Old master of the art game

What is the future for museums? Timothy Clifford, who hasn't been shy of controversy as head of Scotland's galleries, talks to Aidan Dunne

'If I arrive somewhere am I more likely to go see art in a museum or in situ? Well, I'm going to go see it in situ every time. Why go to a museum when you can have the real thing?"

When it comes to the issue of museums as suitable showcases for art, Timothy Clifford, director general of the National Galleries of Scotland, is forthright. He cites the example of Venice. Far better to go to the Scuola Grande di San Rocco and see Tintoretto's stunning paintings in the building they were made for. Far better to go to the Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari and see Titian's Assumption in its elevated, intended location rather than abstracted from its setting at an inappropriate height.

Far better to go to practically any church in Venice, in fact, than visit the huge Accademia, no matter how exceptional its collection. He is scathing about the Accademia, seeing it as exemplifying most of what is bad about museums. "A lot of what happens in museums is like taking objects from the wild, like taking animals like lions and tigers from the wild, in fact." And it's not as if museums are the equivalent of particularly liberal zoos. "No. We're shooting the beast and putting its head on the wall as a trophy."

Mind you, he adds, the damage was largely done by the time the present generation of curators arrived on the scene. The heads were there on the walls. What contemporary curators can do is try to compensate, to "serve and respect the object" and the conditions it was designed for.

This year's James White Memorial Lecture, organised by the Irish Museums Association in memory of the late director of the National Gallery of Ireland, was given last week by Sir Timothy Clifford. White's tenure at the National Gallery of Ireland, from 1964 until his retirement in 1980, was highly significant. He oversaw a programme of modernisation, transformation and popularisation (and was founding chairman of the Irish Museums Association). Clifford, who has been in Scotland since 1984, has a reputation as a controversial and outspoken - or, more accurately perhaps, independent-minded - director who is not averse to a bit of controversy in a good cause.

He lived up to his reputation at his lecture, when he discussed whether museums serve the public good and what future they can look forward to. He seems ideally placed to address these issues, given that his Scottish posting has encompassed an overhaul of the way museums are funded, managed and perceived.

Some cultural observers, including Robert Hewison, have argued that, during the Thatcherite era in Britain, museums found themselves faced with an aggressively politicised environment. Public subsidies were squeezed and museum managers were pressed to look to private sponsors and adopt commercial marketing strategies. Appointments were politically calculated to further these policies.

At the same time it is clear that museums had to change. Sponsorship is an inescapable part of museum management. But, Clifford notes, it is getting more and more difficult. "Businesses have cut back, and sponsorship is an obvious one to go. You can see why. They wonder what they're getting for their money." More generally, "you have to fight constantly for funding, which entails lobbying and whatever it takes.

"From my point of view being in Scotland has been an advantage in that regard. Scotland is on the up. Which is as it should be. England is up enough. I think at this stage I'm an honorary Scot. I've been fighting their corner long enough. But we can never catch up. That's the reality. In my time in Edinburgh we managed to get one Leonardo drawing. The queen has 600 in her collection".

But he has been doing his best. He has a reputation for being pushy in that respect. "It's true I've been criticised for being ruthless in the way I've gone about adding to the collections." Rather than going to funding bodies every five years or so, "in a gentlemanly sort of way", he's been back and forth, year in, year out. "And the funny thing is that they've been delighted to be asked."

Apart from the need to deal with new economic realities, the erstwhile cultural certainties that underpinned museums and their collections have been significantly contested. Feminism and multiculturalism are notable among the factors that have changed the way we look at things. Today, museums must attract an audience that has been wooed by the huge resources of popular culture from infancy, an audience that inhabits a fluid, multimedia world where the very notion that cultural artefacts be confined to and displayed in a fixed location might be considered obsolete.

In this context Clifford could be described as old fashioned: he places great value on traditional connoisseurship and display. He has also attracted some adverse reaction for favouring coloured walls, dense hanging and the juxtaposition of pictures, ceramics and related objects in the National Gallery of Scotland, going decidedly against the contemporary fashion for isolated, clinical presentation, which at its most extreme can mean a single painting to a wall or even a room. The ideas behind his vision emerged in his talk, and it is clear that he still feels passionately committed to his way of doing things.

Lest this make him sound too much like a traditionalist pure and simple, he is also, surprisingly, against portrait galleries. Actually, he is vehemently against them, seeing them as little more than sinister repositories of nationalism and chauvinism. He also identifies them as a predominantly Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. "What do they say? They say: 'We are the master race.' " In other words, they foster an introverted, insular nationalism, to which he is emphatically opposed. "Nationalism is dangerous; it's playing with fire."

Doubtless his move from England to Scotland informs his view here. One problem with cultural introversion, as he sees it, is the distortion of vision it imposes. When he remarks that "I am fairly sure that there is not one Scottish collector of old master paintings and drawings", he means that Scottish collectors are too inclined to opt for things Scottish simply because they are Scottish. This is by no means a purely Scottish phenomenon, incidentally: it's more a general cultural rule.

He was a little apprehensive about raising this issue in an Irish context, but the same point could be made about Ireland. "Don't get me wrong," he is quick to point out. "There's nothing wrong with supporting the art of your own country. Of course it's good, it should be done, but, as I said during my talk, we live in the world, not just in Scotland or Ireland or wherever."

And on that score he practises what he preaches. He bought his first old master drawing for, he thinks, £5 and went on to add to it with pieces in the region of £20-£30. "I'm not saying you can do that now, of course," he adds.

In terms of the immediate future, as he sees it, museums have to face up to the challenge of globalisation. This means something more than the conspicuous homogenisation of the contemporary art world, whereby pretty much the same kind of work is made and exhibited everywhere. Rather it's an opportunity to explore what makes places different. That means a blurring of erstwhile values and categories, which he broadly welcomes. "I think it's quite an exciting prospect." And he singles out one region as crucial.

"Simply put, we have to think of the Chinese. China is just such a huge issue in every respect. So much so that I'd say that if we don't deal with it we're lost."