Feature preview
THE OTHER POINT OF VIEW
Is it time of the arts to take a stand over child porn? Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums, thinks so.
The arts world is wallowing in a moral mire. Last month, I wrote about explicit images being portrayed in an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, and the warnings attached to it. Within a few weeks visitors to another gallery had another notice to read: Tate Modern put up a warning about the Richard Prince photograph of a naked 10-year-old Brooke Shields, part of their Pop Life exhibition. Already no one seems to remember exactly what the words were, but the Tate says it read, ‘Something like … “Visitors may find the image in this room challenging in content.”’
But words can’t protect you from the power of an image. Saying it’s going to offend isn’t a defence against it offending. In the “photograph of a photograph”, Shields’ pre-pubescent body is smothered in oil as she stands in a marble bathtub, her hair and face heavily made up. Although the picture had been displayed without comment at the Guggenheim two years earlier, Scotland Yard felt it was their duty to intervene under Britain’s obscenity laws. Officers from the obscene publications unit arrived on the first morning the exhibition was going to be open to the public (30 September) and advised the image be removed. Interestingly, the press had already seen the photograph at an earlier opening without any legal intervention, as had those invited along to the private view the night before. Are arts correspondents and Tate sponsors of sounder moral mind than those who pay to enter an exhibition?
The Tate is very shy about the exact circumstances of the image’s removal from the gallery wall. They won’t even confirm whether the officers arrived with a search warrant. All they’ll say is that the “room is temporarily closed while in discussion with the police”.
What sort of discussions? And shouldn’t these discussions be held in public, not between the authorities and a single museum? Surely the issues raised here – the relevance of context in displaying difficult images, permission from those portrayed, obscenity, censorship - are pertinent to every gallery. It’s disappointing that there has been, as far as I know, very little attempt at any open debate about this removal. Couldn’t the Tate have used its very powerful position within the cultural sector to lead on such a debate, welcoming the opportunity to bring these issues out into the open and get visitor feedback? Instead, it’s working towards a few handshakes and secret agreements behind closed doors.
The other big child abuse story connected to the arts in the last month has been handled very differently. Movie director Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland and is facing extradition to the US on charges of raping a minor in 1977. Here, the arts have come out in support of their own. It’s a shameful stance. Here’s a man who has pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old while also, undeniably, making a few very good films. But just as putting up a warning isn’t a defence against displaying obscene images, so making groundbreaking movies isn’t a defence against child rape.
To anyone outside the cultural elite, the case for Polanski’s extradition seems clear cut. The removal of the image at the Tate Modern isn’t so simple. But this instinct behind being vociferous about the film director and ignoring the removal of the photograph is the same – to close ranks. Both being outspoken in support of Polanski and silent over Brooke Shields only makes the public more suspicious of the artistic community, believing it to be small and self-serving.
Only when the creative industries open tricky issues up to public debate will they gain the trust of their visitors and viewers. Sadly, these two events have shown that they’re incapable of doing so. Yet.
Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums, wants to put children where they belong – with the rest of us
Who doesn’t want more for kids? Eureka!, the National Children’s Museum in Halifax, is hoping to develop a children’s museum for London in the developing King’s Cross area.
I know it sounds like an odd position for the director of an organisation called Kids in Museums, but I prefer places which aren’t just for the young. There’s a difference between more opportunities for children in museums, and more children’s museums. I personally believe that kids have the best time in a museum when there are also lots of adults there, also having a good time.
But it’s not only better for the kids. My problem is that children’s museums can be slightly tedious for grown ups. I like crayoning as much as any other middle-aged mum, but I don’t really want to do it in a museum. And in terms of having conversations with my kids – which must be at the heart of any family visit – I’d be far more likely to hold them around some astounding historic or scientific object than buttons and levers.
The children’s museums movement, arising from the States, quite rightly “embraces the concept of learning through play” and “characterised as being hands-on and multi-sensory”. But why do we need a separate building solely dedicated to these activities, rather than incorporating it in to every gallery, in every museum?
