Behind the Scenes at the Museum is a new podcast in which I talk to key figures about the big ideas rocking the cultural world, charting the trends and dissecting the controversies, as well as …
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Culture: who pays?
Filmed at the Battle of Ideas, a panel discuss funding for the arts and culture. The speakers in this conversation are Sean Gregory, Alexander Adams, Dr Tiffany Jenkins, Barb Jungr with Claire Fox who also …
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My secret life: on the benefits of secrecy
At the heart of The Secret Garden, the much-loved children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, in which a disagreeable orphan is transformed into a flourishing young girl, lies the protective power of secrecy.
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Contracts of Silence
Gagging clauses’ – NDAs or non-disclosure agreements – have been rarely out of the headlines in recent months. High profile cases in business, politics and celebrity life have prompted calls for an outright ban, particularly …
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Keeping Their Marbles – ‘an outstanding achievement… wide-ranging and incisive.’
In October 1860, during the Second Opium War, British and French forces attacked the Summer Palace near what was then Peking. Built of jade and marble and filled with treasures crafted exclusively for the imperial family, it had been described as a “dazzling cavern of human fantasy”. Three days of looting left it a smoking ruin. Eyewitnesses told of soldiers carrying off strings of pearls and pencil cases set with diamonds. The empress’s pekinese was also taken and, tactlessly renamed “Looty”, presented to Queen Victoria.
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Great collectors used to have great taste. Now they simply show off their wealth
Article published in The Observer on the Leonardo and contemporary collecting. If you walk around Mayfair or Manhattan at twilight and look up, you could glimpse a Damien Hirst spot painting through an apartment window. The simple …
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Shhh! A Narrative History of Secrecy
Secrets have never been more suspect. Post Snowden, post Saville, post the Catholic Church abuse scandal, institutions which keep secrets are automatically seen as having something to hide, and openness and transparency are seen as the new imperatives. Any deviation from the new orthodoxy of honesty is punished – by exposure. But the story of secrecy is not as black and white as our contemporary prejudices would have it. For centuries secrecy has been seen to serve a useful purpose. It has protected citizens from the prying eyes of governments, it has protected the feelings of individuals and kept couples together. Have we lost more than we have gained by abandoning our respect for the power and sanctity of secrecy? Tiffany Jenkins presents a history of secrecy driven by a thesis which challenges the conventional wisdom of the moment.
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“Courageous and well argued.” Henrik Bering reviews Keeping Their Marbles
But what concerns Ms. Jenkins is not so much the legal arguments but something deeper: From the early days of private curio cabinets and onward, the underlying idea of a museum was a desire to understand the world, an ambition to tell a common story. Thus the Enlightenment espoused the notion of a common civilization of mankind— Voltaire saw man as being “always what he is now.” It is this idea of universalism, the museum as a place of shared experience, that has come under attack.
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On the need for judgement about quality in art, culture and life.
In this talk recorded for Radio 4, Tiffany Jenkins argues that we need more judgement about quality in art, culture and life.
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Who Owns Culture? Start the Week, BBC Radio 4
On Start the Week, Tom Sutcliffe discusses who owns culture. The writer Tiffany Jenkins tells the story of how western museums have come to acquire treasures from around the world, but dismisses the idea of righting the …
