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A £1 million LS Lowry painting owned by Derby City Council is to go into storage, as charities call for the authority to sell off parts of its £64 million art collection. lowry painting Houses near a mill The plea to sell some of the pieces to soften the blow of cuts comes as a Derby Telegraph investigation revealed that such sales, including that of the Lowry, could well be possible. For the past few months the painting, bought by the council in 1946 for £42, has drawn in crowds to Derby Museum and Art Gallery and has been as popular as its well-known Joseph Wright collection, Derby Museums Trust says. On March 3 , the Lowry, called Houses Near a Mill, goes into temporary storage, making way for other pieces of the collection, and will be available to see on request. But should it really be locked away or could it be used to raise much-needed funds for the city? The council needs to save £78.9 million over three years. And, in the past 12 months, the authority has confirmed specific cuts in pots of cash to help charities and other voluntary sector organisations of £572,058. Could the Lowry be sold to help plug the authority's funding gap? And, when it was most recently valued in 2012, the authority's 100,000-piece art collection was worth about £64 million. Is there anything in that collection that could be sold and, if there is, should it be? Approach it from the angle of whether some paintings – like the Lowry – have no direct link to Derby, and are therefore arguably less important to the collection, and the answer is yes. A look around Derby Museum reveals three fine art paintings – Portrait of a Young Woman, by Arnold Mason, created in 1935, Emma dressed up, Anthony Devas, 1944, and Head of a Girl, Victor Pasmore, 1940-47 – that have no direct link to the city. The trust says it will not give values for its paintings for "security reasons" – and perhaps rightly so, after 1,100 items were stolen from the collection in 2012. But John Moore, of HIV charity Derbyshire Positive Support, says it would take "only £60,000" to give his organisation a new lease of life, instead of shutting at the end of March. This is following a 100% cut to its annual £77,440 grant from the city council. Mr Moore said: "I will be out of a job by the end of March. Then I will have to start selling things I own, my treasures, in order to provide. Why can't the council? "It's about looking for positive outcomes. Our stash of art or our future?" But the council says it is far from that simple. Councillor Martin Repton, cabinet member for leisure and culture, says it is not the authority's plan to sell "even if we could", and his arguments against the move are four-fold. Firstly, he says such sales would be "a short-term fix" to a "long-term funding problem – one created by the savage, unjustified and unfair Government cuts faced by the council". He said: "If a work of art were sold for one million pounds, this could fund the Christmas lights for approximately nine years. "But after that time, there would be no Christmas lights and no work of art. Is that really what the people of Derby want?" Secondly, art and culture have a great value to the city which Mr Repton says "play a part in decisions made by small, medium and multi-national companies as to why they should base staff in this city". There would, he says, be a danger of firms choosing cities like Nottingham or Stoke as a base without this "cultural offer" and "we would lose much inward investment and employment, as well as council tax and business rate receipts." Next, he says there is the issue that funding bodies like the Arts Council do not look kindly at authorities selling off art. Croydon Council has recently sold off 24 pieces of its Chinese ceramics collection - leaving it with 206 remaining – raising about £9 million. This cash was raised to reduce that council's borrowing requirements for the £33 million refurbishment of a city theatre and concert venue, and appears to be viewed as success by the authority. But, as a result, it lost Arts Council accreditation for three years. Mr Repton said: "If this [an art sale] happened in Derby, it might not be just Derby Museums that suffer. "There's a risk that the entire council would forfeit its Arts Council accreditation and we would be putting in jeopardy much Arts Council funding – such as that received by Derby Live [the authority's entertainment arm] – as well as future grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund, such as those allowing us to improve Green Lane, Markeaton Park and the Silk Mill." Finally, Mr Repton points to the fact that many of the paintings and artefacts in the collection have been bought "through public subscription or through donations by organisations other than the council". He said this often meant that covenants and restrictions would mean the council would not get any cash from the sale of these pieces. Instead, it would go to the original owners or their descendants. This does not apply to the Lowry, though, as the trust says it is "fully owned by the council". And it is not clear if it applies to Head of a Girl or Emma Dressed Up, both gifts from the Contemporary Art Society, or Portrait of a Young Woman, which came from a London-based donor. The council says all of its collection is leased to the Trust, with the exception of a few artefacts held by the Mayor's Office, so it owns almost everything a visitor sees at, for example, Derby Museum. Mr Repton said there was one lease agreement for the whole collection and that the only way the authority could "step in" and take back the items would be if the trust was "deemed to be in material breach of the agreement" and failed to remedy this after a stated time. That agreement is in place until April 1, 2018, with the option to extend for further years, so would this scupper any notion of a sale in the next few years? Council leader Paul Bayliss thought so when talking about the Lowry in November last year. He said: "It turns out that it can no longer be done. Most of the city's art collection is leased to the city's museums trust. "That lease doesn't expire until 2018 so we can't sell them." But Kevin Bampton, head of the school of law and criminology at the University of Derby, casts doubt on whether this is really the end of the story. He says the works could be sold by the council as long as there was a covenant attached that the trust could continue to display them. This would effectively mean that the trust would need to negotiate with the new owner at the end of the lease period. Mr Bampton said: "In short, the city could sell their interest in any artworks they had, subject to any covenants that attach to them by people who have donated works to the city. In the latter case, they are in effect held on trust and would revert to their original owners or descendant if the covenant was broken or to the Crown if none are to be found. "In the case of outright ownership, the work could be sold, subject to a covenant that the Museum or Art Gallery could continue to display them." Would an art collector ever consider such a move? Celebrity Derby-based auctioneer James Lewis says yes and that, in fact, "it might even be an advantage, because you've got no insurance or storage problems". He said: "If the price is right and the buyer had enough liquid funds it's likely not to make too much of a difference. "But also you find that a lot of paintings are bought by investment funds." But Mr Repton says any sale of the authority's art "would be a totally inadequate response to a long-term financial problem". For those organisations suffering from the cuts, though, selling art is a potential lifeline that should not be abandoned until all avenues are exhausted. Kim Harper is chief executive of Community Action Derby, which has seen its council funding for 2014-15 reduced to £41,908 from the £125,155 it got this financial year. Mrs Harper said of the Lowry: "If there's no link to Derby it seems rather decadent to keep it at a time when the city is in such a financial crisis." She added that she thought paintings that had not been on display for some time should be looked at to see if they could be sold. A trust spokesman said that about 10% of the collection was currently on display - "about average for museums of our size and type". Jonathan Wallis, head of museums at the trust, said: "Some of the collections are used for study purposes and others are rotated as and when we are able to change displays, in temporary exhibitions or on loan to other organisations or community groups. "During this year we will be increasing our study capacity to enable more collections to be available for learning activity and academic/personal study while not on display." Mr Repton said: "While the selling of the items might sound like a simple way to ease the council's budget problems, it's anything but." Read more: http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/s-pound-1-million-question-Derby-sell-Lowry/story-20645333-detail/story.html#ixzz2yqMTjThs www.l-s-lowry.co.uk
A short biography of L.S.Lowry