Of course, much of the work being done in children’s museums is innovative and important, often attracting new audiences and families. Discover in East London focuses on storytelling, with a Story Garden and Story Trail through the Sparkly River and over the Creaky Bridge. Eureka! in Halifax was the first children’s museum in Britain and is hugely successful, attracting five million visitors since its opening.
This is all fabulous work, and perhaps particularly necessary over 20 years ago, when Eureka! was founded. But is this the future? If we are going to have a new museum, should primary school pupils be its target audience? Other learning institutions are becoming more inclusive. Special schools are being phased out in favour of mainstream inclusion, and extended schools are being developed for all the community, of any age. So is it the right path to persist with separate museums for small children?
But age apartheid isn’t confined to the walls of the new museum itself. Eureka! London will be housed in the King’s Cross “Children’s Cluster”, advertised as “an environment that is safe and harmonious”. I’m not sure exactly what that means. Shouldn’t everywhere be safe for children, not just a “cluster”? And safe from whom and what? It’s a horrible thought that all adults entering will have to be CRB checked and all surfaces so soft there can never be a scuffed knee.
The additional question is whether central London needs a new museum, especially one which will, presumably, charge an entrance fee. There’s already over 240 museums in the capital, many of them free. Perhaps money (an estimated £35million) and effort would be better spent enhancing and, possibly, enlarging some of these, rather than starting again from scratch. Why not have dedicated children’s facilities, areas and activities within what we already have? The Walker Gallery in Liverpool, for example, has an excellent Big Art area, especially aimed at very young children. Other museums, including the Tate, are considering using a similar model. And why let those museums that don’t now cater for children off the hook so easily? Why give them the chance to point up the street and say, if you want playful, hands-on activities for kids, why don’t you go there? We’ve got more serious, adult things to do.
I’m all for more kids in more museums. But let’s have more play, more learning and more interactivity in all museums, not just those housed in a Children’s Cluster.
This summer, the Royal Society of Arts published its Education Charter. Paul Collard, chief executive of Creativity, Culture & Education, explains why he is supporting the Charter:
This summer, Creativity, Culture & Education (CCE) published “Creative Partnerships: Changing Young Lives”, a compilation of independent research reports and case studies investigating the impact of the government’s flagship creative learning programme, Creative Partnerships. This collection of reports also included a think piece about the RSA’s initiative in publishing a Charter for education, inviting organisations and individuals to support its aims.
In essence the Charter describes the good practice that CCE is already bringing into schools through Creative Partnerships. We believe that awakening a love of learning at an early age is crucial to continuous learning and development throughout life. The Creative Partnerships programme, which is delivered nationally by CCE, fosters innovative long-term partnerships between schools and creative professionals, including artists, performers, architects, multimedia developers and scientists. These partnerships inspire young people, teachers and creative professionals to challenge how they work and experiment with new ideas – in turn leading to young people leaving school with improved attainment levels as well as that all important love of learning.
A new festival will showcase some unusual partnerships between the arts world and the academic one. Patrick Kelly reports
The crowded festival calendar has an new entrant - but this is an arts festival with a twist. The events at Inside Out will combine painters with philosophers, university dons with dub poets, computer gamers with choristers and geographers with gamelan players.
Not only will regular cultural venues like the National Portrait Gallery and Kings Place play host to events, but so too will university campuses. Inside Out, which will run from October 19-25, is the UK’s first-ever festival of higher education and the arts. Inside Out,
Each event will involve academics, alumni and students from the universities in different ways –with figures such as Andrew Motion, Blake Morrison, A.C Grayling, Michael Portillo and Orlando Figes, and less well-known but up-and-coming young academics and artists such as Gideon Koppel, who directed this year’s acclaimed film sleep furiously, London-based Iraqi film director Maysoon Pachachi and David Toop, a ‘sonic researcher’ at the London College of Communication who leads the Laptop Orchestra.
It’s organised by something called LCACE (the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Exchange) which has been going for some 5 years but has decided that that’s enough time hiding its light under a bushel.
