Sir, – Your Editorial on government, culture and the arts (November 15th) is timely. There is a dynamic of decision-making afoot which does not suggest the well-being of the arts and culture is the primary focus of preservation. Instead it looks more like moves to shore up the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, itself threatened by the likes of the McCarthy report. It is hard to see the merits of having raised the possibility of merging the State Archives and the National Library, nor is the logic of merging the National Gallery, IMMA and The Crawford Gallery compelling. Culture Ireland has also lost its autonomous identity, boards are weakening and there are threats to the independence of the Heritage Council. Decentralisation has been further damaging.
What is clear is that long-term damage is being caused to the national fabric of cultural practice in the current fog of crisis. And it is happening unnecessarily and incrementally.
When the founding minister of the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D Higgins, established it in 1993 he had a wide and coherent vision for the ways in which the rich constituents of arts, heritage and the Gaeltacht could be integrated. This included an intuitive and practical respect for “the arm’s length” principle and an understanding of why autonomy is important for key cultural institutions. It was a grand vision but one that became fragmented and diluted during the “boom” years, as the constant changes of departmental name indicates. It was my view, expressed at the time, that the 2003 Arts Act would greatly weaken the public profile of the Arts Council, thereby blunting one of its most potent weapons as a firewall between government and the creative work of artists.
The self-preserving instincts of a government department, not known to be replete with expertise, is leading it to weaken autonomous institutions, assimilate what might better be left separate, and dilute the avenues of voluntary expertise which the boards of many arts and cultural institutions across the state have long exemplified, to both local and national advantage. Nor can generalist civil servants substitute for specialist public servants.
Our attention should not be diverted from the department’s existential crisis, and absence of vision, by the protests of the arts bodies and cultural institutions which it appears to be intent on weakening further. – Yours, etc,