If you managed to save up to buy a new object for your collection, only to be told it’s not actually for sale, how would you feel? Bemused? Angry? This was the situation that faced the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) and the Burrell Collection just before Christmas.
Between them they had raised over £950,000 to secure two important export-stopped works of art, and in both cases the owners changed their minds at the last minute and decided not to sell.
The museums wasted time and money in putting together grant applications (including to the Art Fund) and in leading public appeals, only to find the money had to be returned to donors. Rightly, members of the public were dismayed.
(Luckily for the NPG, good relations between director Sandy Nairne and the vendor mean that the painting is now on a five-year loan to the gallery, and plans, including a tour, are able to go ahead.)
This now recurring situation is worrying. Museums are missing out on important objects; resources are being wasted; and the goodwill of the public is being stretched to breaking point.
You might remember the now-infamous case of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Portrait of Omai. The owner changed his mind about selling on the eve of Tate’s announcement that the £12.5m asking price had been raised. Such cases make a mockery of the system.
The UK’s system for reviewing the export of works of art was set up in the 1950s, is widely admired and has generally worked very well, identifying nationally important objects heading abroad and allowing time for museums to acquire them.
We need preserve it – but also to modernise it. The Art Fund is regularly asked to help fund export-stopped works of art, but we and the museums we support have been continually frustrated by problems and glitches that could so easily be avoided.
It is vital that the public interest is deemed a higher priority than the wishes of licence applicants, and there must be greater transparency in the workings of the committee.
There should be a more rigorous interrogation of sales, price agreements, and provenance, and a commitment to obtaining full paperwork in relation to the commercial aspects of each case. Without these reforms museums and funding bodies will lose confidence in the system.
There is a simple solution to the problem of export applicants changing their mind about selling: instead of relying on verbal undertakings, introduce, from the beginning of the process, a binding agreement that they must sell the object should a museum raise the matching price.
This would provide clarity, certainty and a genuine opportunity to retain significant works in the UK. We have put a proposal to the department for culture that we and a number of museums believe would be workable. It is now being reviewed.
Stephen Deuchar is the director of the Art Fund
Between them they had raised over £950,000 to secure two important export-stopped works of art, and in both cases the owners changed their minds at the last minute and decided not to sell.
The museums wasted time and money in putting together grant applications (including to the Art Fund) and in leading public appeals, only to find the money had to be returned to donors. Rightly, members of the public were dismayed.
(Luckily for the NPG, good relations between director Sandy Nairne and the vendor mean that the painting is now on a five-year loan to the gallery, and plans, including a tour, are able to go ahead.)
This now recurring situation is worrying. Museums are missing out on important objects; resources are being wasted; and the goodwill of the public is being stretched to breaking point.
You might remember the now-infamous case of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Portrait of Omai. The owner changed his mind about selling on the eve of Tate’s announcement that the £12.5m asking price had been raised. Such cases make a mockery of the system.
The UK’s system for reviewing the export of works of art was set up in the 1950s, is widely admired and has generally worked very well, identifying nationally important objects heading abroad and allowing time for museums to acquire them.
We need preserve it – but also to modernise it. The Art Fund is regularly asked to help fund export-stopped works of art, but we and the museums we support have been continually frustrated by problems and glitches that could so easily be avoided.
It is vital that the public interest is deemed a higher priority than the wishes of licence applicants, and there must be greater transparency in the workings of the committee.
There should be a more rigorous interrogation of sales, price agreements, and provenance, and a commitment to obtaining full paperwork in relation to the commercial aspects of each case. Without these reforms museums and funding bodies will lose confidence in the system.
There is a simple solution to the problem of export applicants changing their mind about selling: instead of relying on verbal undertakings, introduce, from the beginning of the process, a binding agreement that they must sell the object should a museum raise the matching price.
This would provide clarity, certainty and a genuine opportunity to retain significant works in the UK. We have put a proposal to the department for culture that we and a number of museums believe would be workable. It is now being reviewed.
Stephen Deuchar is the director of the Art Fund
