Why museums must party

The formula does not change. Black tie, champagne before dinner (wine, if money is short). Canapes, as amusing and individual as possible. Dinner surrounded by Titians or dinosaurs (preferably tough objects that can deal with spilt sauce). Spectacular lighting effects, concentrating on the floral centrepieces rather than the displays. The seating plan is crucial: chairman at the centre table with major target-guests on either side, chairman's partner and director likewise. Being seated on an outer table is like being in the worst team at school.

Food by caterers cooking for several hundred in a space smaller than the average domestic kitchen. Food served tepid if meant to be hot and tepid if meant to be cold. Pretty pudding (though having no pudding is chic, healthy and, of course, cheap). Coffee. Speeches, including commercial break by the sponsor. Ten-minute view of exhibition or new wing. Guests out.

Dinners are something I learnt about in my previous life as director of Dulwich Picture Gallery. When I was appointed in 1979, we had no money to look after a great and beautiful collection. We were so poor we could not stop burglars stealing the same Rembrandt an embarrassing number of times.

As we learnt to raise money, dinners became an essential part of life. Juggling with the seating plan, targeting potential donors, working out the balance of donors with fun people they would want to meet, making sure the electrical supply did not fail under the impact of the catering equipment; all this consumed a great deal of time, which, arguably, would have been better spent on the museum itself and on our visiting public. I couldn't help wondering sometimes if being a party organiser was really why I had studied art history and entered the museum profession.

The museum dinner derives from the United States, where an artistic institution needs to be perpetually fund-raising to keep afloat. For some US museum directors, the job takes over their life, so that they spend evenings, weekends and even holidays playing with their trustees and donors.

Worse, they have to embark on an unending programme of expansion in order to give the illusion that they are keeping afloat financially.

In Britain this tendency is more recent.

Over the past 25 years a new balance - seesaw might be a better term - has been established in national museums between public and private money.

In many ways, this is a positive change. Museums are far more responsive to their public now than they used to be. Permanent collections are often more interestingly displayed. Temporary exhibitions are more frequent. The fierce, old, military-style warders have been replaced by friendlier staff. Information about the collections is available on-line. The repellent cafes of the 1970s (the V&A's was obviously run by an aversion therapist) are transformed.

Very recently, there have been two further developments. The National Lottery has allowed investment-starved museums to renew themselves physically, and the present Government has taken a strong interest in the role of museums as "agents of social change", to quote Chris Smith's somewhat chilling phrase.

It is not quite clear whether the Government is excited by museums on merit, or as social tools. When Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell announces, at Dulwich Picture Gallery on Wednesday, her new initiative on Social Inclusion in the Historic and Built Environment, who will the document benefit more - only the underprivileged, or the vast numbers of ordinary people who, for one reason or other have never had an opportunity to enjoy historic buildings?