A cultural revolution

The reputation of the director of Glasgow Museums certainly arrived in Glasgow before him. The apocryphal tale is of an anonymous phone call to staff at Kelvingrove which broke the news - ''You're getting our boss. And you're bloody welcome to him!'' - before hanging up, cackling. It does not, however, tell the whole story.

An unpopular boss would not have enjoyed quite the send-off to which Spalding was treated when he left Manchester in 1988. Although he was then aged 41 and hardly likely to be seen sporting the baggy laddish look of acid house Madchester, he was popular with the younger members of staff in the Manchester set-up. They appreciated his mission to make galleries popular and accessible, and so Spalding was taken to the hyper-trendy Hacienda Club. His chief delight in the evening, it is said, was the discovery of the downstairs bar, not for its consumables but its decor. The Gay Traitor bar is dedicated to and dominated by a large portrait of Sir Anthony Blunt, art expert and Soviet spy. It is not hard to see how the joke chimes with Spalding's populist ideas.

''He will put a bit of zap into Glasgow with his distinct personality and unusual slants,'' said director of Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery Michael Diamond on the day that the appointment was announced, pronouncing Spalding ''great to work with''.

There are many in Glasgow who would now argue with that view, and the list seems to grow every month. Spalding arrived with an agenda which he has followed single-mindedly and, it would appear, without much regard to the views of those around him. None the less, while those who have fallen foul of his will have made the headlines, he has, until very recently at least, had many admirers on his staff, particularly among the younger members.

The magnitude of the job Spalding took on is difficult to underestimate now. With Glasgow's year as European City of Culture looming, he came in to head up an organisation that, while hugely popular with Glaswegians, could hardly be described as dynamic.

Two vast visual art projects were on the stocks for 1990. The re-opening of the McLellan Galleries as a vast temporary exhibition space, but for which only one show had been booked, and the city exhibition in the railway arches beneath Central Station, then named The Words and the Stones. Keeping the McLellan filled with significant shows was obviously going to be - and has continued to be - an enormous headache for a galleries director with a long list of other facilities to look after, and Spalding hated what became Glasgow's Glasgow.

Given the exhibition's disappointing visitor numbers and resultant debt, hindsight would judge him quite astute, but what the new director hated most about the #5m project - and he made no bones about it at the time - was that it was happening outside the sphere of influence of Glasgow Museums.

Since then, of course, Spalding has added to his portfolio the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art and the new Gallery of Modern Art, and under his leadership the city's best-loved institutions, the Art Gallery and Museum at Kelvingrove and the People's Palace on Glasgow Green, have been radically redisplayed, to less than universal acclaim.

The Palace, of course, provided the first banner headlines of Spalding's term when, creating the post of keeper of social history, he preferred a young Irishman who was in charge of Springburn Museum, Mark O'Neill, over People's Palace proprietrix Elspeth King. King departed and her partner, Michael Donnelly, was dismissed for his outspokenness against the decision in these pages.

As that row rumbled on, Spalding found himself embroiled in another over the Glasgow Girls exhibition in Kelvingrove, where another strong woman, curator Jude Burkhauser, was allegedly forced to resign, the sacrificial lamb that permitted the show to go on.

Delving deeper into his background, journalists found people in Manchester happy to amplify on Spalding's curriculum vitae. The city's provision of a home for the National Museum of Labour History, previously seen as a feather in the director's cap on red Clydeside, threw up the tale of Terry McCarthy, director of the institution on its move from London to Manchester, whose devotion to his work paralleled that of Elspeth King, but who found himself at loggerheads with Spalding and eventually out of post.

There were rumblings also from Sheffield, whose galleries Spalding had led before his move to Manchester, but where he had also apparently proved his political credentials with the award-winning development of the Ruskin Museum, founded by social thinker John Ruskin for the working people of the steel town.

Although he is accused of being interested only in painting, Spalding's background is entirely in the mixed collections of industrial Britain. Taking a BA in fine art at Nottingham University, he first worked for Durham County Council before Sheffield, where he moved from the post of director of the Mappin Gallery to overall charge of a list of buildings that included the civic cinema and a concert hall.

In Manchester he honed his populist ethos, had visitors painting their own watercolours while those of Cezanne and Turner hung around them, and wrote a book on L S Lowry. His acquisitions included a Bonnard landscape and Frank Lloyd Wright furniture. He chaired the exhibitions committee of the Art Council of Great Britain - and in 1992 was seen as a front runner to direct its Hayward Gallery on the South Bank of the Thames.

Glasgow offered Spalding the largest canvas of his career and although he may covet other prestigious London jobs he has remained firmly in control of the city's impressive collection and facilities. Staff complain that he sometimes fails to support museum and gallery events in person, but he is rarely absent from a city occasion at which the council's museums director should be present, be it a Scottish Ballet opening or a civic reception. Small of stature and sometimes indistinct of speech, his self-effacing manner masks a self-confidence that is robust and has been shaken by none of the furores in which he has become embroiled, from the Elspeth King Affair to the current long list.

It is the cumulative effect of the complaints against Spalding that now appear to be mounting against him. The Gallery of Modern Art may have been packing 'em in, but it immediately illustrated that the acquisitions fund which Spalding had persuaded the council to give him had not been spent in Scotland or on Scottish artists, as many had already complained.

His desire to amend the terms of Sir William Burrell's bequest to the city to allow the work in the Burrell Collection to be lent overseas (with the attendant reciprocal benefits) may have attracted less public opposition were it not for the perception that he is presiding over a catalogue of neglect.

The effect of the cuts in local government expenditure were bound to be profound, but the loss of Haggs Castle, Pollok House, the conservation department, a major exhibition, and one day's opening a week (so far) is politically a lot for one council department to bear.

What may turn out to be most damaging to Spalding, however, is his much-criticised lack of delegation, or megalomania as some would have it. His most recent restructuring included not replacing his recently retired deputy, Stewart Coulter, although O'Neill as the new head of curatorial services is seen as No 2. What the row over the proposed staffing cuts has shown, however, is that Spalding's presentation of a collective decision to the councillors was a sham.

It would be wise not to wager too much on the irrepressible Julian Spalding coming a cropper this time round, but if his autocratic rule is to be tempered it will have to be the elected members who do so. Palace coups are not unknown in George Square and there are those who would smile at the irony if the museums director became a key pawn in one.