Jacob Rothschild retired at the end of March 1998 as the first chairman of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), an organisation which in its first three years had distributed over £900m ($1.46bn) in grants for more than 1,600 projects.
It was not a role he expected. He had taken over as chairman of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) in 1992, but it was only in 1994 that this relatively small organisation was given responsibility for distributing milliions from the UK's newly instituted National Lottery and Rothschild added the HLF to his portfolio.
Fortunately, Rothschild was well equipped for the task, coming from Europe’s most famous banking family. He originally worked for the merchant bankers N.M. Rothschild in London and left in 1980 to start his own financial services company, the J. Rothschild Group. He had long been devoted to the arts, and had served as chairman of the National Gallery 1985-91.
The Art Newspaper: How much influence have you had on the decisions of the Heritage Lottery Fund?
Jacob Rothschild: As chairman, I had a very significant role in decision making. Each of the projects was assessed thoroughly—some people would say too thoroughly—by staff, case officers and advisers. But yes, in the early days of the Lottery, the chairman did have a very considerable influence. I led the debate on the grants every month.
How did it happen that the National Heritage Memorial Fund was given the job of Lottery distributor? Did you lobby for the role?
We didn’t lobby. The difficulty for the government was to choose a quango [a board funded by, and with members appointed by, government to look after some area of public interest, such as English Heritage] which covered the whole of Great Britain and all aspects of heritage. They could have selected several distributors, perhaps English Heritage for buildings and the Museums & Galleries Commission for museums—but that would have been clumsy. NHMF had the advantage of covering all Britain and all areas of heritage. The government could have set up a new organisation, but we had a track record. I remember one day I went to a point-to-point race with Hayden Phillips [permanent secretary of what was then called the Department of National Heritage] and our wives, and we were chatting. He raised the subject, and asked, “Why doesn’t the Memorial Fund have a go at this?” I replied: “Do you think we could do it? It is such a challenge, but we would try to respond to it.”
How could a relatively modest organisation suddenly transform itself into one handing out hundreds of millions of pounds?
The balance of our trustees was fine for NHMF, but in the past few years they have been changed to reflect the circumstances of the Lottery—regional spreads, various interests, different backgrounds. The trustees are only appointed for three years, so the balance did change. We have 14 trustees, and we would need more trustees to cover the full matrix—but this would be rather unwieldy.
Georges Seurat's The Channel of Gravelines, Grand Fort-Philippe (1890), acquired by the National Gallery, London, in 1995, with the aid of a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund under Jacob Rothschild's chairmanship Louis Jebb
Could we move on to the acquisition of art. Seurat’s The Channel of Gravelines was the Lottery’s first major acquisition, for the National Gallery [in 1995]. Were you concerned about public reaction to the purchase of a £16m painting?
To be frank, I was very worried. It came after the Churchill papers were bought with £13m from HLF. I believe passionately that we did the right thing over the Churchill archive, but we suffered violent negative reactions. I felt that we took a real risk in acquiring the Seurat from a dealer [Heinz Berggruen], who had bought it for much less money only a few years before. But there was an element of the picture coming home to Britain.
Why has the feared backlash against the acquisition of art not materialised?
If you look at the three very expensive acquisitions of the National Gallery—the Seurat, Dürer’s St Jerome [bought with the assistance of the HLF, the Art Fund and J. Paul Getty Jr through the American Friends of the National Gallery, London, 1996] and Stubbs’s Whistlejacket [acquired in 1997 for £15.75 million gross from the Trustees of the Fitzwilliam Family Settlement, with a £8.3 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £2.8m from private donations]—there hasn’t been any criticism. This is partly because Neil MacGregor [director of the National Gallery 1987-2002] has done wonderfully well in making people feel that the National Gallery’s collection really does belong to them.
George Stubbs, Whistlejacket, bought by the National Gallery, London, with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund, in 1997 Louis Jebb
There has been an extraordinary change in attitudes. If you look back to 1929, when the National Gallery bought the Wilton Diptych [around 1395-99, acquired from the Earl of Pembroke] and the family portrait by Titian [The Vendramin Family, Venerating a Relic of the True Cross, around 1540-45, acquired from the Duke of Northumberland], all hell was let loose [at paying large sums to wealthy British landowners]. The attitude towards these expensive acquisitions has become much more positive over the last decade.
Should the HLF only help with art that has a British connection—works by British artists or hanging in British country houses? Or should it, for example, assist the Tate Gallery to buy a Picasso from abroad?
I feel that it is extraordinarily important that we do buy art from abroad which fit into our national collections—as we did with the early Mondrian Church at Zoutelande [1909-10, bought for the Tate in September 1997 from Acquavella Galleries in New York, with the help of £1.1m from HLF]. Having said that, if Whistlejacket is up for sale, you just pray that you have enough money to acquire that as well.
How does the HLF decide whether to give £8m towards Whistlejacket or help regional museums with pictures costing a few thousand pounds, perhaps works with local historical associations?
What haven’t prospered are the regional and small museums, particularly in terms of acquisitions. We did reduce the requirement for partnership funding from 25% to 10% for purchases under £100,000. We had hoped that this might cause a renaissance with Friends groups at regional museums, because they wouldn’t have to raise that much money for acquisitions. I can’t really claim there has been a renaissance; it has been a disappointment. But we have had some notable successes: the Sebastiano for the Fitzwilliam, the Canova [Ideal Head, acquired 1996] for the Ashmolean and the Batoni for York City Art Gallery [John Smyth of Heath Hall, Yorkshire (1773) acquired 1996]. But I wish there had been more.
Let’s move onto museum and gallery buildings. How did you tackle these projects, which have absorbed a major proportion of the HLF’s money?
