ABSTRACT
At present it is the burden of galleries and museums to be coerced into the utopian promise of enlightenment through Arts for Everyone initiatives, although in reality everyone seems to be those designated ‘disadvantaged’. Museums as agents with responsibility for social inclusion, beyond the paternalism of an earlier age, is a relatively new idea. What this means in practice has been highlighted in literature that explores these ideas at some length (DCMS 2001; Group for Large Local Authority Museums (GLLAM) 2000; Newman and McLean 2000; Scottish Museums Council 2000; Allen 2002). Galleries and museums are required to answer new questions in return for public funding. Lottery monies and government support require both the rejection of entry fees and the recognition of the need for accountability in order to secure public usage, broad social inclusion and education initiatives. These institutions can no longer maintain existing barriers to public access, those exclusive barriers that reinforce their positions as the custodians of high culture, as centres largely for the middle classes, as collectors’ playgrounds, for connoisseurship, or as cultural capital for the moneyed, well-intentioned but uncritical classes. However, the rhetoric behind creative partnership initiatives must be called into question.