Patrick Kelly on the first line of defence for the nation’s art treasures
Sir Stafford Cripps is not one of those historical figures normally associated with making a contribution to the gaiety of the nation - but we have him to thank for the fact that Titian’s The Death of Actaeon and Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks adorn the walls of the National Gallery while The Three Graces by Canova is amongst the treasures enjoyed by visitors to the Victoria and Albert Museum or the National Galleries of Scotland.
These great works of art were saved for the country thanks to the UK’s rather unique system of banning the export of art until such time as major museums and galleries have had time to stump up the cash to keep them at home. At one time, all of the above were destined to leave these shores as their owners found buyers abroad until a government minister stopped the sale in its tracks. Public appeals, donations from the Art Fund, support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund - all of these were tapped in order to ensure that the asking price for the artworks was matched here in the UK.
But who decides to slap the export ban on a treasured item, or rather who recommends that course of action to the Secretary of State for Culture? And on what basis do they make that recommendation?
Step forward the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest. This body has been around for some 57 years, making it one of our more venerable quangos. It was set up by the lugubrious Cripps, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, following an inquiry into whether Britain should retain its wartime controls over the export of outstanding works of art.
York’s venerable Theatre Royal has gone much further than handing out free tickets to young people, it’s asked them to run the show too.
Robbie Swale has been booking acts for the programme at York’s Theatre Royal this month. But Robbie doesn’t work for the theatre. He has a job with the Meat Hygiene service. Izzy Madgwick has been commissioning designers, employing photographers and issuing press releases for the York Theatre Royal since May, but she’s not on the theatre payroll either - she’s just graduated from university.
In fact, stroll into the foyer of the city’s prestigious and venerable theatre building, 265 years old and still going strong, and you will come across box office staff, technicians, managers and catering supervisors who are not only extraordinarily young, but none of them will be on any kind of employment contract with the theatre.
But this is not a student occupation..it is rather, one of the most daring schemes ever undertaken by a regular theatre. From September 19 until October …everything at York Theatre Royal will be run by a group of young people who have been allowed to take over the theatre lock, stock and barrel.
THE OTHER POINT OF VIEW with Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums
‘Visitors should be aware that some of the works in Walking in My Mind are of an explicit nature and are not considered suitable for children.’ Hayward Gallery
When I’m tutoring on a writing workshop for museum and gallery professionals, we always advise participants against using the passive voice. It’s evasive, we say. It suggests to the visitor that you’re hiding something. Who exactly is doing or saying it? The visitor wants to know.
And that’s how I felt when I read that notice as I entered the Hayward Gallery on the last, crowded weekend of the Walking in My Mind exhibition, accompanied by my eight-year-old twins. Who didn’t consider the work suitable for my kids?
Not me. And certainly not the other parents who were there that weekend. Every single family I saw nodded at the notice, then dragged their toddler or teenager into the gallery, stalwartly ignoring it.
The particularly offending item was a work by Jason Rhoades called The Creation Myth. In a huge room as crowded as a jumble sale, there were, if you looked carefully, some images of women’s genitals in the style of pages torn from a pornographic magazine. (There was an additional notice outside this room, with PARENTAL GUIDANCE in big red letters –
‘Visitors should be aware that this work contains sexually explicit images. This work is not suitable for children. To by-pass this work, please retrace your steps …’)
The problem was, the only reason my kids looked carefully was to find what they weren’t supposed to see. ‘What’s not for children?’ they pestered me. If there had been no notice, they wouldn’t have noticed. And even when they did find the offensive images, they just glanced and moved on to more interesting items – the toy train with a stuffed snake on top, for example. My teenager, in contrast, would have stuck by anything suggesting sex. But I don’t think the parental guidance notice was directed at 16-year-olds.
This isn’t the first exhibition where my kids have been warned off. I remember the 1997 Brit Art exhibition at the Royal Academy, where we were guided away from a room full of pictures of naked children. At Banksky in Bristol recently, our guide ushered us past the plastic phallus hidden amongst the exhibits in one glass cabinet, not wanting the twins to spot it.
