Anthony Julius
Good afternoon everybody. It’s a great privilege and pleasure for me on behalf of Mishcon de Reya to introduce Dr Tristram Hunt who has had an extraordinary career which we’re going to discuss in some detail, focusing in particular on his role as Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, one of the great museums of the world. For those of us who don’t really know about the history of the place, maybe you could just give a little, I mean, you are a historian, you can give us a little account of its genesis?
Dr Tristram Hunt
So, I mean the V&A emerges in the mid-19th Century from three main strands. The first is the design school movement of the 1830s and ‘40s, this very strong idea that Britain was falling behind France, Germany, America in design skills and so wanted to have a school of design. So, you would collect artefacts to encourage design and drawing and in a sense manufacturing skills and have a museum as part of that. The second strand was the East India Company. So, we have our origins partly in the East India Company repository which was the museum repository of the British East India Company and the psychology of colonialism was strongly connected to collecting and this museum was originally in Leadenhall Street in the City and then it becomes the India Museum and then it forms part of the South Kensington Museum. So, that’s why we’ve always had this incredible South Asian collection, a strong connection to British Imperial History. And the third and final which is probably the most significant, which is the Great Exhibition of 1851 and that incredible moment in Hyde Park which brings together the work of industry of all nations and in this aftermath, Albert was, with his great factotum Henry Cole so, we can’t let this moment go to miss, we’ve got to have a kind of legacy for this. And so he created Albert-opolis south of Hyde Park, which would be today the Natural History Museum, Imperial College, The Science Museum and at the heart of it was the South Kensington Museum. This was to be a treasury of science and art to encourage design, manufacturing, technology so, quite a strong kind of utilitarian focus for the museum for its early days along with this very strong conviction in education and this in a sense marks us out I think from other museums and it’s a big part of what we hope to do today.
Anthony Julius
And how did it get its name?
Dr Tristram Hunt
So, originally it was just the South Kensington Museum. Then Queen Victoria was convinced at the very end of the 19th Century to rename it The Victoria and Albert Museum. She just wanted it to be The Albert Museum in honour of her beloved Albert, but she was rightly convinced that it should be the Victoria and Albert Museum and again, we like the fact we’re not a state, we’re not a governmental foundation like the British Museum or the National Gallery. It gives us just a slightly different feel in a sense to us as an organisation.
Anthony Julius
How does that kind of semi-detached relation to the state work in funding terms?
Dr Tristram Hunt
I mean we’re both very lucky and at the moment in this Covid-moment rather stuck. I mean, I think the British model of museums is extraordinarily good in that we receive now around 45% of our funding from Government. So, we receive around £40 million a year from tax payers in the UK and it means that there is obviously a strong connection as a Government-funded body but also an independence and that’s different to our colleagues on the continent. But we’re also not wholly dependent on philanthropy and entry prices as colleagues in America are and this model was working really, really well until Covid hit and suddenly we’re slightly high and dry because we’ve neither got the big financial muscle of the American endowment to the museums, nor do we have the kind of level of state support that our continental colleagues have. That said, the Government has been generous to the museums in the recent bailout, we’re grateful for that. But the funding model I think will probably have to change over the coming years because all of our commercial income, catering, retail, licensing, events, corporate support and let me put on the record, debts to Mishcon de Reya for their support and the support of other members. All of that is under pressure.
Anthony Julius
I mean, just to help us understand. If you imagine a kind of pie chart, what are the proportions?
Dr Tristram Hunt
We’re a £90 million organisation. If you kind of slice through in terms of revenue rather than sort of our kind of capital programmes, the levels of support it’s paid-for tickets for exhibitions, it’s membership both corporate and individual, it’s retail, both online and in the shop it’s catering and then it’s commercial and events hire. We’ve had to, like every business and every organisation, just pull our horns in. put on pause various projects and I think one of the challenges we’re all facing is living with our malleability. You know, we did have an amazing 4 million visitors coming to South Kensington last year. I don’t think we’ll be back to that for three or four years and without those visitor numbers, everything else is impacted. So, we’re going to be a smaller organisation. We’re going to have to do less. Whilst also, I think, what we’ve all felt during Covid is the importance of civic places. The importance of being present together. The importance of, whilst we’re all on the screen at the moment, I’m looking at things which are not on the screen, has value. So, I think the role of museums and actually from my perspective with that are placed within supporting education, supporting education outside the classroom. All of it’s vital. What we do remains vital. But you know, people are in a kind of business-critical frame at the moment and understandably they’re not able to support in the way they did. So, the ask to Government because we are a national collection will be higher and we will need more support over the coming years.
Anthony Julius
It's troubling I’m sure for you to find yourself in that position because Government is going to be saying, ‘Well, we’ve run out of money ourselves we’re going to have to raise taxes. Why the V&A in London?’ What’s your answer to that?
