Treasures Sold Off to Raise Millions for Councils
April 6 2020
Picture: The Sunday Times
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Worrying article in The Sunday Times yesterday (paywall) reporting on cash-strapped Councils in Britain that are selling off works of art to fund various projects and shore themselves up in testing times.
Several freedom of information requests were placed by the newspaper with hundreds of councils across the country to reveal that £27 million has been raised over the past decade. This has included the selling off of important paintings, ancient sculpture and collections of ceramics.
Their findings revealed;
A total of 2,280 pieces of art have been sold since January 2009, according to FoI responses and public record searches, which cover about 70% of the UK’s 408 councils.
The five local authorities with the highest sales are Northampton borough council (£15.8m), Croydon council (£8.2m), Ealing council (£713,000), Cambridgeshire county council (£688,000) and Hertfordshire county council (£469,282).
Amongst the works that the newspaper highlighted included an Italian Landscape by Joseph Wright of Derby, sold by Kensington and Chelsea Council for £240,000, and featured in a recent series of Britain’s Lost Masterpieces.
The reasons for the sales listed are various, from paying for residential care to helping to build new art storage facilities (which wouldn’t be needed if more effort was put into putting their art out on display).
This of course sets a rather worrying precedent, and raises the question of whether more councils will start reviewing their deaccessioning policies in wake of the recent economic fallout affecting the globe.
