The acronym for Arts Council England is rather unfortunate at the moment. The organisation is being accused of many things: being overly close to government, underfunded and blinkered – but nobody thinks it is ace.

Even friendly culture critics are losing patience. As the august arts commentator Richard Morrison recently wrote in the Times: ‘The Arts Council… seems determined to shift public subsidy on to supporting amateurs and community projects.’

‘We are tempted to refuse our ACE grant and not spend so much time box-ticking’

Simple purpose has been replaced by a giant strategy paper, Let’s Create, which seems concerned with how ACE can insist on a policy of social engagement, rather than continue as an agency funding a range of professional arts organisations. Companies that still get cash have by and large accepted this, although not without grumbling. There is widespread resentment that the work must still be delivered alongside copious social requirements and wide-ranging community projects while urgent fiscal concerns, including fuel costs, inflation and a still-nervous general public, remain a clear and present danger. ‘We are tempted to refuse our ACE grant and not spend so much time box-ticking,’ one trustee of a tiny choral company told me. Those who did not get their regular grant – and there are a few – are letting loose publicly.

One such company is English National Opera. When its funding was axed in order to force a move out of London, there was a furore. Its respected music director, Martyn Brabbins, resigned in the wake of cuts to the orchestra and chorus, while the overall saga continues to rumble on. The company may move to Manchester, perhaps Birmingham or Liverpool, perhaps not at all. Here’s ENO chairman Dr Harry Brünjes on the matter: ‘Let’s Create focuses on community projects and social enterprise with no focus on the artists or musicians who form the backbone of the organisations ACE supports. We have now reached a workable solution with ACE but it has forced us to make difficult decisions in order to build a sustainable business. It would be far better if the relationship between the Council and the producers was more about synergy and less about regulation.’

Not only has ACE come up with a new set of playing rules, but it has demanded that they be delivered by unpaid trustees who are the guardians of museums, galleries, theatres and opera companies across England. Gone is the physical presence of the Council around board tables, formerly represented by a friendly ‘relationship manager’; for most arts organisations, it is now up to their trustees to make sure Let’s Create is being adhered to. I know this because I sit on three such boards, and therefore receive regular emails from the Council with hectoring titles such as ‘transforming governance’, or invitations to training courses revealing how I might implement its ‘investment principles’.

Minutes of board meetings must reflect the Council’s bidding, conjuring up images of its chairman, Sir Nicholas Serota, or chief executive Darren Henley nightly filleting thousands of board papers from every single area of England. In fact, I was told this is performed by AI, which only compounds the Orwellian picture. For some chairs and trustees, who might assume their appointments came because they have already demonstrated they are responsible, this is a step too far. Chairs are grumbling about the extra work this involves; would-be trustees are running to sectors where boards enjoy more independence.

Even if you are doing exactly what ACE requires – and have the minutes to prove it – you might still fall out of favour. At least this is how it seems at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, which houses more than half a million objects in a distinguished collection ranging from ancient artefacts to impressionist treasures. It is run by director Luke Syson, whose impeccable CV includes significant stints curating at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and London’s National Gallery.

‘We used to get £1.6 million for the entire University of Cambridge museums consortium,’ Syson says. ‘And that was cut in half. So the university had to decide how to focus that spend and decided to focus on a programme that linked the collections rather than on one collection in particular. What that meant for the Fitzwilliam is that we now have a substantial hole in our annual budget that was supporting our learning and public engagement activity.’ Meaning what? ‘That there is inevitably a reduction of how we use our collections for the benefit of the people in this divided city and region. Cambridge is one of the most unequal cities in Britain. And the irony in all of this was that while perhaps a few years ago we might have been accused of a very traditional mode of working, we are now very much focused on how we create a two-way bridge between our academic community and the larger region. But we no longer receive money from the Arts Council. It’s a blow.’

Whatever it is, it is illogical; the two temporary exhibitions currently at the Fitzwilliam might have leapt straight out of Let’s Create. Black Atlantic uses loans and work from within the collection to examine the history and legacy of the museum’s founder, Richard FitzWilliam, whose grandfather amassed a fortune via the transatlantic slave trade. The other, Real Families: Stories of Change, considers what constitutes a ‘real’ family; the exhibition kicks off with a traditional Reynolds family portrait, but proceeds to exhibit work depicting trans parents, single parents, children living happily with single sex parents, adopted children and more.

I have contributed an essay to the catalogue that compares an oil painting by the Renaissance master Joos van Cleve with a contemporary photograph from Finnish artist Elina Brotherus. Such juxtaposition of date and genre runs throughout each exhibition. Both shows are free to visit, and when I went, on different days, they were packed with a diverse crowd which one imagines would have brought joy to the mandarins in Bloomsbury.

Being ignored by the Council might have an upside, however. ‘To some degree we are in a position where we can think through our priorities, certainly taking account of what the Arts Council is interested in, but perhaps doing something which is a bit more distinctive from the very, if I can put it like this, standardising measures of quality and ambition that the Council has come up with,’ Syson says.

He adds: ‘In my view there is no contradiction between working with communities, which is very much an Arts Council priority, and doing the kinds of deep-dive research that a university museum ought to be doing.’

‘To connect with communities, don’t fund things which they are already interested in’

I ask him whether he thinks the Council is still interested in museums, such as the Fitzwilliam, telling the story of art? I’m met with a pause. ‘It’s hard to see that it’s currently their major priority. It’s hard to see that they are encouraging organisations like this one, with the major collections that we have, to think how we might do just that. As well as doing something else. What I would like is to get away from the idea that in order to connect with communities, you have to fund those things which communities are necessarily already interested in.’

It’s more important than ever, he says, to make a noise about major works such as Botticelli’s languid, post-coital Mars being surveyed by a (possibly) impatient Venus, which the Fitzwilliam is presenting next year, on loan from the National Gallery. ‘We are saying: here is something you might enjoy. This is something marvellous. Open your heart and your eyes to it. Because history of art isn’t taught any more at schools; someone whom – a few generations back – you might have thought was a household name, isn’t. So you have to say, “What do we have to do to bring Botticelli to people’s attention?”’ Syson knows to put it into context. ‘Part of the job of the Fitzwilliam is to help people understand that our opinions have been profoundly formed by what we’ve looked at over generations. So, our ideal of female beauty might be affected by the way we’ve looked at Botticelli… concerned with Petrarchan ideals and Renaissance fashion. And there is something about opening our eyes to the ways in which the past affects the present, which feels important.’

The National Gallery’s triumphant 2011 exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan was curated by Syson. It was a remarkable show, a once-in-a-lifetime experience to see most of da Vinci’s major works displayed together. It may well have engaged communities and dealt with social projects, but it did not lecture. It did not preach. It gave the public the chance to revel in masterpieces by a canonical artist.

‘When I did the exhibition at the National, I felt it was not our job to be instructive,’ Syson says. ‘Yes, the show gave a political context for Leonardo, but above all it was to allow people to feel. To experience. Knowledge is part of that but in the end a work of art speaks. It doesn’t have to be but it can be incredibly beautiful. You can be its interpreter to some degree, as these are works which have multiple meanings, But above all they are inspiring.’ And that is an ace ambition.