Museums in England and Wales are encouraged to apply for grants from the Arts Council England (ACE)/V&A Purchase Grant Fund.
Managed by the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), the fund supports the purchase of a wide range of material related to the arts, literature or history for the permanent collections of non-national museums. The grants budget for 2025/26 is £725,000.
The fund has been run by the V&A since 1881 and enables acquisitions worth a total of around £3m every year. It is awarded on a rolling basis throughout the financial year, with decisions normally given within for weeks of receiving all necessary information.
The minimum purchase price eligible for grant support is £500 and the maximum is £500,000. No applicant is likely to receive more than £50,000 in any one financial year and the maximum grant is 50% of the purchase price.
Recent acquisitions include Despair & Promise, a pair of slip-cast earthenware Staffordshire-inspired figurine cats, by Vicky Lindo and Bill Brookes (2024), which were acquired by the Higgins Bedford in March 2025.
Also purchased this year was an annotated author’s copy of A History of the Birds of Europe by H E Dresser (1838-1915), one of the most significant ornithologists of his time. The 17-volume set was specially produced and printed for the author himself, with original hand-coloured plates and manuscript annotations.
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A temporary export bar was placed on the set in 2024 after it was found to have met the Waverley criteria as a national treasure. With the support of the Purchase Grant Fund, Art Fund and Friends of the Nations’ Libraries, Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester was able to secure the acquisition in January 2025.
“This was Manchester Museum’s largest new acquisition in recent memory, and the museum’s first experience with the temporary export bar process,” said Esme Ward, the director of Manchester Museum.
“The ACE/V&A Purchase Grant Fund not only provided generous support, but also fully recognised the urgency of the timescales to which we had to work. The speed and flexibility with which the fund responded was hugely appreciated, and played a pivotal role in enabling us to save these stunning volumes for the nation. We are exceptionally grateful for everything that the fund has done to make this possible.”
The fund supports the acquisition of objects, collections or archives of any date relating to the arts, literature or history, including archaeological and ethnographical material, objects illustrating social and popular culture, decorative and fine art, rare books, documents and letters with good historical content, maps, writers' manuscripts and archival photographs.
Museums and galleries should be Accredited, and record repositories be Accredited under the Archive Service Accreditation Scheme, or have formal "working towards" status.
The fund is unable to consider new artistic commissions or scientific or technological material.