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Not many months ago we were all born-again disciples of John Maynard Keynes. A new New Deal was on the way in which public pounds spent on good works would wash around the aching bones of the economy like some magical spa treatment.
No longer. Now the talk is of cuts, cuts and more cuts, signalled in advance by the Tory government-in-waiting.
And the axe hovers over three of London's biggest cultural building projects: the proposed extensions to Tate Modern and the British Museum and a new centre for the British Film Institute.
Also threatened are a visitor centre for Stonehenge and a base for the Royal Opera House in Manchester. Public money committed to all these projects might now be removed.
Their fate is still unknown after an unexplained £100 million "black hole" was discovered in the capital budgets of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The striking feature of this story is the spectacular bungle at its heart, yet the likely consequence is not an examination of incompetence at the DCMS but a rush to punish blameless projects that had been promised public money.
They are easy targets. Tate and the BM already receive significant amounts of public money, including for building projects completed less than a decade ago. They can be portrayed by a government looking for votes nationally as elitist, Establishment and - worse - in London.
Tate Modern's project, an imposing pyramidal brick tower, looks ambitious, something from a less cautious age than we now inhabit.
The British Museum scheme has yet to get past the Camden council's committee, which refused it planning permission last week.
But it would be a pointless act of vandalism to kill off these works. It would squander the many millions of pounds and man-hours it has already taken to get them this far.
It would throw away sums already offered by private donors - £25 million to the Tate, an undisclosed sum to the BM - on the strength of the Government's promise of support. It would deter the larger sums these projects might attract in the future.
The Government would look, and be, flaky and duplicitous.
The plain fact is that it promised the money, in what the then culture secretary called "a firm symbol of the Government's commitment", and on the basis of this promise institutions have hurled themselves into their building projects.
"If the Government were a private company," says one caught up in the fiasco, "they would be sued."
They, and the whole country, would look particularly idiotic in relation to the Stonehenge visitor centre, a venture which has taken decades not to happen.
Prehistoric man found it easier to drag huge stones from remote quarries to build the original monument than we do to put up some toilets, a coffee shop and exhibition space.
Nor are London's great museums "elitist". Their expansion plans are a consequence of their huge popularity: six million people a year at the British Museum and five million at Tate Modern, compared with an estimated two million when its building was designed.
They are free to enter. They are also assets for the whole country, attracting visitors from abroad. And if some object to their being in London, where else would they be so accessible?
The glee with which people take axes to cultural projects is depressing when far larger sums are squandered, almost without protest, on faulty Private Finance Initiative schemes and failed computer systems.
Not to mention the odd pointless war. The Government should keep its word, rediscover the financial ingenuity it displayed during the banks' bailout, and rustle up the missing hundred million.
Reader views (2)
The arts in the UK should be treated to a standard cost/benefit analysis.
The conclusion would be that they generate billions for the UK every year via tourism, music, paintings, films etc created here.
Stop thinking of art as a 'nice to have' or luxury and be brutal with the numbers. Look at the tax revenue generated, the jobs created and so on.
The 'infrastructure' of the arts must be maintained for this success to be continued in the future.
Imagine the results in banks had been allowed to collapse and billions were invested in the arts!
- Manny Goldstein, London, UK, 28/07/2009 11:07
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If the ridiculous proposed Tate Modern extension does not happen, that will be an excellent result for London. As for the proposed Manchester ROH, no one there wants it & it is pointless. So, two good results - the recession does have an upside after all.
- Liz, London,UK, 28/07/2009 10:41
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