new County Council Snibston Museum on the site of a closed coal mine, which museum was shut in 2015 and the building demolished in 2016. The costume collection remained with the City Council as the result of the division of the County collections that was agreed between 1996 and 1999: see DE 7971/46, DE 7971/47, DE 7088/72, DE 7088/73, and DE 7088/2 for the full details of the negotiations over this division from the perspective of both the County and the City Councils. 6 The opening of the new Derby Museum of Making, for example, is basically built around already existing items from the City’s collection, alongside new donations from interested parties, rather than having been created ab initio.

‘Semper Eadem’?: Stability and Change at New Walk 181 7 Although it should be noted that this is not as new as might be expected: ‘museums began evaluating their practices in the 1920s, when many were under pressure to justify funding’ (Lawrence, 1993).

References Archive Material CM 27/13 Museum and Libraries Committee Minutes 16th May 1939 to 14th October 1946. DE 7088/72 Leicester City Council Arts, Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes 12th June 1996 to 8th June 1998. DE 7088/73 Leicester City Council Leicester City Arts and Leisure and Leisure Services Committee Minutes January 1998 to August 2000. DE 7971/33 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes June 1973 to May 1975. DE 7971/34 Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes July 1975 to July 1978. DE 7971/46 Leicestershire County Council Arts, Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes March 1996 to February 1997. DE 7971/47 Leicestershire County Council Arts, Libraries and Museums Committee Minutes May 1997 to February 1999. 4D 56/77/5/1–8 What to See in the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery (editions 2–9, December 1914 to August 1933).

Other Sources Beard, M (2004), The Parthenon: Temple, Cathedral, Mosque, Ruin, Icon (London, Profile Books). Braudel, F (1972), The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London, Collins). Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2001), Libraries, Museums, Galleries and Archives for All: Co-Operating across the Sectors to Tackle Social Exclusion (London, Department for Culture, Media and Sport). Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2006), Understanding the Future: Priorities for England’s Museums (London, Department for Culture, Media and Sport). Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2017), The Mendonza Review: An Independent Review of Museums in England (London, Department for Culture, Media and Sport). Diesing, P (1962), Reason in Society: Five Types of Decisions and Their Social Conditions (Urbana, University of Illinois Press). Downs, A (1972), ‘Up and Down with Ecology–the Issue Attention Cycle’, Public Interest, 28, 38–50. Elliott, M (1979), Victorian Leicester (London, Phillimore). Gray, C (2011), ‘Museums, Galleries, Politics and Management’, Public Policy and Administration, 26, 45–61 (DoI: 10.1077/0952076710365436). Gray, C (2015), The Politics of Museums (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan). Gray, C (2016), ‘Structure, Agency and Museum Policies’, Museum and Society, 14/1, 116–30 (DoI: 10.29311/mas.v14i1.629).

