The Patron State: A Case Study of the Government Indemnity Scheme in the United Kingdom

Pennell, Joseph, Interior, Fitzwilliam Museum. 28.1 x 30.6 cm (11 1/16 x 12 1/16 in.).
Nation Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (accession number 1979.20.96)

By Nora Malhi

The museum as we know it today is a civic institution. Democratized and public-facing, it sustains and renews itself by creating new forms of engagement between objects, audiences, institutions, and historical narratives. At the heart of this process is a vast and complex system of continual object exchange. The temporary loan of movable cultural property encompasses works of art, archaeological materials, and other collection objects, which enables museums to assemble items across institutional and geographic boundaries.

Many modern exhibitions depend upon this circulation, using temporary exchanges between international collections to construct focused narratives around particular themes, historical moments, or the corpus of an artist. Direct encounters with cultural heritage were once largely confined to those living in close proximity to certain works or possessing the means to travel to them. The key advantage of the loan mechanism is that it makes works of art publicly accessible, overcoming past financial and geographical barriers which inhibited this. The key mechanism of the loan allows works of art to be made widely accessible to the general public, overcoming the financial and geographical barriers. Although now embedded and naturalized within museums worldwide, this system was made possible through the development of extensive legislative and governmental infrastructures throughout the twentieth century. A prime example of this, and one of the earliest advancements of its kind, was the Government Indemnity Scheme (GIS) in the United Kingdom.