Very early on we decided to make museums a theme. We were not allowed to solicit applications, but we were permitted to say that we wished to stimulate a particular section of the heritage. We therefore chose museums—as well as urban parks. There was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make an impact, as dramatic as any since the 1845 Museum Act. Look at the London projects: the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Wallace Collection, the National Maritime Museum, Dulwich Picture Gallery… We did realise that we were over-emphasising museums, but felt that if we didn’t do it in the first phase of the Lottery, it wouldn’t happen later. [Under the HLF’s first Major Assessment Programme for important museum developments, in February 1997, £140m had been awarded for 26 projects.]
Museums putting in Lottery bids have to submit detailed business plans. There are complaints that it requires piles of paperwork—and is it really a valuable exercise?
For better or worse, we live in a more commercial environment. If you are grant-aiding large capital projects, the white-elephant syndrome has to be watched very carefully. There is no point in putting up an extension if the running costs cripple a museum. So it is extremely important to test the viability of these projects.
Which Lottery schemes have you personally been most enthusiastic about?
I think Somerset House is an extraordinarily exciting project. For years it has been a hidden building, but we now have a quite incredible opportunity. Arthur Gilbert became unhappy with the way his collection was being presented in the Los Angeles County Museum, and he put out a feeler to see whether we could find the right place in this country to house it. The magic moment came because of Lottery money and some lateral thinking, enabling the Gilbert Collection to be gifted to this country and go to Somerset House. That provided the key for all the other things that followed, and there is now a possibility that the Luton Hoo collection will come.
The Labour government is putting pressure on the HLF to reduce expenditure on buildings. What impact will this have?
It will be extremely interesting to watch the proportion of HLF money that in the future is spent on revenue funding, rather than on capital projects. It will change, and rightly so. The danger is that there may be an erosion in what is coming to the arts and heritage. There has already been a very difficult period for quangos funded under the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, with their grants being frozen for a number of years. Could this be because of the bonanza of Lottery money—in spite of all the promises about additionality?
How much political pressure has there been on HLF?
Quite understandably, there has been a change in the guidelines and directions that the Conservative and Labour governments have given us. The situation was fairly free of pressure in the early years. The Labour government wants us to have a strategic plan, and to take account of need. We are also being expected to achieve a fair regional spread.
How do you achieve regional spread?
The difficult question is whether you should give money to a region, even though its heritage is relatively weak. Take churches: Norfolk has more wonderful churches than many other parts of the country. On your church map, is it fair to give more to Norfolk or should you give pro rata across the board? My own feeling is that you can’t expect to achieve an absolutely fair regional spread. What you can do is to watch very carefully for areas that are under-represented. You then have a duty to go to those areas, to search out the heritage and try to achieve a regional balance.
Has too much money gone to London and the national institutions?
This again is an extremely difficult question. In the early years, we were very generous towards the national institutions. I have always said that with Lottery money you should take a ten-year view. It is no surprise that the national museums, which are well organised and relatively well funded, were the first to come in. But I think they will find life more difficult in the future, because we must pay attention to making a fair regional spread.
Going back to the NHMF, how do you feel about the government’s decision to reduce your grant yet again? It will be £2m in the coming year, compared with £12m in 1993-94.
It’s a great pity. For relatively modest sums in terms of public expenditure, NHMF has had an extremely significant impact. But if you see the NHMF trustees receiving extraordinary sums of money [as a Lottery distributor], then as a grant-giving organisation it seems easier to cut than operating quangos which are suffering more and more. We are an easy target.
Is NHMF now redundant?
Although we tried to give a brief to NHMF, to show the differences with the HLF, it is difficult to do. The remit is very broad, and covers pretty well anything that the NHMF would have done. Although NHMF has an endowment fund, I would have thought that as long as Lottery money goes on, we have to live with the position that NHMF has effectively been phased down—almost out, with its present grant in aid. I hope that its grant will be restored to a somewhat more reasonable figure in the years to come, and the minister hopes so too; but it depends on how much money he has from the Treasury.
But it is important to keep NHMF going. There should be a fund of last resort—and you never know when the next great heritage crisis may come. For example, the Sutherland pictures might not stay in Edinburgh for one reason or another.
The Duke of Sutherland’s loan to the National Gallery of Scotland includes some of the country’s finest masterpieces. If they ever came on the market, surely they would be too expensive for NHMF, and the Lottery would then have to step in.
I think there is always a political danger if a very large sum of money goes to a duke. That is compounded by the fact that these pictures are worth huge sums, even in Lottery terms. It is further compounded by the fact that we are supposed to achieve a fair regional spread, and there would be a very significant distortion if an acquisition on that scale had to be made.
NHMF doesn’t have that sort of money anymore. But you could go to the minister and ask: for something of such extreme national heritage importance, may we invade our endowment fund, which has £30m?
Your successor at HLF will have much less money than expected because of the introduction of the sixth good cause. Behind the scenes, how hard did you fight against this?
Not very hard, because the Labour Party in its manifesto said that it would introduce a sixth good cause [a New Opportunities Fund, to fund health, education and environmental projects; to be added to five original good causes: the Millennium Commission; arts; heritage; sport and charities]. Being in the manifesto, you have to accept it. On the detail of the bill, there are a number of points that we have raised.
Now you are stepping down at HLF, will you continue to be involved with the heritage?
The probability is that I will become involved with the Gilbert Collection. I do have responsibility for Waddesdon Manor, which takes quite a lot of time. I shall continue to sit on the jury of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture. I have also said to the minister that I will gladly go on being helpful, in so far as I can. But I can’t continue to do it seven days a week anymore.