Hot news on opera, galleries merger and Abbey

ARTSCAPE: THE THREE galleries – National Gallery, Imma and Crawford – will now not be amalgamated, the Minister for Arts, Martin Cullen, has decided, but the National Gallery and Crawford will merge, while Imma remains a stand-alone institution. The Abbey looks very likely to be relocated to the GPO by 2016, and the current feasibility study sounds like a formality. Lastly, the decision on how a new national opera company in Dublin will be established in 2010 will be taken within three months.

Whew.

The Minister was in decisive form the morning after the Budget. He was relatively happy that the arguments made about the importance of the arts had held some sway. And while there are significant cuts, particularly for the Arts Council, the threat to the Irish Film Board and Culture Ireland is gone – “and for good reason”, he says. What made the difference in arguing for the cultural agenda? “Farmleigh was a surprise. It made everybody sit up and think differently about the arts.” It was followed through “at the highest levels”, with presentations to the Oireachtas committee, and the National Campaign for the Arts, plus the economic reports that quantified the contribution of culture to employment and the economy. Our international reputation was significant. “Ireland won 70 global awards last year,” he says. “The Cabinet was very impressed with that.” So “everything helped” in negotiations.

And there are big cultural developments to come, about which the Minister was very open. “I’m going to merge, with their consent, the Crawford and the National Gallery,” he says. “They’re quite happy; it makes sense. The Crawford would like to be part of the National Gallery set-up. I’ve never believed in putting Imma and the National Gallery together, and I think it would be wrong. They have very important, distinct remits, and I’m going to keep them separate. They might do joint marketing abroad or some synergies in that area, but in terms of their own distinctiveness, their own programming, their own directors, their own raison d’être, I’m not going down that road.”

There has been speculation about where the idea emanated. “I was astonished when this thing was proposed,” the Minister says. It was from “the bowels of Finance”, not Arts. “It would be a terrible loss to Ireland. You would gain nothing from putting them together – you would lose. It’s been my view from the beginning, but I had to go through a process.”

He is emphatic that a national opera company based in Dublin will be set up in 2010. “I always had this idea about a national company, but I never saw Wexford as the home for it, albeit it has a fabulous theatre. Wexford Opera has created an international brand, and it could and should do more with that brand.” But, he says, “I don’t think a national opera company in any country would work outside its capital”, and he feels the Wexford festival would get lost in the larger opera company. Parallel with Wexford, a new opera company will emerge from Opera Ireland and Opera Touring Company, and he wants to finalise details and structures on how this will work within three months. “This would be driven from the Department, working with the Arts Council and the two opera companies.”

There will be a “brand new structure with a new mission and a whole new set of objectives. The two companies will disappear.” There will be some “debt issues”, and “we’d resolve those, because we don’t want to set it up on the wrong footing, and give them a clean, brand new slate so they are not starting off with financial baggage. We’ll have to bite the bullet on the residual debt.”

A national opera company is a “missing link in the armoury. The logical thing is to put the two opera companies in Dublin together – this idea of trying to put the three of them together and place it in Wexford wasn’t workable, and I don’t think it was the right thing to do anyway.”

Following the Arts Council’s report on opera, it announced in July that a new national opera company would be based in Wexford. Is that report dead? “I would say it is,” says the Minister, though “it was a worthwhile exercise on their behalf, and it flushed things out and brought things to a head.” This week the council said it didn’t expect to make a statement on opera until late January.

Where does that leave relations between the Department of Arts and the Arts Council? He has spoken to chairwoman Pat Moylan, and she “has no issues. She believes in the idea of a national opera company; she certainly believes in the idea that I have proposed.”

“The Arts Council was trying to do the right thing. They knew there was an issue. I don’t mind a healthy tension, but if you ask me is there a big row, blood on the table or something, I think the issue is to move on.”

There had been some speculation before the Budget that the Abbey Theatre would be removed from the Arts Council’s responsibility and into the Department of Arts. This did not figure in the Budget, but it is still very much on the cards, according to the Minister, and he sees it ultimately becoming part of the Department’s portfolio of national institutions, along with the National Concert Hall, Library, Gallery, Museum, and so on. He has discussed this with Moylan, and she is “very supportive of what’s going on”.

And while the feasibility study for the theatre’s possible relocation to the GPO continues, and there will be a decision soon, he says that before the idea ever got into the public domain the Department was pretty sure it would work. A prominent international architect approached the Minister and did a lot of research, made drawings and a model of how the theatre might work within the GPO. This was “quiet background work” on whether the GPO could meet the spec, feasibly encompass two theatres, and “retain some element of the post office. Can you create a living space, a good cafe society that lives through the day and night? I have seen it all and it’s fantastic. So I know it works.” He wouldn’t disclose who the architect is, but whoever it is seems to have strong connections to Ireland, and initiated the project without payment.

The Minister was almost dismissive of the earlier plans to build the new Abbey on the quays, a proposal that had progressed almost to announcing an international architectural competition. It came to a head when “they started to change the goalposts down there, and there was an issue about the water and about the space. You were trying to construct a building where the price was going through the roof. They were trying to fit something into the wrong space for the wrong reason.”

The cost of relocating the Abbey to the GPO would be considerably less, he says, estimating it at €80-€90 million rather than the likely €150-€170 million for Georges’s Dock.

He showed the Taoiseach the architectural model and got his backing. “I don’t want another museum in there, open nine to five – the whole bloody thing is dead. Think of the wider context of O’Connell Street and try to rejuvenate it.”

Plus, “the idea whets so many appetites that you would get investment into it, but I’m not basing it on that. Does it fly? Does it fly with State investment? Is it realistic? And it actually is.”

“I think the public will buy into it. It is looking to 2016, and rather than putting another bloody spire up or something, this is something that can benefit a wider O’Connell Street and live on for a long time, and you finally create a home for the Abbey.” On this, too, he wants to finalise a decision within a few months, and he “would strongly be of the view that it would be yes”.