You’ll have noticed that all these instances involve contemporary art. Why do we think modern images are particularly problematic? I’ve never seen – although you may correct me – a notice up warning children away from the anatomically correct genitals on Michelangelo’s David. When my youngest was just three, I showed him the replica at the V&A and his immediate response was to shout out, ‘Big willie!’ Should I have grabbed the handles on his pushchair and made for the flowers on the 19th century French porcelain vases, steering him away from harm?
Brit Art, Banksky and Walking in the Mind were all great exhibitions for kids. At the Hayward, Yoshimoto Nara’s My Drawing Room became a wonderful Wendy house for them to peep into; Thomas Hirschhorn’s tunnels made of cardboard boxes and packing tape were a joy to explore. But at all of them, there were some works of art I was uncomfortable exposing my children to. At the Hayward, Mark Manders’ cat cut in half disturbed the twins. ‘I think that’s why it isn’t suitable for children,’ whispered one of them, guessing completely incorrectly what they were not supposed to see.
I don’t advocate getting rid of all warnings. But I do believe it would be far braver for galleries to own up to who wrote them. ‘We – the Hayward, or even a named curator – believe this work is unsuitable for children.’ It’s chickening out to imply an impersonal authority – Government? The Authorities? God? - has deemed us bad parents if we let our seven-year-old stroll past a picture of a penis.
But most of all, I wonder if it really is productive to point these things out. Human genitals are far more embarrassing – and confusing to look at - for 16-year-olds than six-year-olds. And violence is far more damaging to both of them. So let’s have no more passive voices on gallery walls. If a museum, gallery or exhibition space feels a need to warn parents, that’s fine. But say who is doing it. And, perhaps, why.
More details of TextWorkshop writing workshops for museum and gallery professionals at www.textworkshop.co.uk
To order a Kids in Museums Manifesto and sign up as a supporter, go to www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk
27 Feb 2008. Starting today, Dea Birkett, director of the charity Kids in Museums, starts a regular column
I’m cynical about the power of the press. I don’t mean that I’m anti-media. How could I be? My roots are in writing, broadcasting and journalism. I’m a great admirer of those who produce stories that millions want to listen to, watch or read every day. My cynicism is about the point of it all.
Last month we launched the 2009 Kids in Museums Manifesto – 20 ways to make a visit family friendly - compiled from visitors’ comments. The press coverage was, and continues to be, considerable, including in this magazine. It began on the day of the launch with news features in three national newspapers; it’s always best to get on the news rather than arts or features pages. For a start, the news pages are generally read by far more people. And, more importantly perhaps, they’re the place other media outlets - in particular radio and TV - pick up their stories. For example, our news feature in the Telegraph led to about a dozen calls from radio stations asking for interviews later that day. If we’d had a feature on the arts pages, this would never have happened.
During the following few days, comment pieces appeared in response to the news features. These led, in turn, to letters on the letter pages. This variety of sections kept the debate about welcoming everyone in museums going. In terms of column inches, the launch was a triumph.
But is column inches and interviews a good way to assess the success of media coverage in the arts? I once attended a press seminar for museum professionals given by David Yelland, former editor of the The Sun newspaper. He said straight away that there was not point in museums chasing national coverage. His argument was that if they wanted to pull in the punters, they should put up a notice in the local Tesco. Far more people would read it than any national newspaper article and, as a result, far more people attend your exhibition. It also required minimal effort and no cost.
I know any arts PR person reading this will be shaking their head at this point. They want to slap down a pile of double page spreads in front of their client to prove what good coverage they secured. But big isn’t beautiful if it’s in a paper few read (and that includes at least one national) or in a section that only the converted turn to. (An arts page review might only be read by people who were going to go to the event anyway, rather than attract new audiences.) With press coverage, size really does matter. But not as you might imagine. Often the smaller, the better. A single column is far more widely read than any 1200 word feature.
It’s important for all organisations, and particularly those working within the arts sector, to ask what’s the point of press coverage. Why do we want to attract attention and from whom? And what would we consider a good outcome of this coverage?
