The opening of the Frieze art fair in Regent's Park, London, this month follows a series of record-breaking contemporary art purchases at auction in the past six months.
Lucian Freud took the "most expensive living artist" title in May when Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought his Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995) for $33.6m at Christie's. In July there were new auction records set at Sotheby's for contemporary artists Marlene Dumas, Bridget Riley and Richard Prince.
And last month the same auction house held the Damien Hirst sale, which raised £111.4m. Meanwhile, works by modern artists such as Munch and Monet can sell for more than $30m each.
Contemporary art has been driven by the arrival of buyers from new economies such as Russia, China and the Middle East and speculative purchasing by a new group of collectors: those working in the financial industries such as hedge-fund managers.
Prices at auction, especially in the contemporary art sector, have so far continued to climb in the past decade. The value of Old Master paintings is estimated to have increased by at least 400 per cent in the past 20 years.
National museums are now, however, spending less grant-in-aid revenue on acquiring works than they did 25 years ago. According to research carried out by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), in 1982-83 five national museums (V&A, Tate, National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery and the British Museum) spent almost £8m in total on acquisitions using funds drawn from their grant-in-aid.
In contrast, the V&A and Tate were unable to allocate anything from their grant-in-aid towards acquisitions in 2006-07 according to their financial statements. The National Gallery had ring-fenced £681,000, while the National Portrait Gallery put aside £1.09m for acquisitions in a special Portrait Fund.
Acquisition funds
Admittedly, national institutions do still obtain works through donations, legacies, other government grants, endowments and assistance from bodies such as the Art Fund. Tate's "incoming resources" for buying works of art in 2006-07 was £13.62m.
The gallery was even in the rare position of having privileged early access to Frieze last year to spend £150,000 provided by the Outset/Frieze Art Fair Fund. The British Museum states that £2.9m went towards acquisitions during the same period, with £2.5m provided by donations with the "balance funded from the museum's own resources".
But what of other government-backed bodies designed to bale out cash-strapped curators? The V&A/MLA Purchase Fund received £1.6m in 1981; in 2006-07, it got just over £1m. The National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) together spent on average nearly £18m a year on acquisitions between 1994 and 2003. This dropped to under £5m in 2004-05.
The NHMF is keen to point out that the government doubled its income from £5m to £10m for 2007-08 and recently confirmed an increase in funding until 2011. But the body was set up in 1980 with an initial grant of £12m.
The HLF has made 457 awards totalling £142.6m since 1994 towards the acquisition of portable heritage. Taking £161.2m from the HLF pot for the Olympics will no doubt affect acquisitions. A HLF spokeswoman says: "The HLF is spreading the reduction due to the Olympics across 12 years. We expect to distribute more than £750m between now and 2012."
Should museums compete at all?
So should museums, especially those with extensive collections, even be trying to compete in today's overheated art market? Mark Jones, the director of the V&A, is concerned about the acquisitions predicament faced by galleries.
"Without acquisition and the engagement and expertise derived from it, museums can lose the passionate involvement with their collections which, communicated to the public, makes them special and worthwhile," he says. The UK's ambition to be one of the world's leading creative economies is under threat if students of art and design have little or no access to new ideas and trends, he argues.
"Certainly the most valuable and high status objects in our collections were acquired in the period up to the 1970s. How damaging it is to our cohesion at local and national levels that the major changes in the make up of this country's population are represented, if at all, by inexpensive objects acquired on a shoestring?" Jones asks.
But are there other avenues for galleries to explore? "The only way for museums to compete is to woo the people who do buy at auction rather than trying to buy themselves," says Melanie Gerlis from the Art Newspaper.
"I think that a culture of private donations can appeal strongly to some of the newer buyers who want validation, or what economists call cultural capital, and seasoned collectors are predisposed to help museums. They just need a little encouragement."
So could tax incentives for individual and corporate giving help alleviate the acquisition dilemma? A tax relief scheme that has proved successful is Acceptance in Lieu (AIL), which allows public collections to acquire works of art in settlement of inheritance tax. The total value of objects acquired through AIL in 2005-06 was £25.2m.
"Tax incentives would be a cost-effective way for government to bolster public collections," says the Art Fund's Sally Wrampling. "We hope the treasury will introduce a new income tax incentive on lifetime gifts of works of art in the autumn."
Tax breaks needed
Fiscal initiatives were among the proposals discussed in a recent report from Arts Council England calling for a national contemporary art collecting strategy (See link 1 below).
Two members of the report's working group - Kate Brindley, director of museums, galleries and archives at Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives, and Stephen Snoddy, director of the New Art Gallery Walsall - are adamant that tax inducements should be encouraged.
"Artists should receive tax breaks for donating works, but this has to be collection-led, not artist-led," warns Snoddy. "There has to be a quality control."
