Council calls minister's plan to let Museum Association audit itself 'questionable' and contrary to 'good governance'

Just over a year ago, Culture Press released the story that Wim Hupperetz, director of the capital's Allard Pierson, had resigned his position as chairman of the museums and heritage advisory committee to the Council for Culture. The reason was Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven's decision to hand over control of the policy of the national museums to those national museums themselves. 'If this goes ahead,' he declared on this site, "we will soon be giving millions of euros to a few museums, without ever asking them what they are actually doing with it.

After his departure, things remained quiet for a long time. As it now turns out, Hupperetz's action had an effect after all. In February this year, more than six months after Hupperetz's alarm, the minister once again asked the Council for Culture whether its decision was OK. The Council, by now in a bit of a bind after the lousy turn of events surrounding the last Arts Plan, now comes up with an opinion which effectively amounts to "Don't do it, Ingrid!":

'The council would find it questionable if the MV (Museum Association, ed.) takes charge of conducting the visitation. After all, the MV is the branch organisation of Dutch museums and its board includes directors of national museums. The council considers this, with a view to independence, impermissible and contrary to the rules of good governance.'

Organ

There is no word of Latin to this statement, so things will have to be different after all. The council therefore advises the minister to create a separate body to conduct the visitations after all. That body should include independent, authoritative people: 'The council advocates that the majority of the committee have broad or specialist knowledge and experience in the field of museums. International experience is an advantage.'

Indeed, the visitation body would have to have its own secretariat, just as happens with visitations in higher education. And the minister would also have to pay for it, when she was so happy to have her WC One visitation committee paid for by the Museum Association. The Culture Council thinks this is the worst idea ever, and as taxpayers we can only agree. Directors deciding among themselves whether they are doing well with the millions? Everyone has the utmost integrity, but that's how you tie the knot.

Cash transfers

So the minister, if she is going to follow this advice, will have to draw the purse strings. Only, we have known definitively since Monday 29 June 2020, extra money is not in it. Then she will have to go back for some cash transfers, but since that particular Monday, we also know that there is a seemingly inexhaustible source of cash shift material available: the museum purchasing fund. It already pays for the bailout of Noorderslag and Scapino; surely it can also finance the new visitation agency for national museums.

Still, it remains ironic, of course, that a plan to remove regulatory ambition from the ministry, namely by scrapping all state museums from the Specific Cultural Policy Act, leads to more rules, and more importantly, more expensive consultants and more office staff.

Money, therefore, spent less and less on art, and more and more on managers.