Letter from Edinburgh: art and a 'Yes' vote
September 1 2014
The sinister side of the Yes campaign from No Thanks on Vimeo.
Video: Jim Murphy MP
Regular readers may know by now that I’ve moved to Scotland. For anyone tired of the exorbitant and over-crowded streets of London (where I was born), Edinburgh is the place for you; a capital city with all the culture and commerce you could wish for, but at a fraction of the price, and sandy beaches just 20 minutes away.
My new home means, among other things,* that I’ll have a vote in the referendum on whether Scotland should become an independent country. Folk down south (as they say up here), including friends of mine in the UK government, have always been relaxed that ‘No’ will win comfortably. But from where I am the outcome has long looked less certain.
It’ll be close. With less than three weeks to go, the latest poll (excluding undecideds of about 10%) gives 47% yes, and 53% no. From what I’ve seen, the Yes side is far, far more motivated to vote than the nos. And winning referenda, just like elections, is all about getting your vote out.
I’ll be voting no. When I lived in England, I sometimes thought that an independent Scotland would be no bad thing. The romance of a plucky nation going it alone was attractive, and there’s no denying Scotland has often been at the wrong end of bad decisions taken in London. For Jacobites like me, the history of these decisions stretches far back. And in fact I don’t think the sky will fall in if independence wins. I would cheerfully support the new Scotland in its endeavours to go solo.
But Britain and Britishness, I’ve come to realise, is more important than anything else. It may not be fashionable to take pride in being British, but when the alternative is the small-minded nationalism seen in the video above [since made unavailable after I posted this; it showed the Labour MP Jim Murphy being assaulted, and called a 'traitor', 'quisling', and much else], it makes you yearn for the solidity of traditions and institutions built up over many centuries; tolerance, fair play, the pound, the BBC, even the monarchy, to name just a few. In the last few weeks a dark enmity has crept into parts of the campaign, predominantly on the Yes side. Some of it is racist, some is violent; it’s all menacing. My fear is it’ll only get worse in any post-Yes negotiations, when the English drop their nice guy act and hold out for what is best for them.
Anyway, the point of this post is to look at what would happen to the UK’s art in the event of those negotiations. I know culture is pretty far down most people’s list of priorities at the moment, but it has hardly been looked at, and actually there are some quite serious issues at stake.
There will be two main areas for an independent Scotland to investigate when it comes to the UK’s art collections. First, how to divide up existing assets. And secondly, how and whether to maintain existing cultural programmes such as Acceptance in Lieu.
The Scottish National Party’s (SNP) ‘White Paper’ on an independent Scotland has only this to say about cultural objects:
Question: What will happen to cultural items related to Scotland and held in UK national collections in an independent Scotland?
Answer: Scotland currently owns a share of all UK national collections.
The national museums and galleries in both London and Scotland all hold items from different parts of the UK and collections assembled from across the world. They have long-established arrangements for loans, exchanges and partnerships, which will be able to continue when Scotland becomes independent.
Independence supporters say Scotland is entitled to at least an 8.4% share of the UK government’s total assets, based on population levels. There has been much debate over whether Scotland could have a similar share in the institutions of the UK, but it looks unlikely. In other words, Scotland could reasonably claim to have a share of the assets of the British Museum (its collection), but not the institution itself.
How many Lewis Chessmen that gets you I’m not sure. But for art lovers in Scotland, the key prize at the British Museum is its superlative collection of Old Master drawings. As David Black pointed out in The Art Newspaper in February, one of the BM’s most important single collection of drawings is was acquired from the Scot John Malcolm of Poltalloch, whose 1,400 works (see them here) included efforts by the likes of Michelangelo, Raphael and Rembrandt. The National Gallery in Scotland often bases its collecting policies on works that have been owned by leading Scots in the past, and if provenance was to form the basis of any acquisition strategy the Malcolm collection would be an obvious place to start.
What of the National Gallery in London? You could argue that Scotland’s claim to anything in the National Gallery in London is balanced out by the rest of the UK’s claim to anything in the National Gallery of Scotland (below). Jointly acquired pictures like the two Dianas by Titian can obviously continue shuttling back and forth between London and Edinburgh (despite Nick Penny’s earlier doubts).
Other national institutions without a ‘reciprocal’ location in Scotland, such as Tate, are another matter. An independent Scotland could quite reasonably argue (despite Tate’s origins as an off-shoot of the National Gallery in London) that it deserved more or less 10% of Tate’s collection, based if nothing else on the fact that Scots have funded Tate’s growth through their taxes. I would agree.
What gems from Tate’s collection should Scotland choose? Again, the provenance strategy is one route. Or one could just go for purely Scottish art; the Ramsays, the Raeburns. But we’ve a surfeit of those up here already, and I would suggest taking a wider view by identifying gaps in any Scottish national collection. The National Galleries of Scotland has (as far as I can see) one painting by Hogarth; Tate has 20. Many of these sit unseen in a London storage depot.
