The cringing self-abasement of Britain’s museums

This is National Vandalism Week, and I have been celebrating it in style. First stop – the London Coliseum for the opening night of English National Opera’s inspiring new production of The Rhinegold. The Arts Council says that the ENO is ‘one of the most dynamic and imaginative organisations working in the country’. One can believe it, listening to the orchestra on top form playing Wagner’s spellbinding score. You would never guess that the Arts Council has condemned the company to death. As vandalism goes, this is quite something. The Council has decreed that, in return for a grant significantly less than its current level, ENO must move its base out of London by next year, doing no more than a short season at its home in St Martin’s Lane. This will involve giving redundancy notices to the entire orchestra and chorus who are its heart and soul. ENO will no longer be a company. It will become a mere brand name, performing with scratch orchestras and choruses to much smaller audiences for short seasons.

The Arts Council’s response, per its chief executive Darren Henley, is that the future lies with ‘opera in car parks, opera in pubs, opera on your tablet’. Apparently this is what ‘levelling up’ means. The provinces can make do with pale imitations of the real thing, while opera in London is available only to the well-heeled who can afford the prices at the Royal Opera House.

Then to the British Museum, where there are persistent rumours of a deal to ‘lend’ the Parthenon sculptures (the ‘Elgin Marbles’) to Greece. Everyone knows that it will be a loan in name only. While the sculptures remain in England, they are protected by a statute which provides for them to be vested in the British Museum in perpetuity.