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Gray, C & V McCall (2020), The Role of Today’s Museum (Abingdon, Routledge). Hatton, A (2012), ‘The Conceptual Roots of Modern Museum Management Dilemmas’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 27, 129–47 (DoI: 10.1080/09647775.2012. 674319). Holmes, K & A Hatton (2008), ‘The Low Status of Management Within the UK Museums Sector’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 23, 111–17 (DoI: 10.1080/09647770802011948). Lawrence, G (1993), ‘Remembering Rats, Considering Culture: Perspectives on Museum Evaluation’, 117–24 in S. Bicknell & G. Farmelo (Eds), Museum Visitors in the 90s (London, Science Museum). Lewis, G (1989), For Instruction and Recreation: A Centenary History of the Museums Association (London, Quiller Press). Lipsky, M (1980), Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf). Lowe, E (1928a), A Report on American Museum Work (Dunfermline, Carnegie United Kingdom Trust). Lowe, E (1928b), ‘Notes on American Museums’, Museums Journal, 27, 208–17, 238–46. MacGregor, N (2022), The Museums That Make Us: Leicester Museum and Art Gallery (BBC Radio 4 broadcast, originally aired 11/4/2022). (At: bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/ m0016810 [Accessed: 12/4/2022]). McCall, V (2016), ‘Exploring the Gap between Museum Policy and Practice: A Comparative Analysis of Scottish, English and Welsh Local Authority Museum Services’, Museum and Society, 14/1, 98–115 (DoI: 10.29311/mas.v14i1-678). Middleton, V (1998), New Visions for Museums in the 21st Century (London, Association of Independent Museums). Miers, H (1928), A Report on the Public Museums of the British Isles (Other than the National Museums) (Edinburgh, T & A Constable). Selwood, S (2002), ‘What Difference do Museums Make? Producing Evidence on the Impact of Museums’, Critical Quarterly, 44/4, 65–81 (DoI: 10.1111/1467-8705-00457). Simmons, J (1974a), Leicester Past and Present: Volume I Ancient Borough to 1860 (London, Eyre Methuen). Sylvester, C (2009), Art Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It (Boulder, Paradigm Publishers). Taylor, A (1997), ‘“Arm’s Length but Hands on”: Mapping the New Governance’, Public Administration, 75, 441–66 (DoI: 10.1111/1467-9299.00069). Wilkinson, H (2014), Negotiating Change: Curatorial Practice in UK Museums, 1960– 2001 (Leicester, PhD Thesis, Leicester University).

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Index

accountability 137, 156 admission charges 7, 10n8, 92–3, 109, 112, 116 Art Fund 45, 54, 85 Arts Council England 96, 110, 133, 155, 160 Attenborough Ceramics collection 54, 54n5, 55n15, 71, 175 Boylan, Patrick 32n17, 93, 103n16 Browne, Montague 22, 23, 132, 135, 136, 145n4 budget 96, 101n1, 123n9; budget cuts 90, 95, 98; see also expenditure collections 37–41, 50–54; New Walk collection 42–50: see also Attenborough ceramics collection; dinosaurs; Egyptian antiquities; expressionist art collection; New Walk Art Gallery collection; New Walk Collections display Conservative Party 19, 20, 32n14, 91, 92, 93, 102n13, 112, 118 curators 22, 28, 50, 53, 115, 122, 130, 132, 134, 136, 144; see also Honorary Curators dinosaurs 48, 49, 55n10, 75 display 48, 50, 55n15, 63, 71, 136; display in New Walk 17, 22, 24, 37, 45, 49, 70, 72, 115, 127, 129, 132, 135, 142, 150, 151, 153, 175–6 Egyptian antiquities 24, 37, 49, 54n3, 71, 72 ethics 31n3, 137, 145n1; ICOM Code 24, 96, 103n16, 150; Museum Association Code 176 exhibitions 48, 50, 55n15, 63, 71, 136; New Walk exhibitions 17, 22, 24, 37, 45, 49, 70, 72, 75, 115, 127, 129, 132, 135, 142, 150, 151, 153, 175–76

expenditure 82, 87, 97, 101n1, 109, 111; New Walk expenditure 23, 46, 83–91, 96, 102n10, 129, 140, 151, 162 Expressionist Art collection 24, 39, 49, 54, 163, 165n7, 173, 176 First World War 37, 44, 54n2, 65, 69, 129, 157 Friends of the Museum 45, 54n4, 85 Guide Demonstrator 23, 31n3, 51, 66, 67, 74, 75, 77n6, 96, 150, 176 Hodge, M 32n17, 46, 48, 130 Honorary Curators 17, 43–45, 52, 83, 84, 127, 129, 135, 143, 152 see also curators ideology 93, 112, 116, 118–19, 176, 178 income 83, 86, 87, 91, 94–95 160 International Council of Museums (ICOM) 24, 96, 132, 150, 160 Labour Party 7, 20, 32n13–14, 92, 93, 100, 102n13, 108, 111, 112, 121, 123n9 Leicester: Employment, 18–19, 60, 64, 67, 73, 88, 127, 132, 179; Ethnic Diversity, 7, 29, 60, 70–72, 73, 74, 77n1, 97, 159; Politics, 16–17, 19, 68, 106–13, 122; Population Size, 1, 18, 21, 23, 28, 54n2, 60 legitimacy 62, 107, 114, 117–18 Leicester Council 45, 102n7; Borough 97, 107, 123n3; City 20, 28, 29, 68, 82, 95, 101n1, 102n13, 108, 123n9, 132, 180n5; Town 17, 44, 83, 87, 108 Leicestershire County Council 16–17, 19, 20, 29, 32n4, 91, 102n13, 108, 119, 121, 127 Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society (The ‘Lit and Phil’) 2, 15, 17, 21, 22, 39, 44, 47, 65, 108, 113, 142–43,

