Call for national art collecting strategy

The creation of a national strategy for collecting contemporary art was put firmly on the agenda last month as the arts council and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) came together in an attempt to address some of the problems surrounding the issue.

A document circulated by Arts Council England (ACE) called for a national strategy, and the minister for culture, Margaret Hodge, convened a meeting to discuss collecting, in particular in relation to contemporary visual art.

The main thrust of the ACE report, written by Andrew Brown, the acting head of visual arts strategy at the council, is that public collections of contemporary art are becoming impoverished and that there should be an overarching national strategy to address the problem.

The document makes a number of suggestions including the creation of a national endowment fund with a panel to support and administer it, and better use of national collections such as the Arts Council Collection, the Government Art Collection and the British Council Collection (see box).

The report came about as a result of research into the state of contemporary collecting conducted earlier this year.

It was then discussed at the DCMS meeting, with representatives from regional and national museums, funding bodies and other sector organisations, in July. Brown said the meeting acted as a catalyst and that ACE now had a mandate from the DCMS to take the strategy forward.

So far the report seems to have been generally well received. Kate Brindley, director of Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives, said she welcomed the fact that regional museums were at the table and said it was vital that the momentum from the first meeting was sustained.

However, concerns have emerged about several of the specific proposals. Doubts have been expressed about the need for another acquisition fund that might duplicate the work of existing organisations.

David Barrie, director of the Art Fund, said that he welcomed the discussion about a strategy but he was sceptical about the need for a new fund. There are also worries that a national panel with the power to make decisions about acquisitions would be over-centralised and end up creating another layer of bureaucracy.

There is enthusiasm, though, for building on the success of the Contemporary Art Society's Special Collection Scheme, which was funded by ACE and enabled the purchase of over 600 works for 18 collections, and the more recent Art Fund International scheme, which is giving money to five regional partnerships for the purchase of contemporary art.

It was suggested at the DCMS meeting that the Art Fund scheme could be extended to create 10 regional partnerships, each collecting in a specific area.

While there is general agreement that the report is a good starting point for a discussion, there has been some scepticism about how far the initiative will get. It's not the first time that there has been a summit meeting on the subject. Both ACE and the DCMS have called meetings on the topic over the past couple of years, but few solutions have been put forward.

But this time both organisations seem keen to make progress. A working group has already been established and will meet this month to consider the report in detail (see box).

A wider reference group made up of representatives from regional and national museums, funding organisations and other sector bodies will meet in September to consider the first proposals from the working group. It is hoped the working group will then report on progress to the DCMS in November.