An alternative to such cherry picking would to insist that Tate opens a satellite institution in Scotland. This would be funded by Scotland, but would have guaranteed access to a fair share of the whole Tate collection, allowing regular exhibitions and a good more ‘permanent’ display. Tate already has satellite sites in Liverpool and St Ives, and the lack of one in Scotland has always seemed strange. It’s (alas) unlikely that Scotland would want a representative gallery of ‘British’ art, and I would envisage most of the works chosen having Scottish connections. Of course, in the event of a Yes vote, Tate Britain would have to re-brand itself, again.
The really difficult case, though, is the Royal Collection. The SNP has said that the monarchy would remain, with a single monarch presiding over two separate nations, as we had between James I & VI’s accession in 1603 and before the Act of Union in 1707. In the longer term, few should be in any doubt that a strong republican feeling would soon express itself after Elizabeth II died, and though I would regret it, I can see an independent Scotland being a republic within my lifetime. In which case any Scottish Royal Collection might be short-lived…
Even so, one could argue that this shouldn’t get in the way of any discussion over a fair distribution of cultural assets. At the moment, the Royal Collection has an excellent gallery at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Queen's Gallery, which gets most of the exhibitions that take place in London. Since these are regularly amongst the best in the world, I would personally hope that arrangement continues. Holyroodhouse itself has some good pictures, but not many, and if we’re going by the 8.4% principle, then more art would have to be raided from other locations such as Windsor, Kensington, and St James’.
Here, the identification of more ‘Scottish’ works might be easier, with portraits of monarchs like James I & VI (naturally, I would chose the posthumous one by Van Dyck). One might even try and stretch the provenance route to its limits and seek a share of works acquired by Charles I, a Stuart. That would be a crafty way of getting some of the best pieces in the Royal Collection, but perhaps worth a go. Alternatively, a Scottish government could promise to leave the Royal Collection as a shared asset, but demand certain guarantees from the Royal Collection Trust that the Queen’s Gallery and Holyroodhouse would have access to a fair proportion of the overall collection for long term loans.
What Scotland decides to do with questions over the funding, retention and acquisition of art is more complicated, and hasn’t been mentioned by the SNP in its White Paper on independence. Many funding bodies such as the Art Fund have yet to say whether they would continue to fund projects in an independent Scotland. At the moment, just 1% of their members are based in Scotland. Would it pull out?
The SNP says the National Lottery, which through its Heritage Lottery Fund generously supports painting acquisitions and other art programmes, would continue to operate as normal. But I think we can safely expect it to soon become a Scottish National Lottery, with much reduced prizes and ‘good cause’ funds. A Scottish Heritage Lottery fund would have far less firepower to acquire important works of art. An appeal to ‘save’ a really expensive Old Master might be almost impossible to pull off.
Of course, the question of ‘saving’ important art assumes that a Scottish government would implement the same export controls as those currently used by the UK. These are amongst the fairest in the world, and seek to properly compensate the owners of important works should the state decide to acquire them. However, a Scottish government might seek to follow policies similar to those used in Italy or France, where the state has the right to pre-empt the purchase of important works, which effectively makes them worth a fraction of their value in a fair, open market. I would strongly advise against that, for if, in the negotiations prior to a formal split, a Scottish government even indicated that it wished to pursue such a policy, there would be an immediate ‘art flight’ of works south of the border.
(A related point on the question of export controls concerns what happens to art in the rest of the UK after a Yes vote but before a formal split, a period which might take two or three years. There could be a scenario in which important art in England leaves the UK by the back door. For example, an owner wishing to sell a picture abroad without risking an export stop could, in early 2016, ship (let us say) their Constable of Hampstead Heath over the Scottish border, and leave it there till independence. Will a Scottish government try to stop such a quintessentially English picture from being exported? Probably not, and even if it did, it’s unlikely Scottish funding bodies could match the price. I raise this unlikely prospect only to point out that the English could begin to impose certain border controls prior to formal Scottish independence.)
Other possible changes to the tax and cultural asset policies could also encourage a swift transfer of art south to England. For example, at the moment the UK Treasury allows private owners to defer the payment of inheritance tax on certain pre-eminent works of art, provided they are put on public display. The policy is called ‘conditional exemption’, and is designed to allow collections to remain intact, and sometimes in situ (in an important country house that is open to the public, for example). In the event of independence, therefore, will owners of conditionally exempt paintings see their deferred taxes called in by a Scottish government? A quick glance at the labels in the National Gallery of Scotland reveals how many major works are on loan from private aristocratic collections (such as the Dukes of Sutherland and Buccleuch). Might it be harder for a Scottish government to be seen to be 'giving tax breaks to toffs'? Again, if there’s even a hint of that we can expect to see conditionally exempt art shipped swiftly over the border.
Less of an immediate impact, but still important, is whether the successful Acceptance in Lieu scheme is continued by an independent Scotland. This allows the nation to acquire works of art directly from estates in return for an amount of inheritance tax foregone, and reduces the risk of them being sold on the open market or overseas. At the moment, the annual allowance for this policy in the UK is set at £40m. Could a Scottish government hope to continue such an effective policy with a necessarily lesser limit? A single work of art could easily exceed a proportionally lower limit.