198

Index

152, 154–55, 163; financial support of 43, 45, 83, 91, 94, 102n4; members of 16, 52, 83, 84, 97, 127, 174 see also Honorary Curators Liberal Party 16–17, 19–20, 29, 32n4, 91, 102n13, 108, 119, 121, 127 Lowe, Ernest 22–24, 52, 53, 76, 115, 132; and education 23, 31, 130, 150–51; and museum policy 45, 47–49, 51, 135–6, 150 management 9, 28, 44, 69, 119, 121, 122, 127–45, 154, 165n6, 173, 176–7 multifunctionalism 40, 59, 98, 137, 138, 156 Museums Association 67, 96, 136, 144, 158, 172; and New Walk 23, 24, 32n17, 53, 66, 130, 139, 157, 176 Museum extensions 16, 84, 88, 89, 91, 102n10, 135, 155 Museum functions 20, 40–41, 48, 51, 62, 75, 91, 115, 117, 121, 128, 132, 138, 149–56, 161, 163–64, 175, 176 Museum funding 63, 77, 88, 96, 110–11, 120, 174, 181n7; New Walk funding 17, 23, 24, 46, 82, 83–5, 98, 99, 145n5, 160, 171 see also expenditure; Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society financial support; National Museums funding National Museums 2, 14, 15, 46, 63–64, 128, 158; funding 83, 101n2, 107, 111, 112, 174 New Museology 59, 98, 115, 119, 131 New Walk Art Gallery 10n1, 22, 44, 53, 87, 88, 89, 142, 163, 165n1; collection 45, 46, 48, 70, 77n15, 85, 93; demands for a new Art Gallery 16, 100, 151, 162

New Walk collections display 22, 24, 27, 45, 49, 55n10, 55n16, 70–72, 75, 78n16, 129, 132, 135, 138, 142, 145n4, 150, 175 policy: attachment, 64, 111, 139, 156, 161; instrumentalisation 8, 59, 64, 110, 133, 149–65 power 15, 22, 29, 39, 45, 50, 51, 106, 107, 108, 114–15, 116, 118–21, 141, 149, 155, 159, 174; Curatorial power 44, 143, 176 professionals 8, 22, 44, 93, 121, 127–45, 153, 155, 161, 163, 170, 177 rationality 3, 9, 107, 114–17, 120, 140, 173; technical rationality 115–17, 121, 128, 133, 134, 138, 139–43, 145, 155, 158, 159, 162, 175, 177, 178 religion 16, 17, 18, 22, 32n4, 108 Schools Service 31, 150, 151, 174–75, 176 Second World War 21, 67, 89, 131, 138, 139, 158 Squire, Charles 52, 53, 97, 100, 130, 140, 173 Thomas, Trevor 24, 32n17, 61, 77n2, 115, 130, 132, 136–38, 150, 153, 176 Trotter, Monica 53, 68, 97, 140, 173 Victoria and Albert Museum 2, 45, 54n4, 72, 85 visitors 9, 63, 64, 65, 71, 159; to New Walk 25–8, 33n21, 47, 49–52, 65, 70, 72, 92–3, 97, 101, 113, 115, 150, 155 visitor numbers 25–28, 72 Welford Road Cemetery 18, 32n11, 86, 97, 108, 174 Weston, Ruth 66, 67, 69, 74, 139