Last year, one of my Beaver magazine columns addressed the crisis facing Canadian museums. Gist of the article: local, provincial and federal government keep putting up capital to build new museums, but they starve the existing ones of the operating budgets they need just to maintain their collections. Museums are important; I was glad to say they deserved support.
Yesterday the Government of Canada announced $4.6 million in new cuts in assistance to museums. Canadian Museums Association Executive Director John McAvity is quoted in the media today expressing his disappointment.
McAvity is right to criticize the Harper cuts to museums. But McAvity has been in the press a lot lately. A couple of weeks ago, in a dispute over museums that refuse to pay artists copyright fees for the reproduction of their works, it was McAvity who was quoted as saying art galleries would simply go out of business if they had to pay artists. Other gallery owners and curators weighed in on the same theme: hell, no, we won’t pay artists.
These museum funding cuts are a foolish, shortsighted move. We ought to try to stop them. But you know, I may let others lead the charge for the museums this time. If museum directors want their friends to stand by them, they should think a little more about standing by their friends.
