New labour, old masters

This paper explores the impact of extrinsic political policies on the National Gallery's practices of display, exhibition and interpretation through the lens of the purchase in 2004 of Raphael's 'The Madonna of the Pinks'. It is recognised that since 1997 government policy and funding for museums and galleries has been primarily predicated on their current and potential function in the promotion of social inclusion, cultural access and diversity and, as a result, museum practice has been explicitly harnessed to the delivery of social policy objectives. Similarly, funding for acquisitions from the Heritage Lottery Fund has been harnessed to the objective of widening participation in both the production and consumption of heritage practices. Analysis of the historical and contemporary contexts for the purchase of 'The Madonna of the Pinks' reveals both continuities and disjunctions in the National Gallery's production of art history, the management of its interpretative regimes and its engagement with actual and target audiences. The resulting complexities characterise a site that today accommodates connoisseurship and populism, exclusivity and diversity, incongruity and contradiction.