Religion and cultural policy: two museum case studies

Abstract

This case study compares the controversies arising from two museum displays relating to the religion in Glasgow, written from the perspective of a practitioner involved in both. One, in 1993, involved the opening of the first museum of world religions in the UK and the other, in 2009, a programme of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex art in Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art. The main continuity amongst the protesters was that museums should represent Christianity and Christian values as the majority heritage of the country and not give ‘special treatment’ to minorities. The main changes over the period were: the appropriation by Christian protestors of the language of rights, and in particular a claim to a ‘right’ not to be offended; a resentment that putatively violent minority faiths were able to enforce greater respect than Christianity; and the way the Internet enabled protestors to organise and sustain a campaign over a long period. The article concludes with reflections on the implications of these controversies for museums and other cultural organisations, particularly with the inclusion of religion in the provisions of 2010 UK Equalities Act.

Keywords:

• museums
• religion
• art
• controversy
• sexuality
• rights

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleagues Bridget Sly and Stephen Blair and two anonymous reviewers for their very useful comments on this article.

Notes

1. St Mungo Museum was the sixth‐century Celtic saint who is said to have built a church on a site near the museum, around which Glasgow grew. Consultation showed that, as the city’s founder, naming the museum after him was acceptable to local faith communities.

2. In 2007 Glasgow City Council created a separate, independent charity, called Culture and Sport Glasgow to manage its sporting and cultural facilities.

3. In 1993 I was senior curator of history in Glasgow museums, and project managed the creation of the St Mungo Museum of Religion Life and Art. In 2009 I was head of arts and museums in Glasgow, with overall responsibility for the programme of the GoMA.

4. See John Gray (2004) for a critique of this teleological account of modernisation and its survival in secular forms in such works as Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992).

5. This policy interest led to a proposal from the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown for the creation of a museum of British history which would ‘focus not just on how a museum could relate the narrative of British history, but how it could celebrate the great British values on which our culture, politics and society have been shaped’ (Brown 2007). The idea met with such an unenthusiastic response that it was quietly dropped (Kirkup 2009).

6. See, for example, Karp and Lavine (1991), Merriman (1991), Duncan ([1995]2007), O’Neill (1996) and Karp et al. (1992).

7. For an account see http://www.elanthemag.com/index.php/site/blog_detail/london_new_york_parisdetroit_islamic_art_exhibits_are_cropping_up_everywhere/.

8. The Burrell Collection (1983), Scotland Street School Museum (1990), The St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art (1993), the Gallery of Modern Art (1996), the Riverside Museum (2011).

9. This practice is often justified on religious grounds, though it has no basis in the Koran.

10. The Spectator review said that ‘in terms of interpreting and inspiring society afresh, the St Mungo Museum is probably the most important museum to have been opened in Britain since the V&A’. A critic in the Museums Journal said its ‘boutique’ style was reminiscent of a sex shop (Artley 1993, p. 8).

11. By the historian, Keith Thomas, who visited Glasgow as a member of the British Museum trustees, to whom I gave a presentation on the city’s museums (Clelland 1994, p. 13).

12. For example, in a discussion about the Turner Prize, Grayson Perry said, ‘Most of the landmark painters over the last ten centuries have probably at some stage been outrageous’ (Tate 2007, p. 35).

13. The work consists of a large sheet of thick glass with copies of the Koran, Bible and Talmud embedded within its surface.

14. Notable exceptions include the ‘Darkest Africa’ exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the Enola Gay display at the Smithsonian Institution (Cannizzo 1989, Dubin 2001).

15. The original scope of the exhibition did not include intersex, but as research progressed this emerged as a significant issue.

16. Out of a total of 1508 written comments, 719 were negative, 355 were positive, and the remaining 434 were neutral suggestions, observations or enquiries. Of the negative comments about 60% were made by people who had not seen the exhibition. This was a high level of response for the gallery, but in relation to the 274,400 people who visited during the course of the exhibition, it was a tiny proportion, especially given the active campaigning by the press and evangelical groups.

17. Ironically, one of the most positive accounts of the exhibit was on Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’ (BBC 2009). The Guardian took an interest only in the GoMA issues when a separate controversy arose about our decision not to show a film which an artist had offered to us, and we were accused of censorship. This seemed to be an issue with which the liberal press is far more comfortable than those surrounding religion. When we tried to get significant factual errors removed from the Guardian website, they refused, offering us instead a right of reply, arguing that as the article was an opinion piece, and that the author therefore had not needed to contact us before publishing and that he did not need to correct the errors in the original text. This experience made it clear how difficult it was to get CSG’s case accurately reported, much less any kind of extended hearing.

18. Other issues which came up included a failure to distinguish adequately the display of sexually explicit images per se and explicit images relating to LGBTI cultures and identities.

19. In museum terms it is important to register that, while both displays were informed by equalities policies, the issues were not forced on the objects being displayed, whether historic or newly created, but were inherent in them.