Government Art Collection
Gordon and Sarah Brown, and Culture Secretary James Purnell, hosted a party to launch a catalogue of all the oil paintings held by the Government Art Collection (GAC). The GAC supplies paintings to all Government buildings and embassies around the world, and it has in total some 23,000 works of art. In typically British fashion, it was founded in 1898 to save money. The view was that if the Government went out and bought a job lot of paintings, it could use them to cover the walls of Government offices and save on redecoration costs. Needless to say it is now a pretty distinguished collection, although the catalogue allows you to play a parlour game of sorts to see who is included. For example, there is only one Freud, very early, of a Welsh landscape; one Kossoff and one Hirst etc.
The catalogue was undertaken by the Public Catalogue Foundation, an extraordinary charity set up to catalogue all the oil paintings in public collections (80% of which are in storage). In three-and-a-half years it has done 25% of the country. If a Government body had been set up to do it, I am guessing not a single catalogue would yet have been produced.
canvas said on January 15th, 2008 at 2:20 pm:
It’s only as good as its advisors…
Matt said on January 15th, 2008 at 3:52 pm:
James Purnell was there? Do we have photographic evidence? Anyone?
UK Daily Pundit said on January 15th, 2008 at 7:52 pm:
Why not flog the 80% in storage and give the London Mozart Strolling Players a few bob. They’ll be back on the road before you can say “the London who?”