EDITORIAL ARTICLES I-THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM N some respects the Victoria and Albert Museum is not equalled by any other museum in the world. In this great collection, which has grown out of the modest annexe to the school of design founded by the late Prince Consort, the nation has a heritage of priceless value which it owes in great measure to private beneficence. It is to be feared that the nation does not realize the value of this great public treasure house, or concern itself greatly about its administration. If it were otherwise steps would surely be taken to put that administration on a more reasonable and efficient basis. South Kensington has passed through many vicissitudes, and it I I owes very little to the Government, though 513 organization, and decided to make the museum practically a department of the Education Office. The museum is now almost completely under the control of the Board of Education, and it is to be feared that the present system is very little if at all better than the old one. Let us see what the system is, confining our attention to the art museum which is our immediate concern. The museum is governed, under the Board of Education, by a director, and it would be difficult to find a director more devoted to its interests, more untiring in the performance of the many and onerous duties of the position, more courteous and ready to give every facility to those who wish to use the museum, than the present holder of the office. The director can make purchases up to the value of £20 with the consent of the principal assistant-secretary of the Board of Education, but for purchases above that value he has to obtain the consent of a committee appointed by the Board. This committee is composed of certain eminent artists who are for the most part not experts in the classes of objects with which the museum is chiefly concerned, such as furniture, metalwork, ceramics, and textile fabrics. Purchases when sanctioned by the committee require the further sanction of the President of the Board of Education, but this is little more than formal. great difficulty in the matter of purchases is the small amount of money available for the The Government grant for the purpurpose. chase of objects of art used to be £10,000 a year, but this has now been reduced to £7,000, obviously quite an inadequate sum for a great museum; there are additional grants for books, casts, and photographs. Were it not for private generosity it would be impossible for the museum to keep its various departments up to anything like a proper standard; as it is, many things which ought to be bought have to be passed over simply because there is no money with The which to buy them. This is particularly the case in regard to furniture; the museum is very badly off for English furniture, but it is impossible to buy it with the present funds. The Government, far from taking into consideration the fact that prices have risen all round, has, as has been already said, actually reduced its grant during the last few years. The same parsimony is shown in regard to the museum staff, which is very inadequate in number. The staff of the art museum, exclusive of the library, consists (in addition to the director and the assistant-director) of three keepers, four assistant-keepers, and seven assistants. It is hardly necessary to say that a staff of fourteen for so large a museum is a very small one. There are six principal departments, namely, woodwork and furniture, metalwork, ceramics, textiles, pictures and drawings, and the important circulation. department, which has to do with the loan of objects to provincial museums; each of these ought to have a keeper and at least one assistant-keeper, and in some departments two or even three assistant-keepers are required owing to the number of objects and the variety in period and place of origin. No one man, for instance, can possibly be thoroughly well informed as to textiles or ceramics of every age and country. At present only one department has both a keeper and an assistant-keeper to itself; two departments are assigned to one keeper with an assistant-keeper; two more have each a keeper but no assistantkeeper; and the remaining two have each an assistant-keeper only. In two cases, therefore, assistant-keepers have the work and responsibility of keepers without the status or salary. The seven junior assistants are distributed over the six departments. Even the number of attendants in the museum is far too small, and their pay has recently been reduced, so that it will be difficult to find in the future men fitted for The Victoria and Albert Museum this responsible work, which involves the moving of objects of enormous value. In fact the Victoria and Albert Museum is being starved by the Board of Education, and a further step in the direction of 'economy' is contemplated, which will be disastrous to the museum if it is allowed to be taken. This is nothing less than the abolition of the director; the Board of Education proposes, when the term of office of the present director expires, to dispense with a successor and to hand over the supreme control of the museum directly to its own clerks, who will then become the authorities to decide such questions as the purchase of a Persian carpet or a piece of gothic metalwork. It does not seem to have occurred to the Board of Education that those who are responsible for the management of an art museum should have some know ledge of the various objects of art that it contains. The general conclusion to be drawn from the present state of affairs is that we want in England what every other civilized country has, a ministry of fine arts, which would have all the national art collections under its care. The Board of Education was not constituted to manage museums, and it is absurd to suppose that it can do properly work which is quite outside its own province. Moreover, it probably has to fight the Treasury to get enough money for its own proper purposes, and has neither the time nor the energy to see that due and adequate financial provision is made for the museum. To entrust it with the control of a vast collection of art treasures is simply fatuous. It might just as well take over the administration of the National Gallery or the British Museum. II-THE FUTURE OF THE CHANTREY TRUST HE Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Chantrey Trust is so moderate a document that those responsible for it must see that their recommendations are carried out in practice, if they are to avoid the stigma of weakness. The appointment of a single responsible buyer was obviously the ideal way of utilizing the Chantrey Fund, and the present settlement can only be regarded as a polite compromise. However, the practical elimination of the Council of the Royal Academy, which, in the opinion both of the Committee and most of the witnesses, was chiefly responsible for the mediocrity of the purchases, is a good thing. No less desirable is the inclusion of an Associate, presumably to represent in some degree a younger generation of artists. As the Committee have dealt thus gently with past faults, we trust that they will have the courage to ensure the acceptance of their recommendation with regard to ' outside' societies. On this sentence in their report any practical value that it may possess seems to depend. A purchasing body of three may become just as narrow, if not perhaps quite so inefficient, as a purchasing body of ten, if they have no strictly defined relation to the educated world outside them. Unless some provision is made compelling their proper consideration, the reports of the other important artistic societies may be shelved and disregarded as consistently as their exhibitions have been neglected in the past. Mr. MacColl and Lord Lytton have, however, effected so much already that we think the future conduct of the Chantrey Trustees may safely be left in their hands. Meanwhile they deserve the thanks of the public for calling attention to what the report euphemistically calls 'the unduly narrow construction placed upon certain terms of the will' which has had such 'unfortunate effects upon the collection.' |