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John Constable’s Brightwell Church and Village
John Constable’s Brightwell Church and Village was part of the 2013 exhibition Photograph: Alamy
John Constable’s Brightwell Church and Village was part of the 2013 exhibition Photograph: Alamy

Share your hidden art treasures with all of us, London galleries are told

This article is more than 8 years old
With up to 90% of the nation’s art in storage, one regional curator accuses the capital’s museums of ‘cultural colonialism’

In the summer of 2013, a major exhibition of more than 60 oil sketches by John Constable and JMW Turner went on a mini-tour of the country, attracting crowds in Warwickshire, Margate and Newcastle.

These scenes of nature, painted by the artists en plein air, had been hidden away in the Tate Gallery’s London storerooms, according to one of the co-curators of that exhibition, who is now calling on the capital’s galleries and museums to be more generous in sharing their art and artefacts with the rest of the country.

Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on keeping vast collections in storage, London’s museums and galleries should loan more of their hidden treasures to their counterparts beyond the capital, according to Professor Steven Parissien, director of Compton Verney, an award-winning art gallery in Warwickshire. “This is the nation’s art,” he said. “Let the nation see it. The art gallery world is not just about London.”

Parissien says too many such works are shrouded in darkness in the Tate’s storerooms. “There are an awful lot down there,” he said. “Marvellous jewels. They may be in the dark for a good many years to come.”

The London nationals do lend to regional galleries such as Compton Verney, but they should be doing far more, added Parissien.

Those institutions not only receive extensive support from taxpayers outside the capital, for whom visiting London is an added expense, but some London nationals also charge regional galleries a “sizeable” loan fee – on top of conservation and transport costs that are covered by the borrower.

“I don’t wish to point fingers, but I’m going to,” he said. “The Victoria & Albert Museum is particularly disappointing. They get lots of money from the government. Galleries like ours don’t.

“It would be nice if they at least looked at a two-tier charging system. We can take some of [their] collections on long- or short-term loan. We can arrange national tours to get all those collections out.”

Some observers believe that up to 90% of the nation’s art is not on display. Four years ago, a freedom of information request revealed that annual art storage costs exceeded £1m, with the Tate spending £465,500 and the National Maritime Museum £142,360 on storing 93% of its 4,000 paintings and 70,000 prints and drawings. The V&A confirmed that its annual storage cost is around £750,000.

Parissien argues that regional loans would save money and also enable the public to see the art: “Everyone wins.”

In last week’s spending review, the government pledged to invest £150m to enable the British Museum, Science Museum and V&A “to replace out-of-date museum storage at Blythe House [in west London] with new world-class storage facilities to preserve and protect over two million fragile and sensitive objects”. Blythe House allows access, but partly by appointment.

“Rather than pay vast sums for public access stores by the nationals, let’s just lend some of them out ,” said Parissien.

Whaam! by Roy Lichtenstein in Tate Modern’s storage warehouse. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Referring to the Tate’s branches – Modern, Britain, St Ives and Liverpool – and the V&A’s planned outposts in the Olympic Park, he accused the London nationals of “cultural colonialism”. He added: “You don’t need to spend millions of taxpayers’ money on new buildings. We’re already here – a whole national network of superb galleries.”

Compton Verney’s lenders include the Royal Collection, from which it borrowed Van Dyck’s portrait of Charles I.

Parissien, who has been its director for seven years, said the Royal Collection made possible his touring exhibition, Canaletto: Celebrating Britain, which has attracted tens of thousands of visitors to Abbot Hall in Kendal, Cumbria. He praised the Royal Collection for seeing “the PR benefits of getting the Queen’s collection out”.

There were “lots” of regional galleries with “marvellous facilities” and their own important collections, he said, pointing to the Bowes Museum in County Durham as an example. Compton Verney also boasts one of Europe’s top three Chinese collections among its own art holdings.

Critics argue that art should be moved as little as possible due to the risk of damage, and Parissien accepts that some exhibits are too fragile, while others are more valuable for research than display. However, he questioned why the regional museums have to go “cap in hand to the big London nationals”.

Such loans could also encourage donations, he said: “People [are] now rather reluctant to donate a work to Tate because they feel it’s going to go straight to the store.”

A Tate spokeswoman said that it lends extensively to UK institutions and in 2014-15 lent just over 1,000 works to 152 venues from a collection of more than 71,000. However, she admitted that only 25% of their “unique works” are on display: “This does not include all those works on paper, such as in the Turner bequest, which can be viewed in the Prints and Drawings Room.”

A V&A spokeswoman said that 60,000 of its 234,000 objects suitable for long-term display are on show, while some two million books, drawings, prints, photographs and archives are available to view in study rooms or by appointment. She argued that their many collaborations with regional institutions include, in 2014-15, loaning 439 objects to 100 venues for temporary exhibitions and 1,559 objects on long-term loan to 152 venues.

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