Our best source of acquisitions - death
December 19 2011
Picture: National Gallery
Details of this year's Acceptance-in-Lieu scheme have been released. Almost £20m worth of cultural treasures, including the above Rubens sketch The Triumph of Venus (at £4.4m), have been accepted by the UK government in place of inheritance tax. Invitations to be allocated the Rubens are now being sought. So if you've got a Rubens hole in your museum collection, apply now.
I've always found it curious that the government will automatically acquire a pre-eminent work of art for the nation if it comes from someone who's dead, but not if they are alive. But there it is. To see some of the other works acquired this way, click here.
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- New Release: Italian Paintings at the Yale University Art Gallery
- Recent Release: Artists and Pirates - Satirical Prints in Georgian London and Dublin
- Upcoming Release: Noble Beasts - Hunters and Hunted in Eighteenth-Century French Art
- Louvre Abu Dhabi Fellowship & Grants
- Rediscovered José I Portrait acquired by University of Coimbra
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- Recent Release: Artists and Pirates - Satirical Prints in Georgian London and Dublin
- Upcoming Release: Noble Beasts - Hunters and Hunted in Eighteenth-Century French Art
- Veil-Picard Collection at Christie's Paris in March
- Rediscovered José I Portrait acquired by University of Coimbra
- Finding Catherine Read
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