In an separate initiative, Tate is forging closer relationships with artists through its Building the Collection scheme, which has so far secured 17 donated works from figures such as Damien Hirst.
"The need for public/private relationships and mutual support within the UK contemporary art world seems more necessary than ever," says Ben Harman, curator
of contemporary art at Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA). He cites the positive impact of dealer Anthony d'Offay's part sale-part gift of 725 major postwar works to the Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland in February. (As part of a complex arrangement, corporation and income taxes of £14.6m were paid for by the department for culture).
"There are dedicated funds for contemporary art purchases within Culture and Sport Glasgow [the trust which runs GoMA]," adds Harman. GoMA is among the five regional partnerships awarded £1m each by the Art Fund International scheme to spend over five years.
Watching the pennies
The Art Fund project, seen as a contemporary collecting lifeline following the end of the Contemporary Art Society's Special Collection Scheme in 2005, could be extended to create 10 regional partnerships as part of the new ACE collecting strategy.
"The scheme will build UK collections of works by international artists as they are being created, not waiting until prices are way beyond the reach of museums and galleries," emphasises Wrampling.
Indeed, spotting the potential of artists before their stock rises sharply may provide the key for museum collecting. Brindley points out that some contemporary works are affordable if you buy them early enough.
Andrew Burnett, deputy director of the British Museum, says that the institution has been purchasing modern prints by US artists for the past 30 years before a steep rise in prices.
He identifies antiquities buying as a challenge, with sale costs accelerating in the past decade given the finite supply of the best quality, properly provenanced pieces. A strong antiquities sale at Christie's in June fetched over £3m.
But not everything is out of reach. British 17th- to 19th-century portraits and watercolours, especially Victorian garden artists, have fallen in value in the past year.
Inexpensive items can still bolster a collection. The V&A bought a number of pieces for under £1,000 for its current Cold War Modern exhibition. These include two Braun radios, both designed by Dieter Rams; and a Garden Egg Chair, designed by Peter Ghyczy and made by Elastogran.
A contemporary art market fall may take place, the most vulnerable price range being the £20,000-£100,000 bracket. But the gulf between paltry budgets and auction prices is so vast that any correction would make little difference to the spending power of museums and galleries, says Walsall's Snoddy.
A spokesman for Christie's commented that there hasn't been any significant decrease in the activity of museums at the company's auctions, adding that "our heritage and private treaty sales department continues to work actively with museums".
And museums haven't given up the ghost entirely. Tim Potts, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, says: "We do still bid at auction when we can. I do not have the impression that museums are giving up." Kate Brindley, in Bristol, agrees: "Rolling over and saying, 'We can't do this' is not my position'."
Gareth Harris is a freelance arts journalist
Lucian Freud took the "most expensive living artist" title in May when Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought his Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995) for $33.6m at Christie's. In July there were new auction records set at Sotheby's for contemporary artists Marlene Dumas, Bridget Riley and Richard Prince.
And last month the same auction house held the Damien Hirst sale, which raised £111.4m. Meanwhile, works by modern artists such as Munch and Monet can sell for more than $30m each.
Contemporary art has been driven by the arrival of buyers from new economies such as Russia, China and the Middle East and speculative purchasing by a new group of collectors: those working in the financial industries such as hedge-fund managers.
Prices at auction, especially in the contemporary art sector, have so far continued to climb in the past decade. The value of Old Master paintings is estimated to have increased by at least 400 per cent in the past 20 years.
National museums are now, however, spending less grant-in-aid revenue on acquiring works than they did 25 years ago. According to research carried out by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), in 1982-83 five national museums (V&A, Tate, National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery and the British Museum) spent almost £8m in total on acquisitions using funds drawn from their grant-in-aid.
In contrast, the V&A and Tate were unable to allocate anything from their grant-in-aid towards acquisitions in 2006-07 according to their financial statements. The National Gallery had ring-fenced £681,000, while the National Portrait Gallery put aside £1.09m for acquisitions in a special Portrait Fund.
Acquisition funds
Admittedly, national institutions do still obtain works through donations, legacies, other government grants, endowments and assistance from bodies such as the Art Fund. Tate's "incoming resources" for buying works of art in 2006-07 was £13.62m.
The gallery was even in the rare position of having privileged early access to Frieze last year to spend £150,000 provided by the Outset/Frieze Art Fair Fund. The British Museum states that £2.9m went towards acquisitions during the same period, with £2.5m provided by donations with the "balance funded from the museum's own resources".
But what of other government-backed bodies designed to bale out cash-strapped curators? The V&A/MLA Purchase Fund received £1.6m in 1981; in 2006-07, it got just over £1m. The National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) together spent on average nearly £18m a year on acquisitions between 1994 and 2003. This dropped to under £5m in 2004-05.