Dr Tristram Hunt
As a national museum you know, we work with schools in Blackpool, in Doncaster and Sunderland and Sheffield. We lend, we’re the largest lender of objects to other museums around the country. One of our sites is obviously in Stoke-on-Trent at the Wedgewood Museum, the Wedgewood collection there. So, we’re a national institution, yes, in South Kensington but national. But also, if we want visitors to come back to the UK, you know, coming to see our cultural institutions is one of the big drivers for inward-bound tourism and that’s something we’re going to have to rebuild over the coming years. And then the other component from a kind of internal investment idea is the creative industries contribute over £100 billion to the UK economy and the V&A has always regarded itself as this kind of seedbank for the creative industries. I think before lockdown the latest figures were showing that 40% of visitors to the V&A would describe themselves as from the creative industries. But you know, we completely get that in the hierarchy of the us versus a critical care bed or us versus some of the law and order, we understand our place. But I think you get a very good return from investment in supporting cultural institutions.
Anthony Julius
Yes. What is the V&A’s kind of national footprint?
Dr Tristram Hunt?
So, we have touring exhibitions of Chester and Exeter and obviously the schools programme. In terms of UK visitors, so 50% of our visitors are from abroad, 50% from the UK, 45% of the UK visitors will be from London, another 20% from the South East and then the rest of the UK. So, it is kind of in terms of as it were coming direct to South Ken, London, South East dominated. But the important point about the collection is that we share it as widely as possibly amongst other institutions. But also having been the Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent central I’m absolutely passionate about ensuring that what we do through the Wedgewood Museum in Staffordshire connects across the Midlands and so over the coming years our footprints in Derby and Nottingham and Leicester and Stoke has to be much, much bigger.
Anthony Julius
So, you talked about your political career which allows me to just take a slight kind of sideways look at that. You started as an academic and then you had a period as a very fully and actively engaged Member of Parliament and you were in the Shadow Cabinet for a while. And now you’re the Director of this extraordinary museum. Of course it raises lots of really interesting questions. I mean, just the sense that one’s life however structured one wants to make it seem to the outside, it’s so much a matter of chance and opportunity. I mean, I just wondered whether you feel that or whether you had some master plan?
Dr Tristram Hunt
No, I mean I think that’s very well put. I mean I was always, I was passionate about politics and passionate about history. Whether it’s making radio programmes about history or whether it’s the role of the museum or you know, my work as an academic historian, there was always this idea of that interplay between past and present and particularly you know, notions of memory and the past and how that affects the contemporary as well as an interest, just a kind of raw interest in politics. I was very, very lucky I worked on the great 1997 general election campaign in Milbank for Peter Mendelsohn and I was a strong supporter of Tony Blair and the New Labour years. And when I was doing my doctorate I worked as a special advisor a couple of days a week for David Sainsbury when he was the Science Minister. So, I always kept this connection between politics and history and I then had some happy years working at Queen Mary University of London, lecturing there and making some television programmes and writing books and doing the kind of – that crossover – that public history space. But then there’s always a sense of wanting to give it a go yourself and so I tried to be selected for a number of seats and I was very, very lucky enough to be selected and then elected as Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent.
Anthony Julius
What are the plans for the future? What programmes are you developing now for the V&A?
Dr Tristram Hunt
In the short-term a fantastic exhibition next year on Iran, Epic Iran. Telling the story of 1000 years of remarkable civilisation through material culture. Then a big family exhibition on Alice in Wonderland next year. We’ve got an exhibition on bags coming up this autumn. But a broader level our big strategic objective over the next year is to build a new museum in Stratford in East London – V&A East and a new collections and research centre in Stratford on the Olympic Park. So, taking, everyone says, ‘Where have you hidden all the other stuff?’ Well, we’re going to show you where it all is. So, you will be able to wander the reserve collections of the V&A. See all those items that are not on display in the galleries. Whilst also building up a new museum as part of the East Bank development alongside Sadler’s Wells, the BBC, London College of Fashion, to create this really new dynamic centre in the fastest growing, youngest, most diverse part of the UK, which is really exciting.
Anthony Julius
Yes. And a message to all the people on this really fascinating conversation and thank you again for that, has to be come and then come again to the V&A.
Dr Tristram Hunt
Come, come again and then best of all, become a member. If you’re able to support the museum over the longer-term then that gives you re-entry to exhibitions and the member’s room and crucially the shop, discounts there. These are the times when actually retaining support and growing support for these cultural institutions which, I’m not allowed to be political anymore but, we seeing growing tax on institutions and sort of partisanship and actually having a strong and vibrant civil society of which museums are an important part of, of Britain and our democratic liberal tradition.
Anthony Julius
Well, Dr Tristram Hunt Director of the V&A, thank you very much on behalf of the Mishcon de Reya Academy for giving us an hour of your time and thank you, those of you who have been listening, for listening.
Dr Tristram Hunt
Yes, thank you.
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