The slow death of a collecting culture

Apollo, June, 2006

Among the most celebrated images of collectors and collecting are Daniel Mytens's portraits of the 14th Earl of Arundel and his wife, which hang today in the drawing room at Arundel Castle, Sussex. Their presence there also reveals a great deal about the relationship between private and public collections in the 20th century. The paintings were acquired in 1976 by the National Portrait Gallery, in part-settlement of capital taxes incurred on the death of the 16th Duke of Norfolk. In an early example of an arrangement that has been repeated elsewhere, the paintings were left in situ, in the historic context of the collections that the Earl of Arundel largely founded.

This collaboration between a public and a private collection is beneficial for both. It depends of course on the willingness of the Dukes of Norfolk to share their collections with the world at large. They do this not only by opening Arundel Castle to the public but also by initiatives such as this issue of APOLLO. The articles that follow have grown out of a series of seminars held at the castle and organised in collaboration with the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, in an exemplary demonstration of how country houses can participate in academic life. APOLLO is most grateful to the Duke and Duchess, and their librarian, John Martin Robinson, for their help with this issue.

Its appearance is timely, for it coincides with the publication of the preliminary findings of the Art Fund's investigation into the state of collecting by British museums. The Art Fund is the new name of the National Art Collections Fund, a private charity set up in 1903 to raise funds for acquisitions by public collections. It is good news that the Fund is lobbying for museums and galleries, which badly need a fearless campaigner. Other aspects of this campaign include urging museums to resume collecting contemporary art (a subject discussed by Martin Gayford on pages 108-109), where the Fund has set a lead by commissioning a 'skyspace' by James Turrell, reviewed by Tim Richardson on pages 92-95.

As the example of Arundel shows, public collections have grown in part thanks to a system that balances their needs with those of private owners. This rests on encouraging owners either to retain their works or to dispose of them in a way that gives public collections the opportunity to acquire them. Despite the lack of any tax concessions for lifetime giving, the system on the whole worked well until recently Yet now there is a steady trickle abroad of major works from private collections, most famously Jan Steen's The Burgher of Delft and his Daughter from Penrhyn Castle in 2004. The Earl of Halifax's Titian portrait seems likely to follow.

A fundamental reason is that public funds for collecting in the UK are scandalously exiguous. No public collection receives funding from government solely for collecting; in 2005 the Heritage Lottery Fund gave only 1.3m [pounds sterling] for acquisitions (the Art Fund offered 4.1m [pounds sterling]); and the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the government fund of last resort for acquisitions, received only 5m [pounds sterling] in 2005, a sum that (after much lobbying) will be raised to 10m [pounds sterling] in 2007. More details about the problems will be offered when the Art Fund's full report is published in the autumn, but it is already clear that despite that willingness of private owners to collaborate with public collections--so triumphantly evident at Arundel--the system is juddering to a halt for lack of money.