contemporary monkey

Staffordshire Gold Hoard of Plenty

The City of Birmingham is going through a collective treasure hunt for money at the moment, to acquire, or keep, recently found artifacts in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.  On a Staffordshire farmer’s land, a seventh century, Anglo-Saxon gold hoard was found via the usual suspect: anorak wanderer armed with metal detector: a minimalist Indiana Jones.  The “gold hoard” is a collection of 1500 gold and silver pieces, and was originally displayed at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 2009.  The hoard is now in the hands of those greedy treasure robbers, The British Museum, and the West Midlands is angling to get it back.

Popular British TV personality David Starkey has stoked the fire by throwing his celebrity-ness behind appeals for public and private money.  Starkey was quoted in the Birmingham Post web site saying, “…break it up or move it and its meaning is lost”.  This is the same argument that the Greeks use to retrieve the Elgin Marbles from those greedy bastards, The British Museum, to no affect.  Maybe the Greeks would like to contribute in spite.

I have a better idea, one that performs an educational role.  Let’s work with the facts: it’s a gold hoard.  That means long ago a greedy Anglo-Saxon chief (probably an ancestor to the greedy British Museum n’er do wells) stole, embezzled, or otherwise pilfered gold artifacts from another chief, or possibly his own tribe.  Let’s put the stealing in an environment that it deserves: jail.  The Maze Prison is in the process of being ripped down, but surely England must have their Alcatraz, or a version of Guantanamo Bay.  Why not convert part of an unused prison into a showroom for Britain’s found treasure hoards.  Children on school trips would get a two-for-one lesson: historical evidence of what is now their homeland, and a moral lesson for what happens to you when you steal.  Maybe add a chained-up, rotting old actor in one of the cells to add to the affect of misery.

What’s more, the security comes built-in.  Any art thief would be greatly intimidated to set foot anywhere near a jail.  For the optimistic crook who dares to make a dash for it, the one or two security agents stationed at the front door could easily bundle the burglars into a nearby cell.  Then call the nearest magistrate for a quick hearing, and game over.  Bandit caught, taxi fare saved, Bob’s your uncle.

Birmingham's IKON Gallery: our lifeline to contemporary visual culture

Birmingham: England’s second largest city.  It’s a colossal second to London in population, cultural energy, and decent pubs.  The distance between the largest and second-largest, in population, is the equivalent of New York City and Austin, Texas.  Birmingham, however, is ground zero for the industrial revolution, heavy metal music, and the Balti.  The intrepidness of its history in the muscular shadow of London speaks volumes about its local pride and pluck.  At least that’s what I told myself while walking to the Ikon Gallery for a small, but important, gathering of art folk.

Birmingham is England’s Pittsburgh in that pretense doesn’t reveal itself here.  So with a handful of optimism and some hopeful yearning, I attended a local meeting of art-minded people to discuss the topic of a new contemporary art building to be built in Birmingham.  “Imagining Museums” was held at what is Birmingham’s lifeline to current visual culture: the Ikon Gallery.  The Ikon isn’t the Tate Modern, but it does a remarkable job informing us locals with contemporary visual culture.  Without it, we could easily be stuck listening to Pink Floyd.

Unfortunately, this is still England, and to ask British professionals to devise an image of the future is like making the request to meet in Hells’ conference room of getting no-where fast.  On the precipice loomed a fiery fur ball of committee meetings waiting to be gathered, rolled and spat out.

the IKON gallery; small but concentrated

Initial panel discussions from other global museum directors provided an immediate spark, with vital prompts to go for a new type of museum “while you have the chance”.  Great, I thought, this is going to be a blistering exchange.  After the administrators had their say, however, the exchange was thrown over to (mostly) the locals.  That’s when things turned a bit hazy and grey.

Having only lived in Birmingham for a year, but in England for five, it’s clear to me that Birmingham has an advantage that most British cities don’t.  All sorts of immigration happened, and is happening, in Birmingham, and to ignore the obvious is like wondering if there are any gay men in my home city of San Francisco.  Pakistanis, Caribs, Africans together make up 27% of the population (according to Wikipedia), and that number doesn’t include mixed race.  Amassing contemporary art from these communities, mixed with the current Anglo Saxon offerings, yields an understanding amongst nations that other cities can’t, or won’t, provide.  A new museum that includes nations united could eliminate the need for a British National Party, or any other narrow-minded, political group.

There was a push amongst the group of 50-60 art professionals to canvass the community, to ask them directly what they wanted.  Some of the international administrators were broadly suspicious of that idea.  What you don’t want is entertainment, warned one.  Perhaps give them a wizened choice, recommended another.  This sort of holier-than-though thought process is what gets the art community into trouble.  They turn super-nanny on us.

I’m not sure where this is all going, but as pie-in-the-sky meetings go, a room bursting with animation to discover the new world this wasn’t.  Regardless, there is a palpable (albeit at the low hum end of the audio range) local push for contemporary art in Britain’s second largest city, and with any luck, we might just get something that reflects it.