The cash now or the art for ever

Should councils sell works of art to raise money? Yes, sell the junk, says critic Brian Sewell. No, says Art Fund director Stephen Deuchar, it will have long-term conseqences



Several cash-strapped local authorities are selling parts of their art collections to raise funds. Two valuable Picasso etchings are among almost 40 works of art being put up for auction by Bolton council, while in Tenterden in Kent, paintings are being sold to pay for new heating in the town hall. A valid response in these difficult times, or are collections sacred, asks Emine Saner?

Brian Sewell: I have always believed collections were sacred, until this year. It comes from going through the inventory of paintings at the National Gallery and seeing a lot of pictures that have no business being there. I found, without difficulty, 298 paintings that are in such appalling condition, of no quality, or copies, that they should not be there. If you were very strict, there are probably 800 paintings not of international gallery status. Many are on view, and it would be a salutary exercise if all these junk paintings were gathered together and we left it to the public to decide.

Stephen Deuchar: I would argue that the diversity and texture of any public collection is as important as the merits of its best works. If you argue quality is the sole criteria of a national institution, that's like saying the BBC shouldn't have comedy programmes because they're not as important as political coverage.

BS: That's a brilliant idea. No more comedy or soaps on the BBC!

SD: [laughs] I'm sure you have a favourite soap you would miss tremendously. In the same way, I would argue that there were works in that 800 that you would miss, and that others would as well. I think the idea of a gallery with a range of works for different audiences, different moments in history, is exciting.

BS: We live in a state of fear. Some dear old duck had a beastly picture, of which she was intensely proud, and left it to the National Gallery in 1893. It is still there, and it has no business to be there. We respect her generosity and cannot go against her will – but we should. We should refuse things. When the great crisis came up over the Three Graces [the Antonio Canova sculpture which came up for sale], I was wandering around Buckingham Palace, thinking, why doesn't the Queen step forward? She could sell [some of her paintings] and buy the Three Graces – that's what collections should do. Her collection is full of rubbish!

SD: There has been a tyranny over the last 100 years, where the idea of any disposal is seen to be heretical. We've moved on from that – but there will be discoveries connecting pictures in the future that are not understood now, so that's an argument for a slower pace of buying and selling. If you use solely the current criteria in deciding which picture goes, you create a collection that only has a resonance in the year it was formed. In the 22nd century the works that you think are wonderful are the ones that your successor will think should be sold. Taste and fashion changes, and I think we need to be very cautious when we talk about wholesale deaccessioning.

BS: I don't want to hang on to this paper cup in case, in a century, somebody may see a new connection between this and Cycladic pottery. Making a judgement on fashion can always be an error. You only take quality into account.

SD: The joy of the national collections is they contain collecting histories within them – the taste of curators past. I would say that every museum in this country could improve its collection by some judicious pruning, but that's a different thing from selling works to meet short-term funding needs. The worry I have about encouraging councils to sell off works you perceive to be of less quality is there will be a free-for-all.

BS: In many councils' collections there are pictures that the public never sees because the council have no gallery. I can't see why, if you've got a collection of, let's say, Sickert etchings tucked away that nobody ever sees, and you don't want to go to the trouble of hanging them, it's wiser to get rid of them.

SD: Museums have functions as reference collections rather than just display collections, and a work of art can have a value even without being on display.

BS: You're talking about collections, but I'm talking about local authorities that have acquired things willy-nilly, often through the foolish generosity of people who have adored being a denizen of some dreary town and want to be appreciated for giving a picture by Benjamin Williams Leader. They hang it in the passage by the mayor's parlour, nobody ever looks at it, then someone pokes a ladder through it, and so on. The Leader might get you £5,000 or £6,000, which isn't going to solve any major problems, but might be useful for something the council has to fund. What I am against is what happened in Southampton, where they wanted to build another museum and were going to fund it by selling two of the best pictures the gallery had. That would have been a disaster.

SD: With the grave crisis in arts funding at the moment, I don't believe it would be solved by selling off lesser works, and it would be very short term. In a year or two, you would be back to where you started from, with a reduced collection.

BS: It's a short-term solution, but we are in a short-term crisis. This is, I hope, going to be over. It's wiser to keep a museum open by the sale of dross than to close it. The arts should not be exempt from the problems affecting every household in the country.

SD: But contractions tend to be permanent. My worry is the dross doesn't offer the council much money, so they'll say let's not worry about the dross, let's go for the bigger prices.

ES: What are the guidelines for deaccession?

SD: The Museums Association issues guidelines. They have moved over the years from being opposed to any kind of disposal to supporting it in certain circumstances. The importance is that the proceeds from any sales should be used to enhance the collection, through new acquisition or improved collections care.

ES: There was a story last week about Tenterden council planning to sell art to pay for heating in the town hall.

SD: That would be outside the guidelines. Any encouragement to the council to burst into local museum stores, cherry pick and go to Christie's is something that should be powerfully resisted.

BS: By and large, [the money raised] by an art institution should stay within the institution, but where you have no means of exhibiting things, I think councils are entitled to do what they please with it, such as maintaining a local nursery. If a picture is going to solve a problem of funding in an area of social deprivation then I'm in favour of letting it go.

SD: There is always something else you can spend the money on, but I think we have to be protective of our sector while being mindful of national difficulties. It's the permanence of radical measures now that I worry about. If you get into a culture of selling art to fill potholes, it's difficult to recover from that position.

The Art Fund raises money to save paintings for the nation. See artfund.org.