The Wedgwood Collection, which was under threat of sale to meet the pension deficit of its parent company, Waterford Wedgwood, has been saved thanks to thousands of members of the public who responded to an appeal by raising £2.74 million within one month.   Waterford Wedgwood Potteries collapsed in 2009 with a £134 million pension debt and the museum contents, including over 80,000 works of art, ceramics and archives, were threatened with sale at auction to help meet the deficit.   The public donations will be added to the £13 million raised with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Art Fund and a number of private trusts and foundations.  The collection will be gifted to the Victoria & Albert Museum but remain on display, as a long-term loan, in the museum at the Wedgwood factory site in Barlaston, near Stoke. 

But why did it have to come to this?  Why aren’t such pre-eminent collections, which are a key part of Britain’s heritage, better protected?   The Wedgwood Collection was held as a trust.  Yet, in December 2011, the High Court ruled that the collection could be sold to pay the company’s creditors.  Nearly two years later the Administrator agreed a value of £15.75 million for the collection and gave the Art Fund one year to raise the amount to keep the collection intact.  Selling the collection would have meant splitting it into lots and being scattered across the globe.  How have archives come to be treated as a commodity to be bought and sold in such a cavalier fashion and to have such high prices put on them?   How vulnerable are other collections that have moved to trust status, believing that this afforded them some protection?  

Last month Arts Council England (ACE) published its revised vision for the Designation Scheme.  In a report entitled Pearls and Wisdom, ACE asserts that it plans to go back to the scheme’s founding principles of “quality and national significance” to celebrate and help safeguard vital collections for current and future generations.  ACE is keen to move away from the perception that Designation is a form of quasi-standard akin to Accreditation, so the revised application criteria will no longer include an assessment of the applying organisation’s performance.  It is due to re-open for applications in spring 2015. 

ACE is also exploring what measures it could take to step in when Designated collections are at risk following several high profile cases in the museums world in recent years, which will be great news if ACE really does have the “clout” to tackle such issues.   This was one of the requests from stakeholders in a consultation last year, as was the desire to put public benefit and engagement at the heart of the scheme. 

Pearls and Wisdom – http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/news/arts-council-news/pearls-and-wisdom-our-vision-future-designation-sc/