No way to raise money

Press, 1 June 1977, Page 16

No way to raise money

Any proposal to sell some of the collection of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery merely for the sake of raising money should be opposed. If a gallery does not want a painting it should not have acquired it in the first place. That is the principle followed by the gallery now. Having acquired a painting the gallery should hold on to it. If it does have worthless paintings then the sale of these is not going to solve any financial problems. Those members of the cultural committee of the City Council who are reported to have suggested selling some of the collection are not the first to have thought of a gallery’s selling paintings. In gallery jargon, the practice is referred to as “ de-accession ” and it raises a host of tricky problems. The official policies of the Auckland City Art Gallery and the National Gallery in Wellington are that no painting may be disposed of until 25 years after it has entered the collection. Even then, only worthless paintings are sold or thrown away. A possible exception would be the disposal of a good painting which was completely alien to the rest of the gallery’s collection and which could be found a more fitting home elsewhere. A transaction of this type would usually be between one public gallery and another. A publicly-funded gallery is a repository’ of a nation’s culture. The fact

that one artist or a group of artists is out of fashion for a while, or has not yet been “ discovered ” by the art world, is immaterial. If the original acquisition has been soundly based, the artist’s time will come. That is the nature of collecting and not to follow the whims of fashion. It would be ridiculous as well as psychologically unsound if the gallery’s buyer had in mind that the next change of City Council might bring about the disposal of a work he was in the process of acquiring. It would also be silly, in the inevitable reaction that sets in when a new director takes over a gallery, if the works acquired by his or her predecessor w r ere sold. The other major problem is in gifts to a gallerv: if a person offers a work of art which is accepted, there, should be some certainty that it will form part of the permanent collection. Galleries need policies both for the acquisition of works and for their disposal. If the report which is to be prepared establishes a policy for disposal then it will not be wasted, provided proven conclusions are reached. The , suggestion that works are sold to raise money for the gallery gives no rise to confidence that basic principles have been grasped. The gallery already has a policy on the sort of paintings and other art works it wants to acquire. The cultural committee might well consider enunciating this policy as well.