What gives at Gainsborough's House?

A number of people have asked me to comment on the situation at Gainsborough’s House.  I have been associated with the museum since 2003, and have been a Trustee for some four years.

As was stated in the Free Press on Thursday we have recently been obliged to make our Director, Diane Perkins, redundant due to the fact that our income and expenditure are increasingly diverging. 

We are sad to see Diane go.  She has definitely enhanced curatorial quality at the museum both during and after the House’s restoration and she will be missed by many people.

However over the past couple of years, while costs have risen with inflation and many sources of income have declined, Gainsborough’s House’s finances have been increasingly subsidised by windfalls such as legacies.  Clearly in the longer term one off inflows such as these cannot be relied on to fund ongoing and regular expenses.  There is obviously also a question mark over the annual grants we are currently given by public bodies.  Advice was recently received that a charity of the size of Gainsborough’s House could not expect to sustain its present fixed overhead on the basis of likely future fund raising and other sources of revenue.  An urgent plan of action and retrenchment was deemed essential to guarantee the future viability of the House.

People have expressed concern that we will no longer be able to support an exciting exhibition programme.  Others are worried about education and courses.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

We, the Trustees, are confident that we can continue the current activities of the museum by a combination of redistribution of the Director's duties to other staff members, the outsourcing of some duties, a higher degree of reliance on our many volunteers, and increased responsibilities for the Board.  We are going to have to become more ‘hands on’.   I, for example, am going to be trained so that I can help out the staff in supervising the House on a Saturday.  I may also be able to deliver some of the introductory talks that are provided for visiting groups.  In addition to others who are prominent in the world of art, we are very lucky to have among our number Christopher Lloyd, former Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures. He obviously has outstanding curatorial skills and a wealth of experience. 

We have already had offers of help from one leading Gainsborough scholar, and messages of support from other museums in the area. As far as exhibitions are concerned, we have a full programme arranged well into 2012, and ideas for later shows, some of a particularly ‘local’ nature, are coming in thick and fast.  These do not have to be organised by an in house curator.  The current Munnings landscape exhibition for example was largely mounted with the help of an external expert with the support of Sophie, our museum assistant.

To my mind a museum such as Gainsborough’s House relies on three factors:  what I call the ‘three C’s’.  These are: curatorial responsibility, ensuring security for the collection and academic respectability; commercial sense in maintaining the organisation's financial strength;  and community engagement – being a resource for all the people, young and old,  of Sudbury and the surrounding area. We are working hard to ensure that all three of these features are supported.

Resting on the three C’s, the House’s future will be a positive and exciting one.