Brexit and museums
October 26 2018
Picture: NPG
If you're not 'British' and work for a UK museum, watch out; the government wants to know about you. I've learnt that the Department for Culture Media and Sport has asked nationally funded museums to gather information on the nationality of their employees, to "think about the implications of Brexit". The language of 'thinking' about employees sounds mundane enough, but if you think about it, it's pretty insidious. It leaves the door open for the government to take action against people purely on the basis of their nationality.
What's interesting about the DCMS request is the language they've used. I'm told that DCMS has said it only 'expects' museums to gather this information for them. In other words, it's not framed as an instruction, because the government likes to maintain the pretence that nationally funded museums are 'arms length bodies', in whose affairs it does not directly interfere.
Of course, in practice that's not the case. You might think that the nationality of who museums employ is up to the museums themselves. But in the era of Brexit it's not.
If I was a museum director, I'd tell the government where to go. But alas that's not what has happened at the National Portrait Gallery at least; there, staff have been told that while the museum "values all colleagues", they're still expected to submit information about their nationality. Sad times.
