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I've written more on the National Trust's new strategy for @TheArtNewspaper. The cuts at curator level are worse than I feared.
ALL specialist curators are to go - books, furniture, paintings, sculpture, etc. (Thread, 1/) https://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/national-trust-restructuring-plan-job-cuts
ALL specialist curators are to go - books, furniture, paintings, sculpture, etc. (Thread, 1/) https://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/national-trust-restructuring-plan-job-cuts
In the central ‘Curation and Experience’ team, about 79 posts have been summarily ‘closed’. These staff must now compete amongst each other for 53 new posts. 2/
Earlier this week @thetimes published details of the Trust's ‘Ten Year Vision Document’, which set out an ambition to ‘dial down’ the Trust's role as a ‘major national cultural institution’. 3/ https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/national-trust-to-focus-on-outdoors-and-hold-fewer-exhibitions-in-properties-ten-year-strategy-reveals-wdsf2cm0b
In a letter to The Times, the @nationalTrust’s CEO Hilary McGrady said the Ten Year Vision document was purely ‘to provoke debate’. 4/
I'm not sure. Does axing specialist curators confirm the ‘dial down’ ambition? As I set out in @TheArtNewspaper, redundancy documents match the Vision agenda; ‘a differentiated approach’; reducing ‘extent of collections’; a new post, ‘Curator of Re-Purposing Country Houses’. 5/
Today, The Times reports internal concerns that the Trust 'is set on keeping only 20 of its properties continually open to the public'. 6/ https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/national-trust-to-scrap-its-experts-hdmzlqbhd
Without seeking to deny the financial pressures the Trust faces, this is a vital moment in the Trust’s history. Anyone interested in the arts and heritage should help fight these reckless changes. Thanks for your support. 7/Ends.
