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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
December-January 2014 57
S
EAN Rainbird grew up in Hong
Kong, studied history of art
at University College London,
joined the Tate where he spent 20 years
as a curator of modern and contempo-
rary art before being invited to lead
the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in 2006. He
was initially surprised at an invitation
into the intensely hierarchical world of
German museums, but was delighted at
the breadth of the collection.
“It had 5,000 to 6,000 works of art
and sculpture and some very impor-
tant archives such as the Sohm archive
of the informal interdisciplinary art of
the 1960s and 1970s, and ‘happenings,
concrete poetry and fluxes’: an absolutely
s en sat i on a l c ol le c t ion ”, he says. Howe ve r,
the Staatsgalerie was also plagued with
personnel and organisational problems
that had built up over several years.
“There were a lot of strong personali-
ties who didn’t feel that they should take
instruction from anyone, and on occa-
sions they didn’t recognise any authority
– me, the ministry, or God”.
When Rainbird arrived in Stuttgart
the gallery was changing fast, and his job
was to manage shrinking public-service
budgets while overseeing a major refur-
bishment programme. Only 15 rooms
were available to show art when he
arrived. “That grew over an 18-month
period to 50 or 60 galleries, and at each
opening we re-hung the entire collec-
tion chronologically, which had never
been done before. The chronological
discussion was to bring all the curators
around the table, which again had never
really been done in Stuttgart. It was try-
ing to get a bit better teamworking but
also to conceive of the institution not as
sections in a curator’s head, but as a visi-
tor experience, that people can actually
come in and see some kind of direction
or, or at least to encounter a curatorial
argument that they agree with or disa-
gree with, or like or dislike, but actually
grapple with”.
Rónán Lynch interviews the desk-tied Director of the
expanding and improving but still independent, democratic
and free National Gallery which has 11 galleries open out
of 60 but maintains visitors at over 600, 000 annually
despite 40% cuts
Sean Rainbird
CULTURE
Also in this section:
Frugal Christmas 60
58 December-January 2014
the Dargan roof, which finished in 2011
and the second phase should be complete
by early 2016.
“That’s half way through the MDP. The
current phases have been backstopped
by a very particular discussion between
ourselves, our department and DPER,
which led DPER to provide some backstop
funding that enabled the whole thing to
go ahead, in the amount of around €32
million. That gives us the energy cen-
tre under the front lawn, 8 metres deep,
which will power the new ventila-
tion system. So you’ll be in an
old building but with new
ser vices”.
Rainbird says that the
current refurbishment
was “beyond neces-
sary” as the gallery
used to be far too cold at
various points of the year
and far too hot at others.
“It led to works of art being
in conditions which led to mould”
and things of that kind. The conditions
weren’t of international standard”. He
believes the changes will make the gal-
lery a more human space.
“We’ll open up some windows that have
been covered up over the decades. We will
have a glazed inner courtyard between
the Dargan and Milltown wings so you’ll
have a new entry and a great feeling of
new things”.
The gallery has 11 to 13 galleries open
out of the entire complement of 60-plus
but is maintaining visitor numbers
between around 600,000 and 650,000
per annum.
“I do see a great logic for investment in
cultural institutions because we gener-
ate huge numbers of tourists coming to
Ireland”, says Rainbird. He feels, how-
ever, that there may never be a return to
prev ious le vels of s tate f undin g, requir in g
the gallery to develop its own long-term
fundraising strategies.
“We’ve been cut over 40 per cent in the
last five years along with the rest of the
sector. It’s a larger cut for the arts than
it’s been for other sectors and ministries.
Because we are relatively small, people
may think that it doesn’t make much
difference or that we don’t deserve the
funding because we are not essential for
life support. On the other hand I feel we
are essential for people’s spiritual and
creative lives. It’s very easy to say that if
there is a problem with hospitals or home-
lessness that you can dispense with the
arts but I don’t think it’s as simple as that.
So we have to counter that thinking”.
The gallery has already been raising its
own funds, and contributed 20 per cent
to the current phase of refurbishment.
He says that this level of fundraising is
unusual in Ireland but sees more Irish
cultural institutions having to follow this
path. Rainbird maintains that issues of
funding and governance are intimately
related and while he has stated his admi-
ration for the American level of funding,
he says that direct comparison is not
possible.
“I think what we do in Europe is to
look more towards the private sector to
get people on board in a more complex
and nuanced way, as that’s the only way
we’ll allow our institutions to thrive. The
relationship to government is where we
have to be very vigilant. I think the arm’s
length principle is important. One defini-
tion of this is to create a distance between
the public funder and the institution to
stop political distortion, and to cre-
ate an independence of creative action
in the organisation itself. For example,
collections would be held in trust by
the institutions rather than the state”.
Distance is important.
“Centralising may work for civil serv-
ice departments that have inputs and
outputs and actually implement govern-
ment policy, but arts organisations don’t
implement government policy except in
Stuttgart turned out to be a good
preparation for the National Gallery of
Ireland.
“The biggest challenge at the National
Gallery has been dealing with the effects
of austerity politics and the severity of
the cuts. The impact of Department of
Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER)-
led shrinking of the public sector has
ended up being a very effective instru-
ment on one hand but an exceedingly
blunt instrument on the other hand,
and at times it’s definitely cur-
tailed our ability to run the
gallery as well as it could
be run. One of the things
that appears to me to
have happened is that
the crisis has led some
people at the centre to
pull more power and
influence back towards
the centre than perhaps is
necessary”.
Rainbird arrived to a chorus
of promises from the new government
to abolish quangos and rationalise
services.
