Museum Munagement und Cwrsztorship (1991), IO, 149-152

The Role of Trusts in the Acquisitions Policy of British Art Galleries

SIR PETER WAKEFIELD

No public art galleries in Britain are rich enough to buy the finest works of art that are offered for sale. In consequence, a variety of methods have been developed to enable public collections to acquire what they believe they should have. Some of these methods have been described by other speakers; I have been asked to talk about the help given by trusts and foundations, independent of government-provided finance.

The oldest and most prominent foundation in the field of helping public collections acquire works of art is the National Art Collections Fund (NACF). The founders set up the Fund in 1903 with this as its main purpose, and it has been making grants ever since to help museums and collections acquire many, many thousands of objects.

The Fund is basically a reactive organization giving grants in response to requests from museums for help to buy a work of art. Seldom can the total price of the object be

funded, and a contribution of one-quarter is common. It is expected that the museum contribute at least one-quarter itself. The rest may be found from other sources, often government-financed organizations such as the National Heritage Memorial Fund or the Museums and Galleries Commission Purchase Grant Fund.

An important facet of the operation of the Fund is its insistence that the work of art desired by the collection should be submitted for inspection by the Committee. This Committee of some eighteen trustees is composed of art experts. Their debate upon the merits of what is submitted to them has great value in weeding out the weaker cases and comparing the importance of one work of art with another, both in intrinsic importance and in relevance to the public collection concerned.

The NACF is a foundation belonging to its members. It began as a rather elite group of collectors and connoisseurs, disturbed by the lack of funds available to our national collections and the heavy drain of works of art going abroad. This export of works of art had accelerated as a result of the agricultural depression of the 1880s. The Fund has continued to try to buy for British public collections works of art which would otherwise have left Britain, but the basic work is now directed much more at steady support for their acquisition policies. The remit of the Fund is very wide indeed and is spread over the fine and decorative arts and covers all periods of art including Modern Art. While concentrated at first upon the major national collections, its help ranged ever wider until today over three hundred museums and galleries are its beneficiaries as well as historic houses belonging to the National Trust and English Heritage.

Such are the demands made upon the Fund that its financial sources are inevitably inadequate. The NACF is perhaps unique in that it acts as a charitable trust whilst seeking to augment its funds. Originally, contributions from members were the main

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source, but recently the Fund has built up a capital holding from legacies, and actively seeks to augment its income by appealing to business and industry and other trusts as well as organizing fund-raising activities.

Museums and galleries have three other sources of help with acquisitions. (1) Private giving both of money and objects. Private beneficence has provided the foundation of nearly all British public collections and remains a most important source of help. (2) During this century, much private help has become institutionalized into charitable trusts and foundations which provide a steady support for museum buying. (3) Commercial companies have begun to enter this field. I intend to discuss these three private-sector sources of finance in turn.

1. The role of gifts of works of art should not be underestimated. Historically, donations were the basis of most collections, and in the USA such gifts continue to flow despite the lessening of the tax incentives. In Britain, a tax incentive has operated only upon death, but it is to be hoped that gifts of works of art to public collections will be allowed against tax during the lifetime of the donor. In this area of bequests and gifts the NACF can play a valuable part, since it is in touch with all the public collections and is aware of their needs. Indeed the NACF was instrumental in placing the enormous Ernest Cook Collection amongst 97 different museums. The Fund can therefore give advice to the potential donor and, in the case of bequests, sift through a private collection that has not been allocated specifically and suggest how it could most effectively be distributed.

2. There are a number of private foundations which give help to public collections to acquire works of art, and to name but a few, the Wolfson, the Pilgrim and the Getty Trusts support many causes but do give steady support for acquisitions. There are others which will do so but rarely, and only if the object has a particular relevance for them, whether historically or geographically. Some trusts, for example, help only one museum or museums in one area. However, there is a danger of a certain fatigue caused by the number of requests made of them and by the very high prices of recent times. There is a growing resistance, nourished by the feeling that their contribution is so small in relation to the very large sums required. Furthermore, the task of distinguishing between the merits of a variety of works of art stretches their time and technical competence. As a result, some of these trusts have made quite large contributions to the NACF on the understanding that the Fund is constituted expressly for this purpose of careful selection of objects for grant-aiding and carry out this task in general conformity with the guidelines of the trusts concerned. There may be room for further development here in an effort to avoid the ‘fatigue’ which could reduce the support available for museum acquisitions.

3. The third source of support for acquisitions is the corporate sector of business and industry. This is a difficult source since most public companies expect a return for their largesse in terms of public relations benefit. The price of important works of art has now most unfortunately risen to such levels that even the largest companies consider that the sums involved would provide a better public relations benefit if spent in other directions. In general, therefore, business is an unlikely source of great support, though such charitable organizations as the NACF can and do gather small sums through corporate membership schemes and sponsorship, and this money is fed into support for acquisitions. Fortunately, corporate profits nourish private giving by owners of those companies, or form the basis for the trusts and foundations I mentioned earlier.