The NHMF is keen to point out that the government doubled its income from £5m to £10m for 2007-08 and recently confirmed an increase in funding until 2011. But the body was set up in 1980 with an initial grant of £12m.
The HLF has made 457 awards totalling £142.6m since 1994 towards the acquisition of portable heritage. Taking £161.2m from the HLF pot for the Olympics will no doubt affect acquisitions. A HLF spokeswoman says: "The HLF is spreading the reduction due to the Olympics across 12 years. We expect to distribute more than £750m between now and 2012."
Should museums compete at all?
So should museums, especially those with extensive collections, even be trying to compete in today's overheated art market? Mark Jones, the director of the V&A, is concerned about the acquisitions predicament faced by galleries.
"Without acquisition and the engagement and expertise derived from it, museums can lose the passionate involvement with their collections which, communicated to the public, makes them special and worthwhile," he says. The UK's ambition to be one of the world's leading creative economies is under threat if students of art and design have little or no access to new ideas and trends, he argues.
"Certainly the most valuable and high status objects in our collections were acquired in the period up to the 1970s. How damaging it is to our cohesion at local and national levels that the major changes in the make up of this country's population are represented, if at all, by inexpensive objects acquired on a shoestring?" Jones asks.
But are there other avenues for galleries to explore? "The only way for museums to compete is to woo the people who do buy at auction rather than trying to buy themselves," says Melanie Gerlis from the Art Newspaper.
"I think that a culture of private donations can appeal strongly to some of the newer buyers who want validation, or what economists call cultural capital, and seasoned collectors are predisposed to help museums. They just need a little encouragement."
So could tax incentives for individual and corporate giving help alleviate the acquisition dilemma? A tax relief scheme that has proved successful is Acceptance in Lieu (AIL), which allows public collections to acquire works of art in settlement of inheritance tax. The total value of objects acquired through AIL in 2005-06 was £25.2m.
"Tax incentives would be a cost-effective way for government to bolster public collections," says the Art Fund's Sally Wrampling. "We hope the treasury will introduce a new income tax incentive on lifetime gifts of works of art in the autumn."
Tax breaks needed
Fiscal initiatives were among the proposals discussed in a recent report from Arts Council England calling for a national contemporary art collecting strategy (See link 1 below).
Two members of the report's working group - Kate Brindley, director of museums, galleries and archives at Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives, and Stephen Snoddy, director of the New Art Gallery Walsall - are adamant that tax inducements should be encouraged.
"Artists should receive tax breaks for donating works, but this has to be collection-led, not artist-led," warns Snoddy. "There has to be a quality control."
In an separate initiative, Tate is forging closer relationships with artists through its Building the Collection scheme, which has so far secured 17 donated works from figures such as Damien Hirst.
"The need for public/private relationships and mutual support within the UK contemporary art world seems more necessary than ever," says Ben Harman, curator
of contemporary art at Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA). He cites the positive impact of dealer Anthony d'Offay's part sale-part gift of 725 major postwar works to the Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland in February. (As part of a complex arrangement, corporation and income taxes of £14.6m were paid for by the department for culture).
"There are dedicated funds for contemporary art purchases within Culture and Sport Glasgow [the trust which runs GoMA]," adds Harman. GoMA is among the five regional partnerships awarded £1m each by the Art Fund International scheme to spend over five years.
Watching the pennies
The Art Fund project, seen as a contemporary collecting lifeline following the end of the Contemporary Art Society's Special Collection Scheme in 2005, could be extended to create 10 regional partnerships as part of the new ACE collecting strategy.
"The scheme will build UK collections of works by international artists as they are being created, not waiting until prices are way beyond the reach of museums and galleries," emphasises Wrampling.
Indeed, spotting the potential of artists before their stock rises sharply may provide the key for museum collecting. Brindley points out that some contemporary works are affordable if you buy them early enough.
Andrew Burnett, deputy director of the British Museum, says that the institution has been purchasing modern prints by US artists for the past 30 years before a steep rise in prices.
He identifies antiquities buying as a challenge, with sale costs accelerating in the past decade given the finite supply of the best quality, properly provenanced pieces. A strong antiquities sale at Christie's in June fetched over £3m.
But not everything is out of reach. British 17th- to 19th-century portraits and watercolours, especially Victorian garden artists, have fallen in value in the past year.
Inexpensive items can still bolster a collection. The V&A bought a number of pieces for under £1,000 for its current Cold War Modern exhibition. These include two Braun radios, both designed by Dieter Rams; and a Garden Egg Chair, designed by Peter Ghyczy and made by Elastogran.
A contemporary art market fall may take place, the most vulnerable price range being the £20,000-£100,000 bracket. But the gulf between paltry budgets and auction prices is so vast that any correction would make little difference to the spending power of museums and galleries, says Walsall's Snoddy.
