Distorted Priorities Are Destroying Local Museums

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Leading British painters and sculptors, including Antony Gormley and David Hockney, have written to Chancellor Gordon Brown asking for more money to revive local museums and galleries. Local museums and galleries, they say, were vital to their development as artists, the places where they "first encountered some of the great works of art that have shaped [their] lives". Yet today these places are "in danger of being allowed to wither and die".

While these artists are right to draw attention to the problems in local museums and galleries, they are wrong about the solution. In my view, the main problem facing these valuable national institutions is not so much their lack …