For our launch, we wanted to achieve two outcomes. First, we are a visitor-led and focussed organisation so it’s important that visitors and potential visitors learn about our work. The coverage on local radio helped in this enormously. People don’t tend to get involved with something promoted in a national newspaper but do if they hear about it on Wolverhampton City Radio, where it sounds as if it’s meant for them.
Secondly, we wanted to put the issue of museums being welcome to all, of any age, on the arts agenda and before opinion formers. The national coverage has been particularly useful in this, with the comment pieces at the heart of drawing this attention. Without them, and the ensuing letters, the issue would just have been a story that lasted for the day. Now it’s a subject of debate. It’s just important for us to remember that these are two different audiences, reached through different media outlets.
And, of course, that’s without tackling the internet as a media tool. But then I’ll do that next month …
To order a copy of the 2009 Kids in Museums Manifesto email manifesto@kidsinimuseums.org.uk. You can also join the discussion boards at www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk.
AI Profile - Patrick Spottiswoode
Work has just begun on creating the Shakespeare Globe’s £6m education and rehearsal centre in what used to be the theatre’s headquarters, known as the Bear Gardens. It’s a very fitting way to mark the 25th anniversary of the arrival of the director of education, Patrick Spottiswoode.
There’s an historical symmetry about Globe Education going back in the Bear Gardens, 50 yards away from where the theatre now stands. It was from this ramshackle Victorian corner building in Park Street that Sam Wanamaker conceived what has become Shakespeare’s Globe, a recreation of the theatre Shakespeare and Burbage built which has become as much a part of the London tour as Tower Bridge and the London Eye.
But the whole thing started as an education project, something the callow Patrick Spottiswoode was unaware of when he turned up for an interview.
“I saw the ad in the Guardian, ‘museum manager’, and it said there were two theatres to manage, an exhibition, a shop, a café… I thought I was going to the Barbican”. The two theatres turned out to be a room and a 30-seater auditorium, the exhibition was a ramshackle collection of theatrical memorabilia, with a vast stuffed bear at the entrance, and the café was a kettle. Exhibition were an eclectic mix of Sam’s interests, from bear and bull baiting to the trade union movement to Thames watermen.
But he was caught by the Wanamaker dream. A Warwick University PhD student suffering from second year PhD ennui he was looking for something to fill a year’s break from his paper on Sydney, Spenser and Shakespeare, and he has never picked up that particular pen again.
Instead he became Wanamaker’s amanuensis, keeper of the flame Sam had lit of finding out about how drama worked for Shakespeare by remaking his theatre.
Robot technology is becoming more a d more sophisticated, and although they may not be about to take over the world, are they about to make important contributions to the arts world? Simon Tait meets the man behind RoboThespians, Will Jackson.
How closely related are theatre and the latest generation of robots? Is the connection the art, the mechanics, the humour? Is the difference computer technology? Actually, the relationship is pretty damn close.
Next year could see their coming of age when they take part in a play at a new science centre opening in Warsaw next year.
The moving, talking, singing, acting, sort-of-dancing RoboThespian, or RT, whose eyelids even close over his moving eyeballs as he speaks, has been developed in Cornwall by Engineered Arts whose director is Will Jackson.
He had studied 3D design before finding himself in the film industry making advertising movies – RT’s earliest ancestor, believe it or not, is the furry pink rabbit of the Duracel ad. He went to New York where his textile designer partner Tracy had work, but he found Madison Avenue well paid but, well, dull, and they moved on to Australia for a couple of years, working on animation.
He began building his own machines, specifically unique slot machines, working with the automaton designer Tim Hunkin, and some of Will’s creations are still part of Tim’s Under the Pier collection at Southwold in Sufolk.
Together they worked on the Science Museum’s The Secret Life of the Home – Will has a knack of getting to what children really need to know, and developed the cut-in-half-toilet to show exactly where the poo goes.
Then came Cornwall’s Eden Project, the “biomes” which constitute more than a green theme park for which he and Paul Spooner, another artist working with automaton machines who uses his carving genius to make his pieces, created figures that would show what the world would be without plants.
