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A major relief if Brown would give art a break
Magnus Linklater
Columnist, Scotland on Sunday
Filed 31 Jul 06
©Magnus Linklater
This article,
which was originally published in the Review section of
Scotland on Sunday on 30th July 2006, is reproduced on Land-Care
with the kind permission of the author and the newspaper
WE don't know how much Gordon Brown knows
about art, but we know what he doesn't like: he has so far fended
off all attempts to introduce US-style tax breaks to encourage rich
patrons to support the arts.
Art galleries and museums across America
benefit enormously from generous gifts in the form of pictures and
donations because all such patronage is tax-free. It is a system
which has altered the whole culture of giving, and it could do the
same here. Thus far, however, the Iron Chancellor has proved implacable.
The few modest tax-relief reforms he has allowed have produced encouraging
results. But a bolder approach is needed - and nowhere more so than
in Scotland.
A letter just circulated by the National Art Collection Fund paints
a bleak picture of the funds available to museums and galleries
in the UK for purchasing works of art - they have fallen by 90%
over the past decade. Last year the Heritage Lottery Fund spent
less than 1% of its budget on buying art and income to the National
Heritage Memorial Fund, the 'last resort' source for heritage objects
at risk, has dropped by 40%.
In Scotland, the combined annual fund available
for all the National Galleries for acquisitions is just £1.25m.
For the National Museums, it is £500,000. For the museums
of Glasgow and provincial galleries, the National Fund is just over
£200,000, a figure frozen for the past 10 years.
Since local authorities are, at best, unreliable
patrons, it means that many galleries have simply stopped buying
pictures. True, Scotland's acquisition funds are ring-fenced, unlike
in England, but against a background of rocketing art market prices,
the money available is desperately thin.
John Leighton, the new director of the National
Galleries of Scotland, says things have got harder in the past five
years, largely because prices have been forced up by galleries in
the US and the Far East, as well as by a new generation of 'super-collectors',
including oil-rich Russian billionaires.
He has, of course, a hard act to follow.
His predecessor, Sir Timothy Clifford, was an acquisitive collector,
adept at finding pockets of unspent government money and persuading
rich donors and art funds to help him buy iconic works by Botticelli,
Titian, Canova and El Greco. His remarkable farewell exhibition,
Choice, showed just how a small gallery by international standards
could punch above its weight.
Since, at the same time, Richard Calvocoressi
at the Gallery of Modern Art was quietly acquiring major examples
from the collections of Roland Penrose and Gabrielle Keillor, the
past 20 years have been something of a golden era.
The Scottish Executive has shown itself
willing to help out when major works are being acquired to a far
greater extent than the government at Westminster, but whether that
generosity will continue remains to be seen.
I have no doubt that Leighton, with his
recent experience at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, where he
greatly expanded the collection, will be every bit as ambitious
as Clifford. However, the emphasis may well shift from Old Masters
to more modern acquisitions - such as the Douglas Gordon film about
Zinedine Zidane, whose acquisition for £70,000 was announced
last week.
But Leighton needs all the help he can get.
It would be unthinkable, for instance, for Scotland to lose the
collection of Titians, Raphaels, Poussins and other pictures on
loan from the Duke of Sutherland. Though secure at present, they
may need to be purchased some time in the future.
And there are other great pictures in private
hands, collected by Scottish families, and part of our heritage,
which might one day come onto the market - such as the Treasures
of Lennoxlove, an exhibition of pictures, furniture and art objects
from the home of the Duke of Hamilton opening tomorrow at the auctioneers
Lyon and Turnbull in Edinburgh.
This is where the Chancellor comes in. Mr
Brown has in front of him a report, drawn up by Sir Nicholas Goodison,
former director of the National Art Collection Fund, which shows
how moving to a US-style system - where tax relief is given to private
donors - would not only keep these collections in the UK, it would
ensure that the public had access to them long before they developed
into a national crisis. It would also change the whole culture of
patronage in this country.
Mr Brown should stop seeing this much-needed
reform as a way of helping the rich avoid taxes; he should see it
as a way of reinventing the age of that greatest of all donors,
Andrew Carnegie.
©Magnus Linklater
This article: http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/review.cfm?id=1104332006
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