IN DEVOTING THIS page to a consideration of a recent government report on the arts in Britain today, two reservations immediately occur: first, such reports have a habit of fizzling out, their balloon of optimism deflated by the pressure of day-to-day practicalities; and second, their language cannot quite be trusted: the black-and-white prose of political expediency has no room for subtleties and qualifications. Both these reservations apply to Supporting Excellence in the Arts. From Measurement to Judgement. This report was commissioned in 2007 from Sir Brian McMaster by the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and was published in January this year. Its prime focus is on publicly subsidised arts in Britain, particularly theatre, performance and museums and galleries. Informing several of its specific recommendations is a vaulting vision of the place of culture and the arts in Britain that suggests a considerable change in government thinking.

The report has had a rough reception from many quarters. While commentators in general have acknowledged the benevolent intentions behind McMaster’s findings, most have voiced criticisms, particularly directed at the report’s intrepid truffling after clichés and the imprecision of some of the terms that are used. Inevitably, the meaning of ‘excellence’ has stirred most discussion. For McMaster ‘excellence in culture occurs when an experience affects and changes an individual’. While this woolly definition may sometimes apply, it can hardly stand scrutiny, particularly in the light of the extraordinary complexity of the term ‘culture’ (although, happily, the word ‘multiculturalism’ is nowhere to be found in the report). McMaster sees ‘innovation’ and ‘risk-taking’ as crucial to achieving excellence. More hot air. For most consumers of culture these two qualities are by no means top priorities in their appreciation of the arts and are frequently the cause of derision and neglect. Nevertheless, this stress on innovation – and it is repeated throughout the report – has something to commend it. As there is no way of knowing what may be valued in our culture by succeeding generations, innovation must be encouraged if we are not to close down possibilities for the future: works that today are the object of derision and neglect become, as we know, admired and accepted components of the culture of tomorrow. But nowhere does McMaster discuss yesterday – the importance of tradition and a knowledge of the past. Culture is not simply a manifestation of, as this report seems to imply, present-day creativity and localised self-expression. It has to be carried forwards from generation to generation – changing in interpretation and volatile in impact but unfailing in inspiration.

Unusually for a report of this kind, the figure of the artist looms large alongside the expected attention given to audiences, consumers and footfall. While due acknowledgement is given to artists as individual creators, there are several references to the need for artists to be active participants in the cultural life of the nation – they should sit on boards, tender advice and be apologists for what they do. The report recommends that at least two artists and/or practitioners should be appointed to major funding bodies and cultural organisations (the long tradition of artists as museum trustees in the national collections goes unmentioned). With the right choice of artist, needless to say, this may be of some help in stemming the tide of appointments in which managerial and administrative skills have overtaken experience and expertise. McMaster singles out the need for the boards of museums and galleries to be more professionally engaged in the arts and more international in outlook when making appointments, particularly of curators. This is surely a fair comment, but he is on shaky ground in his appeal to the artist as participant. From some remarks, he seems a somewhat misty-eyed, old-fashioned worshipper of the artist as a free spirit; at other moments, he draws a portrait of the artist as little more than a servant of culture whose duty is to reflect society and become accountable to it. Artists are the greatest critics of art ‘and their judgement of its success or otherwise should be trusted’. Anyone with the slightest working knowledge of artists would know this to be nonsense (see in this issue, for example, Reynolds on Batoni, p.270, and Sickert on Cézanne, p.272).

Elsewhere it is reassuring to find the report endorses the continuing free admission to museums and galleries; that it deplores the virtual demise of regional touring exhibitions from the Arts Council and suggests that a strategic overview for these be put in place (how to pay for such shows is not the concern of this report); that a greater internationalism should characterise major funding boards; and that it condemns the decline in the provision of cultural programming through the public service broadcasters. With all such implementations and prescriptions, with the removal of ‘outdated structures and burdensome targets’, McMaster forecasts that the arts in Britain ‘are on the verge of another Renaissance’. This is an alarming conclusion and hardly desirable – more preferable would be the authority and confidence of another Enlightenment.

The vision outlined in this report of an arts-hungry public embracing creative risk and innovation, its children rarely in the classroom so busy are they attending theatres and galleries, cultural boards coursing with new blood, touring exhibitions and drama companies whirling from one arts centre to the next providing a round of life-changing, subsidised experiences is, of course, charmingly naive. But where McMaster does suggest a possible significant change, if government takes this report to heart, is his advocacy of a move away from the stranglehold of the quantified results of subsidisation that have bedevilled arts strategy for too long. He wants a less bureaucratic, lighter touch to bear on the system of public-sector support for the arts – more judgment, less measurement. Renaissance or not, kicking down the doors of cold accountability and spurious targets can only be to the good.