from sp!ked
Art for inclusion's sake
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In this rather long but hard-hitting polemic, Josie Appleton argues that the cultural policy of social inclusion, currently the rage and mantra of cultural institutions in the UK, assumes a certain condescension (or even contempt) towards the museum visitor. It presupposes that the minority population are somehow unfulfilled until a visit to a museum is completed. Instead, Appleton proffers that:

"This is not a question of whether ethnic minorities should go to museums, or whether museums should show exhibitions about immigrant history or Islamic art. Of course they should - on both counts. But minorities should go to a museum exhibition because they are drawn by its subject matter, not because the museum is counting their heads. And museums should show exhibitions about Islamic art because this is of general relevance and interest, not as a way of attracting the 'right' kinds of visitors."

Probing the underlying premises of the present cultural policy in the United Kingdom and comparing it with that of an earlier age, Appleton concludes:

"Whatever the shortfalls of nineteenth-century cultural policy, at least people got decent paintings out of it. At least there was an aim to broaden everybody's horizons and refine their appreciation. Today's elite, by contrast, seeks to showcase mundane artefacts, and propagate the most trivial and divisive instincts."

One might be tempted to dismiss all of these arguments as being relevant only in the British context. But might not these opinions also ring true if we substitute "non-museum-goers" for "ethnic minorities"?