Museums and Galleries: Scotland

(asked on 7th May 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to increase co-operation between Scottish museums and museums elsewhere in the UK.


Answered by
Michael Ellis Portrait
Michael Ellis
This question was answered on 15th May 2019

The Government welcomes cooperation between Scottish museums and museums across the UK. While culture is a devolved matter, and sponsored museums are arms-length bodies which are operationally independent, the Government provides significant support to museums, including grant-in-aid funding, exhibitions tax relief, and the VAT refund scheme.

In line with a recommendation from the 2017 Mendoza Review of museums, DCMS and the National Museum Directors' Council worked together to devise a Museums’ Partnership Framework, which was published in October 2018. National Museums Scotland are fully involved in this project. DCMS is currently analysing the responses to a survey on the amount of collaboration that currently occurs, and will publish a report later this year.

Examples of recent cooperation involving Scottish museums include V&A Dundee, recently nominated for the Art Fund Museum of the Year award, which is a spectacular partnership showcasing hundreds of V&A objects highlighting Scotland's rich design heritage; joint acquisitions and exhibitions such as the Artist Rooms collaboration between Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland; loans such as those from Scottsh museums and organisations to enable the Charles Rennie Mackintosh exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; and the Natural History Museum’s Dippy the dinosaur which is touring the UK and was recently exhibited in Glasgow.

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