The Government Art Collection isn’t entirely sure where everything is…
By Riah Pryor | From issue 228, October 2011
Published online 20 Oct 11 (News)
The Government Art Collection (GAC), consisting of 13,500 works of art, many of which decorate government buildings and embassies, opened a second show at the Whitechapel Gallery in London last month (until 4 December). The latest exhibition has been selected by artist Cornelia Parker, and the collection is keen to make its works more accessible to the public. Ironically, the works could be safer hanging in a gallery open to the public than in government offices.
Thefts, bomb damage and looting are some of the more extreme threats the works face. The collection has lost more than 100 items throughout its 113-year history, excluding the recent losses in Tripoli (The Art Newspaper, June, p1). Of the 67 works that went missing in the past ten years, only 23 have been recovered. In 2008, Jeremy Hunt, then opposition culture spokesman, told The Times: “The Department for Culture, Media and Sport needs to get it together on a problem that has been going on for too long.”
Questions raised
The recent reappearance of a lost painting at a London auction house raises questions around the degree of effort put in by the publicly-funded organisation to find works that have gone astray.
In May, William Brooker’s 1950-52 painting, Albert Bridge (est £5,000-£8,000), was withdrawn from sale at Sotheby’s following suspicions that it might be a work from the GAC. The work was sold at Lawrences auction house, Somerset, in January but appeared to match a work recorded as missing on the collection’s website.
The painting disappeared in the 1950s from a building in Gibraltar, and is believed to have been consigned by an elderly gentleman who said he bought it around the same time. Owing to an ongoing investigation, the GAC was unable to comment on the current status of Albert Bridge, but a spokesman says: “The sale at Lawrences was not picked up at the time.” Lawrences says it is working with the Art Loss Register to resolve the matter.
