More on Weiwei's seeds
March 7 2012
Picture: Guardian
The Art Fund have been in touch, to say:
In terms of disclosure of the details of the acquisition, we are always completely open, as our members would expect us to be, about any grants we have offered to a museum – in this case £100,000.
Regarding the total cost of the acquisition, we generally also announce the cost at the time of announcement unless the acquiring museum wishes to publish this information separately (which in this case, Tate will do in their annual review, which I believe is published in September).
Curiouser and curiouser. I wonder why Tate wanted to announce the price seperately from the acquisition. Did they fear it becoming a distraction? The Art Fund is usually a generous funder, so in this case one would expect the £100,000 to be a fairly large proportion of the final cost. In which case the 8 million seeds are beginning to look relatively cheap.
