Local authorities have a moral responsibility to safeguard municipal artwork. An investigation by the BBC earlier this month revealed that Birmingham City Council has artwork with a combined value of £451m. The BBC should have made it clear that this is an insurance value. Birmingham, which this year issued a section 114 bankruptcy notice, has not had its artwork valued with the intention of putting it up for sale. Indeed, the authority said as much and acknowledged that selling municipal artwork is a legal grey zone.
In theory, given that a council owns or has title to an artwork, it can be sold. But the reality is far more complex. Many pieces of art are owned under very specific conditions, which can even be difficult for the council to determine. The provenance might not be clear, and the record-keeping and archiving in an authority might leave much to be desired. Many councils have dispensed with in-house archivists, and some artwork will have been given to them provided that it remains in public hands.
The Covert Councillor has been investigating this issue and our Freedom of Information request reveals that Nottingham—which is the most recent authority to issue a bankruptcy notice—has artwork with an insurance value of £92m.
This clearly puts authorities in the spotlight. Authorities might strongly resist selling artwork, but if the alternative is reducing investment in public services, or cutting access to public facilities like libraries, for instance—what is the right option? It’s not an enviable position.
Under the Museums Association’s Code of Ethics, authorities that have oversight over museums are required to maintain collections for “current and future generations” and to treat them as “cultural, scientific or historic assets, not financial assets”. Authorities take the code very seriously. Artwork has in many cases been given to authorities in perpetuity providing it is available to the public—leaving them open to legal risk if they opt for a fire sale. The picture is complex. In many cases, because ownership and the conditions under which artwork is given are not always clear, the mere potential of legal risk has a chilling effect. Given the minefield a council risks stepping into if it were to sell off art, local authorities have broadly avoided selling off paintings and sculptures, in order to protect themselves against challenge.
Yet, following FOI requests, the Covert Councillor can reveal that a small number of local authorities have sold artwork in recent years: Hertfordshire sold 421 pieces of artwork during the pandemic, bagging the council £465,000. Kensington and Chelsea sold an eighteenth-century painting during the Covid-19 pandemic which fetched it £200,000. Derbyshire sold 671 items “following a careful and ethically led collections review” in “accordance with the Code of Ethics for Museums” and earmarked the income for its library reserves. Prior to the pandemic, Cambridgeshire made £27,000 selling artwork between 2017 and 2019, and Horsham sold 403 pieces of artwork for less than a quid each—earning the authority £271.
In an infamous case, in 2014, Northampton Borough Council (as it was then known) sold an Egyptian statue to a private collector, which had been gifted to Northampton Museum in the nineteenth century by the then Marquis of Northampton. At over 4,000-years-old, the statue—known as Sekhemka—is nearly as old as Stonehenge. David Mackintosh, the then leader of Northampton, told the BBC at the time that the statue had "been in our ownership for over 100 years and it's never really been the centrepiece of our collection" but in order to invest in Northampton Museum “we need to raise the money".
When Northampton sold it for £15.8m—a world record for ancient Egyptian art—an international bun fight ensued. The Egyptian ambassador met with Christie’s in order to pressure the auction house to cancel the sale. The Marquis’s descendants challenged the sale, but then agreed to split the proceeds with the council. And the Arts Council England (ACE) removed Northampton Museum’s accreditation. The saga wasn’t the first time authorities were criticised for “deaccessioning” artwork. The London Borough of Croydon raised £8m at an auction in Hong Kong in 2013 when it sold a collection of Chinese ceramics.
Some artworks will have significant local interest but fetch nothing at auction, while others are of national significance and are worth millions. A missing portrait of Henry VIII was identified in Warwickshire County Council’s Shire Hall earlier this year after an art historian saw it on Twitter. That painting was identified because it was on display. Yet a significant amount of valuable artwork is in storage. Gateshead’s trio of watercolours by Anthony Gormley, valued at £450,000, were in storage when the Covert Councillor made their inquiries. Kirklees owns a sculpture worth £6m—which has been on display at one of the Tate galleries in the past—but is now in storage. A Lucian Freud, valued at £4m and owned by another northern authority, is in storage and at least one more authority has an uncertified Banksy “securely stored” away from the public.
Last year, councillors at Middlesbrough Council grilled the mayor of Middlesbrough over whether he would sell off the authority’s £33m collection. After a review, the mayor took the decision not to, but the authority subsequently had to request financial support from the government. Amid continuing financial pressures, as authorities are required to take more difficult decisions, the chorus of councillors asking questions about artwork will only grow louder.
One way that authorities can protect artwork is by making it more accessible. Artwork cannot be on display indefinitely—light and other forms of damage does mean that pieces require time in storage—but too few authorities are making the most out of what otherwise are community assets. Curators and archivists in authorities are increasingly rare, yet there are opportunities—on high streets that are struggling to attract visitors, in community centres and town halls up and down the country and in care homes and temporary accommodation—for the artwork to give new meaning to communities. Artwork by Andy Warhol and David Hockney was made available as part of a “touring gallery” that visited some of the most disadvantaged and isolated communities earlier in the year—or as the BBC described it: “masterpieces displayed in a lorry in Rotherham car park”.
Making artwork accessible to the public can help authorities resist pressure from the bureaucrats and politicians tasked with reducing the costs of services. Indeed, anyone who believes that getting rid of such valuable assets could be the answer to the financial crisis facing local authorities is sorely mistaken. Selling off the family silver would be—in the words of campaigners in Birmingham—the equivalent of sentencing future generations to “cultural deprivation”. And, really, in the long term, it is unavoidable: the government will need to invest more in the services that serve our communities.
