Funding

The Art Fund campaigns for adequate and sustained government funding for museums and in particular to secure proper funding for acquisitions.

Our museums play a crucial role as guardians of our heritage. We believe that museums are rightly able to rely on government funding, both at national and regional level; a right justified by their cultural contribution to society, not because they are tools with which to deliver government policy.

Why museums struggle to collect

Museums have a duty to collect but when budgets are tight potential acquisitions are often sacrificed. In recent years, the funds available for acquisitions have declined and are now either grossly inadequate or non-existent.

Read our paper about the funding difficulties facing museums, ‘The Future of Collecting’ (June 2005).

The National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF)

The  NHMF is the only fund which exists specifically to save items of outstanding national heritage from being lost to the UK.

NHMF grants are often used to purchase works of art of national importance, in particular those that are export-stopped. So the fall in income to the NHMF means many of these objects are being lost abroad or into private collections.

The government has said that NHMF funding will remain at the current increased level of £10 million per annum until 2011.  While this is welcome, in real terms its funding will be 40% lower than it when it was established in 1980. We would like to see it increased to £20 million to ensure that the UK has an effective fund of last resort for heritage objects at risk.

The Art Fund made this issue a key recommendation in our response to an inquiry about heritage launched by a committee of MPs in January 2006.