A spokesman for Christie's commented that there hasn't been any significant decrease in the activity of museums at the company's auctions, adding that "our heritage and private treaty sales department continues to work actively with museums".
And museums haven't given up the ghost entirely. Tim Potts, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, says: "We do still bid at auction when we can. I do not have the impression that museums are giving up." Kate Brindley, in Bristol, agrees: "Rolling over and saying, 'We can't do this' is not my position'."
Gareth Harris is a freelance arts journalist
Help at hand
The competitive market for many artworks makes it difficult for UK museums and galleries to make acquisitions, but there are organisations that can help.
The Art Fund, an independent charity, gives about £4m a year in grants to museums and galleries around the UK. It funds everything from important masterpieces that are under threat of being sold abroad, to works that cost just a few hundred pounds. The fund has helped acquire include JMW Turner's Blue Rigi (1842), which was bought earlier this year by Tate Britain for £4.95m.
It ran a direct mail campaign that raised more than £560,000 towards its acquisition. The painting was secured with a further £2m from Tate, £1.87m from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and £500,000 from The Art Fund itself (see link 2 below).
This year, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) will provide about £255m to heritage projects in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and some of this will be for acquisitions by museums and galleries.
The HLF is administered by the trustees of the NHMF. Major purchases it has been involved in include the National Gallery's acquisition of Raphael's The Madonna of the Pinks (c1506-7) in 2004, which was bought for £22m from the Duke of Northumberland, preventing it from being sold to the Getty Museum in the US (see link 3 below).
The NHMF itself was created in 1980 and is the fund of last resort for the nation's heritage. It gives about £10m a year to fund emergency acquisitions. The wide range of artefacts it has helped fund include the £1.7m acquisition of the 14th-century Macclesfield Psalter by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in 2005.
The psalter, which contains psalms from the Old Testament and other prayers, is one of the finest examples of an English illuminated manuscript.
The NHMF also supported the acquisition of the Mappa Mundi for Hereford Cathedral and the joint purchase of Antonio Canova's The Three Graces (1817) by the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Galleries of Scotland for £7.6m in 1994 (see link 4 below).
The MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund is a government fund that supports the acquisition of objects relating to the arts, literature and history by regional museums, record offices and specialist libraries in England and Wales. It was originally established at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in 1881 as part of its nationwide work.
Each year it considers some 300 applications and in 2007/08, grants of almost £1m were awarded to 100 organisations, enabling acquisitions of almost £3.5m to go ahead (see link 5 below).
The competitive market for many artworks makes it difficult for UK museums and galleries to make acquisitions, but there are organisations that can help.
The Art Fund, an independent charity, gives about £4m a year in grants to museums and galleries around the UK. It funds everything from important masterpieces that are under threat of being sold abroad, to works that cost just a few hundred pounds. The fund has helped acquire include JMW Turner's Blue Rigi (1842), which was bought earlier this year by Tate Britain for £4.95m.
It ran a direct mail campaign that raised more than £560,000 towards its acquisition. The painting was secured with a further £2m from Tate, £1.87m from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and £500,000 from The Art Fund itself (see link 2 below).
This year, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) will provide about £255m to heritage projects in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and some of this will be for acquisitions by museums and galleries.
The HLF is administered by the trustees of the NHMF. Major purchases it has been involved in include the National Gallery's acquisition of Raphael's The Madonna of the Pinks (c1506-7) in 2004, which was bought for £22m from the Duke of Northumberland, preventing it from being sold to the Getty Museum in the US (see link 3 below).
The NHMF itself was created in 1980 and is the fund of last resort for the nation's heritage. It gives about £10m a year to fund emergency acquisitions. The wide range of artefacts it has helped fund include the £1.7m acquisition of the 14th-century Macclesfield Psalter by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in 2005.
The psalter, which contains psalms from the Old Testament and other prayers, is one of the finest examples of an English illuminated manuscript.
The NHMF also supported the acquisition of the Mappa Mundi for Hereford Cathedral and the joint purchase of Antonio Canova's The Three Graces (1817) by the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Galleries of Scotland for £7.6m in 1994 (see link 4 below).
The MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund is a government fund that supports the acquisition of objects relating to the arts, literature and history by regional museums, record offices and specialist libraries in England and Wales. It was originally established at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in 1881 as part of its nationwide work.
Each year it considers some 300 applications and in 2007/08, grants of almost £1m were awarded to 100 organisations, enabling acquisitions of almost £3.5m to go ahead (see link 5 below).
Links
1. Museums Journal, August 2008, p15
2. www.artfund.org
3. www.hlf.org.uk
4. www.hlf.org.uk/nhmfweb
5. www.vam.ac.uk
1. Museums Journal, August 2008, p15
2. www.artfund.org
3. www.hlf.org.uk
4. www.hlf.org.uk/nhmfweb
5. www.vam.ac.uk
