At the London National Gallery

In my museum readings this week I came across an article entitled, "National Gallery assistants escalate their dispute over staffing cuts," on The Guardian newspaper's website. Interestingly enough, published the same day as my blog post about being a Gallery Assistant. This article covers a story about a large group of gallery assistants on strike at the National Gallery in London due to the affects recent cut-backs have had on their hours and workload. The Gallery is trying to establish a new security system where instead of one assistant per gallery there is now one assistant assigned to monitor two galleries.

In this article, the assistants stress the importance of having a suitable number of staff in order to properly monitor each gallery so they can provide sufficient security and customer assistance. They argue that decreasing the number of security personnel increases the likelihood of vandalism and reduces the quality of customer service.

As a gallery attendant at two different institutions, I can wholeheartedly relate and sympathize with their predicament. I also noted that in the article many of the assistants are young professionals with arts degrees, such as myself, who enjoy engaging an audience and are just trying to get more experience in the field. So I can understand the disappointment of getting less hours and less experience with a more cumbersome workload. 

I know I did not focus on security in my earlier post as much as I did audience engagement and shoes, but it is a very important subject. It is my top priority at work; so if I am in a discussion with one visitor and I see another carrying out a potentially harmful activity (either to the art or to a patron), I politely as possible dismiss myself from the conversation and see to the security risk. Engagement and customer service make it fun, but security is the business. I have worked regular days and special events where we were understaffed and I can assure you, it is very taxing. Such days provide fewer opportunities to talk with visitors; when you're stressed out and you look stressed out guests don't want to approach you, and to be honest, you don't feel like approaching guests.

So I have to say, the National Gallery's argument that their new and shorter-staffed plan will provide better security is either a mere pretext on their part in the hope that no one will notice or perhaps they really do not understand the demands of working on the floor. I feel they should just admit that they're trying to save funds by cutting staff, which is the most likely explanation. And as I said, I sympathize with the assistants' plight, I really do, but to be fair a lot of museum staff are getting cut in all departments. With governments reducing funds to all museums, administrators have to find ways to keep the budgets afloat and staff cuts are a big part of that. If the number of working assistants per day absolutely has to be cut, one possible solution is to create a volunteer docent program for students (from secondary to the university level) so they can help assistants monitor the galleries while also gaining experience themselves. At least this will reduce the stress on the assistants.   

What are your thoughts on this situation? Do you have any suggestions or have you faced similar issues at your own museum?