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 The funding of our major museums is in crisis. Collections that do not expand tend to atrophy. The answer must be to close down the open market.
says Evening Standard columnist Brian Sewell
| | |  How can we save our museums?Do you agree? Join the discussion by calling 0870 010 0444, lines open at 1.30pm. | |
LISTEN - Hear Brian Sewell on the crisis in our museums
The funding of our major museums is in crisis.
Their directors have repeatedly said so this year, and last weekend it was revealed that national museums are apparently prepared - in return for a private donation of a million pounds - to hang a portrait of himself dashed off in ten minutes by the donor.
The fact that he was an undercover newspaper reporter was unfortunate for the institutions involved; but the spoof demonstrated their desperate need for extra funding, no matter what the source.
Our national museums are funded by grants from government. In every case, money for new purchases is woefully inadequate.
The prices of great paintings and great works of art have escalated far faster than any other marketable commodity and are now enormous: £10 million for a Reynolds portrait wanted by the Tate Gallery - £50 million for an early Rubens wanted by the national Gallery - and now £35 million for an early Raphael, lent to the National Gallery by the Duke of Northumberland...but soon to go to America if we cannot raise that price.
The National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert each have about half a million to spend on new purchases this year. The Tate has struggled to maintain a purchase fund of about £2 million, but can do so no longer. The british Museum has a ludicrous £100,000. To compete in the open market, these institutions and others need, let us say, not less than £100 million a year each.
New and important acquisitions are the lifeblood of every museum. Collections that do not expand, that do not even fill their gaps, that are too impoverished to protect the nation's heritage, ten to atrophy.
Fresh acquisitions draw in old visitors and attract new. They act as the focus of revised displays and oil the wheels of international exchange in the form of major exhibitions shared with American and other European galleries. But how, after decades falling behind an accelerating art market, are major works of art to be paid for?
Perhaps you think that government should spend more to preserve our heritage, but I am not persuaded of this.
Has the nation the will to spend half a billion a year on works of art when our railways are in chaos, our hospitals inadequate, our schools and universities under-funded, and between one part of the country and another we have dismaying divides between wealth and poverty?
The draconian and incorruptible answer must be that we permit the sale of national treasures only to the nation or to private buyers resident in this country, and forbid their export.
Owners will suffer severe drops in price if competition from Switzerland and America are thus eliminated - and it is undoubtedly an infringement of their present rights - but if our galleries and museums are to do their duty...if they are to survive without becoming an unbearable burden on the taxpayer, those rights must be the sacrifice.
It is a system that works well enough in France, Spain, Italy and Germany.
Do you agree?
Join the discussion by calling 0870 010 0444
lines open at 1.30pm.
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RELATED LINKS | | | The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries
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