Board up the windows! The future of Wales's national museum?

Swingeing budget cuts to Wales' arts and culture sector gets its first iconic symbol.

24 hours ago I signed off a newsletter about the current state of the arts in Wales with these words: “Perhaps the future is not quite so bleak as many thought it might be.” Woooaaah, has that not aged well!

Yesterday, the BBC ran an article about the wrecking ball funding cuts being delivered to Museum Wales (formerly the National Museum of Wales). 90 jobs are lost (I’m not sure why this is such news - I heard 80 jobs a few months ago). But perhaps the news that really caught the eye was the suggestion - the strong suggestion - that the National Museum building in Cardiff could close down due to the amount of renovation needed doing to it (90million quids worth of roofing needed, while Museum Wales is struggling to absorb a £4.5m annual shortfall). People come and go, but a building stands for something greater.

Over on X (formerly known as Elon Musk’s colon) people are raging. The penny has dropped that Welsh culture is being squeezed to extinction by a government that has never really shown it much respect in the first place. The publishing industry has been kicked in the guts, the performing arts landscape has been flame-throwered, the Arts Council is a ghost ship, National Theatre Wales is a dead company walking, and this has largely been ignored by the wider Welsherati, but now we have a symbol, a building, a focal point for the perceived undermining of whatever version of the Welsh nationhood project you subscribe to.

Newly crowned First Minister Vaughan Gething showed his sensitive side when he said in his first presser since being handed the sceptre and orb that the National Museum would not only have to fight its own way out of this particular paper bag, but that he defended the cuts. The Welsh Government, after being handed a real terms budget decrease of £700m by Westminster, is prioritising health and transport, and everything else is being cut. But a cut to something already on life support could be the death of it. The new First Minister speaks as if the Welsh Government has been bestowing weighted garlands of bullion around the necks of those in the cultural sector for decades. You’ve had it good, and now it’s time we all mucked in and did our bit. But we haven’t had it good, not ever. The leaking roof of the National Museum building in Cardiff refutes such an historic narrative.

The search for the £700m deficit by Welsh Government is one thing, but the truth is the arts and culture sector is now dealing with the results of decades of neglect. When Jane Richardson revealed last year that her staff at Amgeuddfa Cymru were trained in the art of taking priceless paintings off the wall during heavy rain to stop them from succumbing to water damage, she wasn’t talking about the effects of cuts from Westminster, she was talking about the results of chronic historic neglect from Welsh Government.

Could this be the moment the public rejects an either-or narrative about the things a country should be allowed to depend on having? Has the First Minister misjudged the Welsh people in this?

Professor of Welsh Politics, Richard Wyn Jones pointed to the “extraordinary headline” of “Vaughan Gething defends cuts to Museum Wales”. He wondered if the new FM is actually not very good at “this politics business”.

Evolutionary scientist, Dr Rhys Jones highlighted something of the rot in the mindset of the people divvying up theses cuts, when he said, “can we stop calling the National Museum Wales ‘an attraction’. We are not at risk of losing a theme park here. We are at risk of losing an institution that offers free education to millions of people and showcases Welsh culture and the National treasures of Wales to the world.”

But when it comes to nails being hit on the head, comedian Mike Bubbins was yer man, when he said on X, “What sort of a self-respecting country has no national museum?” And although Mike is slightly off-point here (there is no suggestion there will be no National Museum, just that the Cardiff building - iconic as it is - would close down), he is undoubtedly right that no “self-respecting country” would be without one. But I would go even further. Bad enough Wales could be without a national museum. worse still that one of the capital’s most popular tourist attractions should be boarded up. Now that would be a symbol for something. What, I could not say.

Gary Raymond is a novelist, author, playwright, critic, and broadcaster. In 2012, he co-founded Wales Arts Review, was its editor for ten years. His latest book, Abandon All Hope: A Personal Journey Through the History of Welsh Literature is available for pre-order and is out in May 2024 with Calon Books.