Martin Roth: the V&A's most successful director on his departure and why the rise in nationalism is a bad thing

V&A director Martin Roth 
V&A director Martin Roth  Credit: Andrew Crowley

Despite misgivings over Brexit, the outgoing German director of the V&A admires our way of doing things

Martin Roth announced earlier this month that he is ending what is arguably the most successful directorship in the long and sometimes troubled history of the world’s greatest decorative arts museum, the V&A. During his five-year reign, attendances have tripled to three million.

The museum’s ongoing massive redevelopment programme has won widespread praise. And box office-busting exhibitions on popular culture (notably David Bowie and Alexander McQueen) have both grabbed headlines and brought in huge new audiences to this vast Victorian treasure house. In July it was announced that the V&A had been crowned Museum of the Year.

So why is 61-year-old Roth – who grew up in Stuttgart and moved from Dresden to take the job – leaving?

“I want to make space for younger talents. When things are working well it’s the best time to leave. I’ve had incredible jobs for the last 25 years, the sort of positions I never, ever expected to get. But you don’t have to keep doing that for ever.”

Is it not, I ask, because of Brexit? He is said to have taken the vote as a personal slap in the face, and his move from Britain to pursue as-yet- unspecified projects and ideas in Berlin and Vancouver, where he has a second home, has apparently been accelerated by a year.

The "David Bowie is" exhibition at the V&A museum
The David Bowie Is exhibition at the V&A museum Credit: AFP

“There’s been a lot of gossip,” he sighs. “If the V&A was in a more difficult position I wouldn’t be leaving. But if you look at the situation in Europe now, not just with Brexit, but the whole picture with this new nationalism, it feels like a time to try to do something politically.”

For Roth, Brexit wasn’t simply a matter of local decision-making, but a symptom of larger and more troubling developments across Europe.

“Wherever you look you see forms of nationalism developing that is extremely alarming,” he says. “We’re seeing a rise in hate crime and racist attacks, and new Right-wing movements such as the AfD party and Pegida in Germany, and the Bloc Identitaire, which is spreading across Europe.” He flashes me a challenging glance. “Have you read Churchill’s Zurich speech from 1946?

“He says that a new nationalism will destroy Europe in another war – not immediately, but with time – which is why he believed we need a united Europe. This is as true now as it was then. Having grown up in Germany in the shadow of the war, for me the European Union has always meant peace. I never thought that this country, which I love, would be the first to take the official road towards greater nationalism.”

Sharply suited, with a bright and occasionally combative smile, Roth is on fighting form. “London is the cultural capital of the world – don’t you think so? London faces East and West. It channels the cultural richness and excitement of Europe. It’s a completely international community, where you meet the best people from every background and discipline. I hope you can keep that in spite of Brexit. But from what I’m observing, problems of movement and access are already starting to affect the arts.” (He refers to how he’s been told the Royal National Scottish Orchestra is having increased difficulties obtaining visas for foreign musicians.)

The Medieval and Renaissance Gallery at the V&A
The Medieval and Renaissance Gallery at the V&A Credit: Ian Dagnall / Alamy

While Roth has been painted by the media as dry and uncommunicative, in person he exudes a brusque but amiable positivity. You don’t accrue a CV like his – including director-generalship of the Dresden State Art Collections (12 museums in all), director of exhibitions for Expo 2000, presidency of the German Museums Association, and that’s just a taster – by sitting around whinging.

Roth is cautious about revealing his future plans, but he won’t be retiring as such. “It’s just not in my DNA. But I’m not looking for another job.”

But whatever he does will, he says, involve a response to this new nationalism. “I think it’s time to be engaged politically, and do something against all that. It’s hard to talk about because I don’t have a plan, I don’t have a strategy. But I work with NGOs, with governments and initiatives.”

If the words sound vague, the tone inspires confidence. Sitting in Roth’s well-appointed office with his deputy Tim Reeve and the V&A’s press officer in attendance, you feel at the nerve centre of cultural power, with the sense that big actions and large possibilities are well within reach. Next June, Roth becomes president of the Institute for Foreign Relations, a German organisation that works with NGOs to promote art and cultural exchange across the world – just one of the roles that people at his level accrue the way the rest of us do parking tickets. Whatever form his opposition to the new nationalism takes, he has the contacts to at least begin to make it a reality.

Martin Roth
Martin Roth Credit: Andrew Crowley

Yet despite his exasperation over Brexit, he has misgivings about leaving Britain. “I love the tolerance, the openness, the way people work together. We have people from 28 nationalities working at the V&A, which I find very exciting. When I was invited to apply for this job, I thought it was to fulfil some kind of quota. I never thought for a moment that I would get it. But they told me, we hire the best people regardless of background. That attitude is not so common, not in Germany and certainly not in France. Can you imagine a British director of the Louvre? It would never happen.”

We tend in this country to take a rather defeatist view of our cultural institutions, imagining them permanently hanging on by the skin of their teeth, while they handle such things with so much more confidence and commitment, we assume, on the Continent. Roth disagrees.

“There are more opportunities here for museums to operate in a business-like way – not to be businesses, culture can never be business – but to be entrepreneurial.” He cites the more arms-length approach from government that has come, alongside stringent cuts, since 2010. It allows museums to, for example, carry revenue surpluses forward, rather than see them clawed back by the Treasury. Roth believes that the V&A’s partnership project with a museum in Shenzhen in China and new outposts in Dundee and east London’s Olympic Park could not have been developed with the same freedom in Germany.

“In Germany there is always a civil servant sitting next to you, who probably isn’t at all interested in culture, telling you what you can and can’t do. Here we have a degree of independence, though we are entirely responsible for the risks we take.”

You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-70 exhibition
You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-70 exhibition Credit: Getty

Yet the sheer size of the V&A and the eccentric diversity of its collections – the current exhibitions range from Sixties counter-culture to medieval embroidery – has made it famously difficult to run. The image has developed of an institution beset by labyrinthine infighting and entrenched working practices, which for all its current glittering success is somehow congenitally unhappy and ungovernable.

“Whenever you try to bring about change, there are people who will oppose you. The V&A has always had a double helix in its make-up. One side of the museum’s DNA goes back to the principles of its founder, Prince Albert, who wanted to improve the condition of the people through education and culture: it’s about openness and social change, working with makers and practitioners. The other side says we are just a beautiful art museum and have to defend our ivory tower. There has always been a tension between these two positions,” he says, leaving no doubt which side of the fence he’s on. “But 95 per cent of the time it’s a productive and creative tension.”

As I prepare to leave, I remember that Roth did his PhD on the role of museums under the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. What lessons did he draw from that that have served him in his subsequent career?

“That you have to be cautious. Looking at that time you see how art and culture can be controlled for political purposes, which can happen very easily, without you realising it.” So does he see the current situation in Europe, with this rising nationalism, as comparable to that period? “No, no. Not at all. But we have always to be cautious – while remaining open.”

 

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