“I don’t wish to point fingers, but I’m going to,” he said. “The Victoria & Albert Museum is particularly disappointing. They get lots of money from the government. Galleries like ours don’t.

“It would be nice if they at least looked at a two-tier charging system. We can take some of [their] collections on long- or short-term loan. We can arrange national tours to get all those collections out.” [...]

“Rather than pay vast sums for public access stores by the nationals, let’s just lend some of them out ,” said Parissien.

Referring to the Tate’s branches – Modern, Britain, St Ives and Liverpool – and the V&A’s planned outposts in the Olympic Park, he accused the London nationals of “cultural colonialism”. He added: “You don’t need to spend millions of taxpayers’ money on new buildings. We’re already here – a whole national network of superb galleries.”