The Art Fund gets political
February 5 2014
Picture: Fitzwilliam Museum
There was a fruity letter in the Guardian yesterday from the Art Fund director, Dr. Stephan Deuchar, accusing the government of contributing to the loss of important works of art overseas because of its cuts to museum funding. It's powerful stuff, and unusually political for the Art Fund.
The letter was in response to a story in the Observer, detailing a 'treasure trove of more than £1.7bn-worth' of art which has been 'lost' to 'rich foreign buyers'. These include pictures like Picasso's Child with a Dove (valued at £50m), and Raphael's drawing of an apostle (at £29m), neither of which any UK museum, even if it had Getty-like levels of funding, could ever have hoped to buy.
Here's what Dr. Deuchar wrote in response, and he's right to point out that much of this art 'lost' overseas is inconsequential:
You report (The works of art that could not be saved for British collections, 31 January) the "loss" abroad last year of 33,000 works of art and other items of cultural value. This is less serious than it sounds. Most were everyday sales from private collections here to private collections elsewhere. Welcome to the art market. The small number that were of high potential importance to UK museums were properly identified by the export review system.
Of these, only six of the original 19 were successfully acquired for public ownership. But it is the sharp decline in public funding for the arts, rather than the export controls themselves, that lies squarely behind this failure. The works which the culture minister, Ed Vaizey, challenged curators to fundraise for in 2013 were, at £115m, worth 50% more than those he export-stopped in 2012; meanwhile his government oversaw funding cuts averaging more than 20% across the sector. With such a background it was remarkable that as many as six were saved.
Agencies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Art Fund continue to do all they can to guard the UK's arts and heritage against the ravages of the government's austerity programme. In the case of the National Portrait Gallery's current campaign for Van Dyck's self-portrait, a number of trusts and foundations, as well as significant sums from public donations, are also of crucial help. The combination of high art prices in a buoyant international market, currently fast-fuelled by hungry private investors, and a sorry parallel decline in national and local funding for UK museums, is the only enemy.
Stephen Deuchar, Director, Art Fund
It's the last part of Dr. Deuchar's letter that I find curious. It's undeniably the case that overall operational funding for UK musems has been cut. This is a sad thing, but of course has to be set in context of the UK's broader fiscal problems. However, these cuts to the day-to-day running of museums do not necessarily impact on the capital funding available to acquire works of art, which traditionally come from other sources outside the museums themselves, like the privately supported Art Fund (museums' own acquisition budgets disappeared a long time ago).
In fact, although it may not suit some to acknowledge it, the present government has made significantly more money available for acquisitions than any other recent government. This is due to two principle reasons.
First, there was a sizeable increase in lottery funding for the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), which gives out capital grants for arts and heritage purposes. Under Labour, the HLF had seen much of its funding diverted towards regular government expenditure, like the NHS, and also the Olympics. But nowadays the HLF is £25m a year better off.*
Secondly, there was a more recent change in the HLF's attitude to acquisitions. Regular readers may recall my frequent rants in years gone by about the HLF's traditional unwillingness to fund the acquisition of cultural objects. But it is almost entirely thanks to the HLF's new, enlightened and laudatory policy towards acquisitions that we have been able to save pictures like Manet's Mademoiselle Claus for the Ashmolean, and Poussin's Extreme Unction for the Fitzwilliam (above). If the HLF had not supported these appeals, both pictures would have left the UK. There are many, less notable cases where the HLF has recently made all the difference to an acquisition, like Birmingham Museum's purchase of Wright of Derby's Portrait of Erasmus Darwin. It should also be noted that the present government has increased the funds available to the Acceptance in Lieu programme, from £20m to £30m.
All of which makes the letter to the Guardian somewhat puzzling in one aspect. Might such charges damage politician's support for the present glut of funding for acquisitions? I'm all in favour of criticising governments when they screw up, and I certainly don't support the sometimes arbitrary cuts to museum services. But we are in fact experiencing a new age of plenty when it comes to museums being able to buy objects. The numbers don't lie. And surely we should acknowledge that. Politicians are sensitive people, and there's something in the old maxim, 'don't bite the hand that feeds you'.
Update - a reader urges us to look further back, when things were really rosy on the acquisition front:
Things of late are better but I do think it’s worth looking at a longer historical perspective – maybe because I’m that old. Up to the mid-1980s the National purchased around 5-6 works each year out of its acquisitions grant from government – it simply can’t do that now for the simple reason its grant-in-aid doesn’t leave enough spare after running costs. And it certainly couldn’t step into the international market to snap up say the major Gauguin it has been looking for for years or a work by Schiele – I don’t think even the advent of the John Paul Getty Jnr money would allow it to do that – and both were possible at one time. Part of the problem, as you no doubt realise, is the level of market prices but if the previous level of support had been maintained it would have been able to acquire van Dyck’s self portrait and several other works without resorting to seeking additional support.
And regarding van Dyck, the last time they bought one without additional support was in 1984, when they at last got a major subject piece – the Lonsdale Charity, The same year they also acquired the Bassano Calvary (with NHF help), the Rosa Witches (for £350,000), the Pissarro of Sydenham (at auction from a foreign source for £561,000), the David portrait of Blauw (from France at last and the UK’s first David), and the Wright portrait of the Coltmans (at auction for £1.4 million with HMF help of £400K). What would they need now to cover that lot.
Update II - the Art Fund seems really to be running with this 'blame the government' line, as they've published the letter as a news item on their website.
Update III - a reader says we should all contribute more to museums, like they do in the US:
[...] it would be nice (and nice implies unlikely) if a shift in British character towards more generous contributions would occur. Supported by significant income tax incentives and estate tax benefits (i.e. government funding) US residents are more charitable than our British counterparts at all income levels. Part of this obtains from the benefits mentioned already, but also it is a matter of social standing and custom. When the Thomas Eakins painting "The Gross Clinic" was to be sold to Crystal Bridges, Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts raised USD 65 million to keep it in a city already replete with his work. Several individuals gave five million each. Britain has ten times the population of the Philadelphia area and plenty of possible donors for its museums.
Sadly, this will never happen, and it's not a question of a shift in character. Here, we pay vastly more in tax, and there will never be the same range of incentives to give to museums that there are in the US.
*(And I'm vain enough to say that this policy was something I helped push through when I worked for the Conservative party in opposition, first by including it in the party's 2005 Arts & Heritage manifesto (Copyright, BG), and secondly by including in the party's Arts Taskforce report, ahead of the 2010 election.)
