In a largely unread report on the future of the Arts Council and indeed the Arts in England (chief recommendation: keep the Arts Council!), Margaret Hodge, now in the Lords, has one dynamite proposal tucked away among the worthy ones. It’s to charge overseas tourists to enter national museums and galleries. Obviously, this country is a civilised outlier in allowing free access to museums and galleries generally, but in the days when this was established, there was no concept of an era of global tourism in which busloads of Chinese tourists could, by themselves, make the queue for the British Museum unfeasibly, indefensibly long. At least if home visitors have to queue behind the tourists, they should be consoled by the thought that the overseas visitors are paying.
And make no mistake, free entry to museums for everyone is a wonderful privilege, whereby access to the most beautiful works of art and civilisation in the ownership of the state is entirely cost-free. George Bernard Shaw declared that he acquired his education through visits to the National Galleries of London and Dublin, and he’s not alone. You can learn more about the history of humanity, and European civilisation in particular, through visits to half a dozen museums and galleries than from most of the arts National Curriculum.
