The Art Fund's Centenary Conference
April 2006In 2003 The Art Fund held a ground-breaking conference as part of its centenary celebrations. The conference - ‘Saving Art for the Nation: A Valid Approach to 21st-Century Collecting?’- brought together a range of speakers and panellists to discuss fundamental questions concerning national heritage, national identity and culture, and the future of museum collecting worldwide.
Sir Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate, gave the keynote speech entitled ‘Why Save Art for the Nation’ , and opened up a lively, and sometimes heated, debate on the key issues. Does it matter if works of art that were once the pride of British private collections go overseas? And, if we are to mount dramatic rescue campaigns, which ones should be saved? When does private property become ‘national heritage’? The conference took place at a time when there was an almost unprecedented level of debate in the British media about the validity of saving art for the nation, and when the possible destinations of Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks and Sir Joshua Reynold’s Omai were still unresolved.
The Art Fund’s centenary exhibition, 'Saved! 100 years of the National Art Collections Fund', at the Hayward Gallery, London, took place in conjunction with the conference; the exhibition brought together nearly 400 of the works acquired for the nation by the Art Fund since its inception in 1903 and spanned nearly 4,000 years of history. The exhibition successfully celebrated the achievements of the Art Fund, and also served to provoke debate about public collections and collecting.
The conference generated national debate and front page national coverage, and put the issue of collections firmly on the museum sector and Government’s agenda. As a direct result of the conference, the Museums Association - the representative body for UK museums – conducted a review of collecting. Their findings were published in a report 'Collections for the Future' in June 2005. The Art Fund will be working closely with the MA on the future of collecting, in particular to ‘develop more strategic approaches to acquisitions’.