Can we hope for a rapid expansion of private giving for acquisition in the future once the present recession is over ? In Britain the experience of the past five years of prosperity and lower taxation has been disappointing. The amount of giving has increased but the

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percentage of income given to charity- whether by individuals or corporates-has not changed appreciably. British giving has not therefore risen to the proportions of charitable donations in the USA, and it would be interesting to know the experience of our German coheagues. Certainly, if the pool of charitable money is not to increase dramatically, we need to work out together how we may increase the share that we obtain for our museums and their acquisitions.

Recently, the government has introduced a new tax incentive for private and corporate giving to charity, whereby they enjoy tax reliefs on donations of between 2600 and ES million. In an effort to gather some of this new charitable giving into the museum sector, the NACF has estabiished the Gift Aid for Art Register, whereby the Fund acts as a benevolent broker between the donor and the museum. Potential donors have the advantage of a wide range of requests for help from museums from which they can select what interests them most. We hope this new initiative wilt attract useful support.

Discussion Summary

SIR PETER WAKEFIELD confirmed that Gift Aid is a gift of money and that they want gifts in kind to be included. Klaus Maurice spoke from his own experience about works of art being given to museums in the owner’s lifetime. He said that in Germany the owner of a work of contemporary art could give it to a museum without paying any taxes as long as the artist was still alive when the work of art was purchased by the present owner. He commented that the German Minister of Finance had no understanding of the art world and was loath to change its old laws to favour the art world. He said that to avoid capital tax every work of art is sold in England via Sotheby’s or Christie’s. A sale in Germany would be liable for 7 percent VAT, although capital tax now has wider exemptions. However, many important works will never surface because they are still liable for tax. A recent development is that anyone giving a work of art is able to spread the tax deductions over many years, which will act as a great incentive.

CHRISTOPH BROCICHAUS asked whether in the UK there exist friendship clubs to support the museums. Sir Peter Wakefield explained that it varies between museums so that the Tate Gallery would acquire work in conjunction with the Friends of the Tate or the Patrans of New Art of the Tate. Christoph Brockhaus said that in Germany 50 percent of the purchase price would be paid by the friendship club and 50 percent by the museum or via governmental grant. He said that these arrangements are becoming vital as expensive works of art can be bought only in this way. Sir Peter said that in the UK the friends of the museum is a fairly recent movement and he mentioned the Association of Friends of Museums which links them all together. He said that the amount of money raised for purchasing by the average group of friends is fairly small and that the Tate has tried to raise this considerably by introducing its new group, the Patrons of New Art of the Tate. A museum director, he said, will look at all sources of funding when he wants to make a purchase, including the friends, but he went on to say that relations between friends and their museum director vary considerably.

KLAUS MAURICE mentioned a French tax that might be interesting for Germany. He said that the French had started a tax refuge for all the artists they had neglected to buy while they were alive. When such an artist dies, instead of paying taxes in cash, the family can pay with art; this, he said, is the only reason why France has Picassos. Richard Calvocoressi said that the ‘acceptance in lieu’ arrangement discussed by Georgina Nayler is similar to this. Sir Peter Wakefield qualified this with a reminder that it applied only in the case of a pre-eminent work of art.

JEXEMY REES (Contemporary Arts Society) discussed the activities of the Contemporary Arts Society in helping to acquire works by living artists for museums and galleries. An important point was that it enabled galleries to acquire works that they either were not necessarily aware of or could not get past their own committees. In this respect it acts as a lifeline. Richard Calvocoressi made the point that, in contrast to the way the NACF operates, the Contemporary Arts Society buys the works and then offers them to museums. Jeremy Rees agreed, and said

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that one scheme which is already operating and which may be extended is where a joint operation is set up between the Contemporary Arts Society and a museum, bringing in funds from other sources and jointly planning a purchasing policy for contemporary work. This was a very important move. He went on to say that all works of art bought by the Contemporary Arts Society are eventually placed with museums. Museums choose the works that they would like on a first, second and third choice basis, which permits opportunity and flexibility.

VLADIMIR MOLCHANOV (Cultural Attache of the Soviet Union in London) said that culture in his country is on a first-come, last-served basis in the budget. They are screaming for funds, both to maintain cultural activities for acquisitions and to fund future developments. He said that the Soviet Union has a national lottery, which helps but which cannot be the answer to funding the arts. Taking into account the current flaring up of nationalistic feelings in the Soviet Union, he said that it is especially difficult to coordinate the national cultural policy. However, the general understanding is that cultural matters are the first thing that the republics will take under their direct responsibility, as happened with the Kulturstiftung der Lander.