With Turner Prize season upon us, the Tate is unlikely to be out of the news for very long - but that's not the only reason the Tate has been in the limelight. The launch of its biannual report in September was unusual for several reasons.
These reports are normally a chance for museums to thank their trustees, donors and sponsors, with a few (usually indecipherable) figures attached. But this time the Tate had a number of issues of substance to announce, including the decision to reveal the values of works of art it has bought from dealers and been given by benefactors, something that is almost unprecedented for a national museum.
The figures are surprising, given the acquisitions crisis that so many museums are currently concerned about. The report reveals that between 2004 and 2006 the Tate bought works totalling £12.2m and was given a further £10.2m-worth.
While this may not seem a lot in a year that a Picasso (Dora Maar au Chat) fetched £53m at auction, and a Klimt (Adele Bloch-Bauer I) £75m in a private sale, it was still enough to amass 500 works, plus archival material. Among the reasons cited by the Tate for the move was to highlight the generosity of some of the (mostly anonymous) donors.
And some of the gifts were generous: they included two John Constables estimated at a total of £4.15m; an Antony Gormley valued at £450,000; and a selection of works by Barbara Hepworth with a provisional value of about £2m. The chairman of trustees, Paul Myners, confirmed that the next priority for the Tate, after the opening of Tate Modern and Tate Britain, is building the collection.
But the information that raised eyebrows in the art trade was the long list of works and prices paid to dealers - from the £817,000 for Sigmar Polke's Triptych to Galerie Michael Werner in Cologne, to the £90,000 to the Lisson Gallery for Francis Alÿs's Pebble Walk. Dealers are notoriously secretive about prices. The reasons for this vary, but most cite commercial and/or client confidentiality.
What is certainly true is that commercial galleries would prefer to keep the precise prices they negotiate to themselves: in the current booming art market in which the most successful artists have waiting lists for pieces, dealers like to pick and choose which clients to sell to and at what price.
Unsurprisingly, prestigious museums that enhance an artist's reputation are favourites to receive discounts. Even organisations such as the Government Art Collection, which places works in government offices and embassies abroad, has attracted discounts. The Art Newspaper reported in May that the White Cube gallery sold a Damien Hirst spot painting to the government-funded collection for £176,250, with an estimated discount of 50 per cent.
But the cracks in the confidentiality argument tend to appear when allegations of wrongdoing emerge. In 2000, a Culture, Media and Sport select committee inquiry into Nazi spoliation noted secrecy in the art market had allowed widespread dealing in looted artworks in the immediate postwar period, although dealers and auction houses were now more conscientious. Still, the committee added, 'there was some scepticism about how widespread and accepted [disclosure of provenances for the war years] would become in a trade… historically characterised by secrecy and anonymity'.
The same secrecy, according to academic Simon Mackenzie, author of last year's Going, Going, Gone: Regulating the Market in Illicit Antiquities, is a major factor in the easy passage of antiquities into the hands of wealthy western collectors.
Regardless of the activities of the trade, there is no reason that publicly-funded institutions should keep information about acquisition prices secret. Last year, the National Maritime Museum in London was the subject of a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) appeal after it refused to disclose the price it had paid for a sculpture by Conrad Shawcross. The FOI tribunal ruled in March this year that the amount should have been given when requested and that 'no sufficient risk of prejudice of the commercial interests' of the museum was demonstrated.
Nonetheless, many museums feel uncomfortable discussing acquisition prices - and not just out of habit. Many are wary about muddying the waters between money and the significance of museum objects. The Museums Association's (MA) code of ethics says: 'Encourage public appreciation of the cultural rather than financial value of items.'
There have always been fears about insurance and security issues if the high value of some pieces is public knowledge. And there is always the danger, as the case of Bury council's Lowry demonstrates, that national or local authority owners might be tempted to sell off the family silver when its true price is widely known. But although the MA does not have a specific position on revealing purchase prices, its policy officer Helen Wilkinson says it would generally be in favour of transparency and accountability.
The Tate decided to reveal the cost of its purchases following criticisms from the Charity Commission on the way it has bought work from serving trustees. And while this decision goes beyond the letter of the commission's ruling, it is in keeping with the spirit.
'We are a publicly accountable museum, not a private entity, and we should be open about our activities,' Paul Myners, the chairman of the Tate's trustees, told Museums Journal. 'Revealing the prices paid for works might lead to public comment or criticism, but curators and trustees should be confident enough to defend their acquisitions.'
So far no other major museum has followed the Tate's lead, but in an era of ever-increasing transparency it is unlikely to be long.