On the other hand, at least some reassurance is provided by the SNP’s track record in government when it comes to the arts; it has contributed directly and generously towards projects like the acquisition of Titian’s Diana and Callisto and the Public Catalogue Foundation (in contrast to the UK government). And as I reported here before, the SNP has advocated funding the arts for arts sake, as opposed to any of the more limited arguments about economic value and the like. But as with the whole question of independence, the many, many uncertainties make keeping the status quo a more attractive option.
Yesterday we hung a union flag in the window.
Update - just seen this in The Spectator and Apollo; a Scottish artist and former museum director debate the pros and cons of independence.
Update II - another poll just out shows Yes gaining even more momentum. Independence is just 3 points away. Undecideds are going for Yes at a rate of 2 to 1. Better start choosing those Hogarths...
Update III - a reader writes:
Given that the Scotland Referendum refuses to recognise anyone as Scottish and worthy of a vote if they live South of the Border - most of the Scottish men/women who either gave works of art to the Nation or created the wealth in the former empire would not have qualified to vote yes or no. Alex Salmond and his party do not count these men and woman as Scottish.
My great-grandmother (Scottish) gave a lovely Rossetti to the Tate Britain, but she lived in England.
Another reader has been looking at the numbers, and wonders if Scotland has enough pictures already:
According to the Public Catalogue Foundation:
The National Gallery, London has 2332 works and Tate has 5358 works (of which c.2400 date up to 1900) for 91.6% of the total population [that is, the remainder of the UK]
The National Gallery of Scotland has 1201 works, for 8.4% of the total population
Result, Edinburgh owes London 703 works.
Another reader writes:
It’s a horribly complicated issue as you indicate but, surely, English collections would have a claim on the Scottish National Collections too in the event of independence? The contents, where purchased, were surely supported by English (or rUK) taxpayers over the decades.
Keep the union flag flying!!
Update IV - according to their online collection, the National Gallery of Scotland has just two oil paintings by Turner. Tate has too many to count.
Update V - a reader sends this sobering view:
On the 7th March I predicated a 42 % Yes vote for Scottish Independence. All right, perhaps a bit optimistic, but I, a resident of a former British colony in North America, still believe that the UK and Scotland are “Better Together.”
As for the effects of an independent Scotland on national art collections, the result would have little impact in the remainder of the UK and in the longer term would result in more new resources for art in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Very simply, Scotland is subsidized in all respects including arts funding by the economic engine that is the Southeast of England.
If Scotland received 8.7 % of the national art collections, and assuming that it already has perhaps half of that in its existing collections, then the remaining national art collections would have to relinquish about 5 % of their holdings. In has been stated in this website that about 80 % of the national collections are in storage, and so the entire Scottish transfer could be effected nearly unnoticed. Of course, they would demand and might receive some trophy works, but then the remaining Art Fund and Heritage Lottery proceeds could make up for that within a decade.
Scotland in its desire to double its art holding may have ignored the costs associated with owning and maintaining an expanded art collection. Who will provide the doubling of space for the newly expanded collections as well as the staff required and conservation costs of the collection. An independent Scotland will already be under pressure financially because of its demographics which will result in greater demand for health, national pensions, and social services in a rapidly aging society.
The National Gallery has seen its Grant in Aid reduced by 15 % during the four years to March 2015 and is anticipating an additional 5 % reduction for the next year. It is uncertain that an independent Scotland will afford to double its grants to its national art institutions after independence.
There are many reasons why an independent Scotland will result in a much more difficult and expensive life for those living there with the government requiring more from and providing less to its working population. The transfer of art is just a small part of this new overhead and reduction in financial resources, but like some others is a net long term benefit to the remainder of the UK which can always go north to view paintings now being maintained by others.
Update VI - Selby Whittingham of the Independent Turner Society writes:
The NG of Scotland lost a prize Turner when the Earl of Rosebery sold the one he loaned to it - the marvellous one of Rome now in the Getty Museum. The pressure for England to hand over many from the Turner Bequest will presumably be great. H A J Munro of Novar, the main patron of late Turner, was a Scot, so was John Ruskin by paternity. A major Turner collaboration was with Sir Walter Scott. The "iconic" Norham Castle depicts a scene on the border. Of course the NG of S has the important Vaughan Bequest of Turner watercolours - the terms of which bequest are better honoured than are Turner's!
Update VII - Prof. Mary Beard has been considering the queston too, in The Times.
Update VIII - The Art Newspaper has a piece on how Scottish artists are viewing the question.
Update IX - Now the polls show Yes leading. Yikes. But I'm not surprised. The No campaign has been an absolute disaster, and continues to make mind-boggling blunders. Even as a strong supporter of the Union, I find myself thinking, with each statement that comes from the 'No' side, 'well, perhaps...'