“Museums are not NGOs or quan-
gos, and there has never been a really
strong logic behind sharing services”,
says Rainbird. “I think you need a lot of
analysis and discussion before you make
those steps. I would say that IMMA,
Crawford and ourselves were quite con-
fident in bringing counter-arguments,
and I would say that we decided to make
it a very proactive discussion. In these
lean years there has been a lot of discus-
sions between the cultural institutions
and a huge amount of exchange of expe-
rience about how to get through difficult
times”.
“I’ve seen my colleagues give a huge
amount of support and information to
their colleagues – of course also to me
and to our board – to define how we
look forward from the current phase of
refurbishment to what happens next.
There are things that you could say sit
behind how you present art to the pub-
lic and are very central to the running
of institutions, and how those institu-
tions relate to one another. So we still
need to address, for example, storage,
collections-care and collections-man-
agement, conservation, and access to
libraries and archives”.
The MDP (master development plan)
for the gallery covers several consecutive
refurbishment projects that will run for
more than a decade. The first phase was
CULTURE NATIONAL GALLERY
The crisis
has led some
people at the
centre to pull
more power
and influence
back towards
the centre than
perhaps is
necessary
“
Sean Rainbird
Director of the
National Gallery
CULTURE
INTERVIEW
December-January 2014 59
a general way; they don’t in particular
or we would have long since been told
what to do for the decade of commem-
orations for example, and it should be
that way. I don’t think the submission of
business plans and strategies and docu-
ments for the minister’s approval so the
minister can tell arts organisations what
to do is ultimately the right way. If you
want healthy arts institutions that can
deal with outsiders and funders in par-
ticular, you’ll need to be able to reassure
people that their gifts or funds will be put
to work for the institutions, and not be
coopted by the government to another
agenda”.
He is not keen on the idea of charging
admission to the gallery.
“In the UK there was a moment in the
early noughties when Tate had to decide
whether to charge or not because funding
was so low. The government found money
for six months, and then established a
policy of free entry for all museums in
the UK, which also led to an exponen-
tial growth in visitor numbers but also
in fundraising and development. These
things go together, and when outside peo-
ple see museums being enterprising and
flourishing, they want to support them.
They want innovative, outward-look-
ing organisations with independence
and autonomy. They don’t want to sup-
port institutions that are withering on
the vine - sometimes for bureaucratic
reasons rather than simply for funding
reasons”.
He believes that charging into the
National Gallery would immediately
cut visitor numbers in half. “The idea of
popping in for ten minutes is a wonder-
ful idea”, he says. “Since we don’t have
identity cards we can’t really differenti-
ate Dubliners or Irish citizens whether
from home or abroad from tourists so it
would be hard to administer”.
He recalls that the Staatsgalerie
Stuttgart began charging a fee in the
1990s, and suffered a drop off of visitors,
with little financial gain, once adminis-
trative costs had been paid.
Rainbird argues that the gallery must
remain outward-looking in order to
attract both visitors and funding. “We
had over 80,000 people coming to pub-
lic events such as artist lectures last
year. We offer events to all age groups
in a very democratic way. If someone
wants to have a performance artist in the
front foyer on Culture Night, yes, we’ll
give them a go. We’ll participate rather
than be stand-offish. If someone wants to
show a contemporary artist, we’ll try to
fit them in. That to me is a sign of a very
healthy institution”.
The short-lived appointment of Fine
Gael activist John McNulty to the board
of IMMA in September illustrated the
tendency of political parties to use arts
organisations as political proxies.
“Arts organisations may look like
a soft touch but I think this incident
showed that a huge amount of people care
passionately about their arts organisa-
tions and don’t want to see these things
happening”.
The affair touches on critical issues of
independence and autonomy, he says.
“Arts organisations are delicate flow-
ers like everyone else but we do have to
run an edifice, we have bricks and mor-
tar and we have collections to look after.
Most of what we do is bespoke and you
can’t just stick the conservation of pic-
tures on to a conveyor belt as if every
one is the same. Arts organisations
need to be run very carefully. Equally,
a lot of what we do is about confidence.
It’s about public confidence, it’s about
confidence in the collections, and confi-
dence in the visitors, and if you disrupt it,
you can easily damage the organisation.
Then it’s the director of the arts institu-
tion who is stuck in front of the press to
answer the charges rather than the peo-
ple behind the department desk. That’s
why we’re very conscious of the need to
act above board and to act fairly and and
transparency.”
Like many of the national cultural
directors hired recently, Rainbird is
working on a five-year contract. “I per-
sonally think it is too short to do good
work, but that’s what they wanted at the
time”, he says.
He laughs when I ask if he spends much
time on matters of art. “It is everything
but about art. The last six months, I
have probably spent one per cent of my
time on artistic matters and 99 per cent
of time on legislation, governance, the
Comptroller and Auditor General, the
Department, any manner of HR issues,
the austerity agenda and the budget.
Governance is a really critical issue,
and I think we can put more attention
on it in the new year to re-establish the
roles of institutions and their boards and
government emphasising independence
and autonomy because I think it’s very
important to re-establish what ‘arm’s
length’ actually means in the context of
fundraising and the programming that
the institutions do, and their ability to
run their own business.
You can’t really separate the curatorial
and artistic matters of a National Gallery
or the Abbey Theatre or IMMA from the
way you organise and finance and bring
about those particular projects”. •
Museums are
not NGOs
or quangos,
and there
has never
been a really
strong logic
behind sharing
services. I
would say
that IMMA,
Crawford and
ourselves were
quite confident
in bringing
counter-
arguments
“
Photos courtesy of the
National Gallery.