Jane Morris writes about museums and galleries and is a judge of the European Museum of the Year Award
These reports are normally a chance for museums to thank their trustees, donors and sponsors, with a few (usually indecipherable) figures attached. But this time the Tate had a number of issues of substance to announce, including the decision to reveal the values of works of art it has bought from dealers and been given by benefactors, something that is almost unprecedented for a national museum.
The figures are surprising, given the acquisitions crisis that so many museums are currently concerned about. The report reveals that between 2004 and 2006 the Tate bought works totalling £12.2m and was given a further £10.2m-worth.
While this may not seem a lot in a year that a Picasso (Dora Maar au Chat) fetched £53m at auction, and a Klimt (Adele Bloch-Bauer I) £75m in a private sale, it was still enough to amass 500 works, plus archival material. Among the reasons cited by the Tate for the move was to highlight the generosity of some of the (mostly anonymous) donors.
And some of the gifts were generous: they included two John Constables estimated at a total of £4.15m; an Antony Gormley valued at £450,000; and a selection of works by Barbara Hepworth with a provisional value of about £2m. The chairman of trustees, Paul Myners, confirmed that the next priority for the Tate, after the opening of Tate Modern and Tate Britain, is building the collection.
But the information that raised eyebrows in the art trade was the long list of works and prices paid to dealers - from the £817,000 for Sigmar Polke's Triptych to Galerie Michael Werner in Cologne, to the £90,000 to the Lisson Gallery for Francis Alÿs's Pebble Walk. Dealers are notoriously secretive about prices. The reasons for this vary, but most cite commercial and/or client confidentiality.
What is certainly true is that commercial galleries would prefer to keep the precise prices they negotiate to themselves: in the current booming art market in which the most successful artists have waiting lists for pieces, dealers like to pick and choose which clients to sell to and at what price.
Unsurprisingly, prestigious museums that enhance an artist's reputation are favourites to receive discounts. Even organisations such as the Government Art Collection, which places works in government offices and embassies abroad, has attracted discounts. The Art Newspaper reported in May that the White Cube gallery sold a Damien Hirst spot painting to the government-funded collection for £176,250, with an estimated discount of 50 per cent.
But the cracks in the confidentiality argument tend to appear when allegations of wrongdoing emerge. In 2000, a Culture, Media and Sport select committee inquiry into Nazi spoliation noted secrecy in the art market had allowed widespread dealing in looted artworks in the immediate postwar period, although dealers and auction houses were now more conscientious. Still, the committee added, 'there was some scepticism about how widespread and accepted [disclosure of provenances for the war years] would become in a trade… historically characterised by secrecy and anonymity'.
The same secrecy, according to academic Simon Mackenzie, author of last year's Going, Going, Gone: Regulating the Market in Illicit Antiquities, is a major factor in the easy passage of antiquities into the hands of wealthy western collectors.
Regardless of the activities of the trade, there is no reason that publicly-funded institutions should keep information about acquisition prices secret. Last year, the National Maritime Museum in London was the subject of a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) appeal after it refused to disclose the price it had paid for a sculpture by Conrad Shawcross. The FOI tribunal ruled in March this year that the amount should have been given when requested and that 'no sufficient risk of prejudice of the commercial interests' of the museum was demonstrated.
Nonetheless, many museums feel uncomfortable discussing acquisition prices - and not just out of habit. Many are wary about muddying the waters between money and the significance of museum objects. The Museums Association's (MA) code of ethics says: 'Encourage public appreciation of the cultural rather than financial value of items.'
There have always been fears about insurance and security issues if the high value of some pieces is public knowledge. And there is always the danger, as the case of Bury council's Lowry demonstrates, that national or local authority owners might be tempted to sell off the family silver when its true price is widely known. But although the MA does not have a specific position on revealing purchase prices, its policy officer Helen Wilkinson says it would generally be in favour of transparency and accountability.
The Tate decided to reveal the cost of its purchases following criticisms from the Charity Commission on the way it has bought work from serving trustees. And while this decision goes beyond the letter of the commission's ruling, it is in keeping with the spirit.
'We are a publicly accountable museum, not a private entity, and we should be open about our activities,' Paul Myners, the chairman of the Tate's trustees, told Museums Journal. 'Revealing the prices paid for works might lead to public comment or criticism, but curators and trustees should be confident enough to defend their acquisitions.'
So far no other major museum has followed the Tate's lead, but in an era of ever-increasing transparency it is unlikely to be long.
Jane Morris writes about museums and galleries and is a judge of the European Museum of the Year Award
