Art and the Public | Art and Museums | Art and Tax
Art and the Public: public value of art collections
Art and the Public: University of Leicester, PhD research
Art and Museums: Museums Survey
Art and Museums: Museum Collecting, an International Comparison
Art and Museums: The Collecting Challenge
Art and Tax: Private Collections in the Public Domain
The Art Fund conducts its own research to better understand the needs of museums and those that visit them.
Our research helps inform the Art Fund's policies and, in turn, our campaigning priorities. We also analyse research undertaken by others in the arts world.
Research
Our research falls under three main headings:
Art and the Public
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Collecting Challenge 2010 29 April 2010 The Art Fund has released the results of its Collecting Challenge 2010 survey looking at the acquiring habits of museums and galleries. 276 UK museums took part in the research between January and March 2010. This is an update on the original Collecting Challenge survey which took place in 2006. The picture found that in the past five years staffing and financial worries are continuing to have an effect on museums’ collecting activities. However, some interesting innovation has been seen such as an increase in borrowing between institutions to keep their displays fresh and also a rise in the number of museums that are working together to make some ambitious joint acquisitions. Read the press release
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| New Research
Art Fund publishes research into the public value of art collections Eight years after free admission to museums and galleries was introduced, the Art Fund releases its new research, Free to see – but what’s next?, exploring what has happened since the national museums freely opened their doors, and what value the British public places on their national art collection. The research finds that free admission is highly valued and boosts the sense of public ownership of national museums. But it also finds that other barriers still remain which prevent people from visiting museums and galleries. Read the press release |
Current research |
Art and Museums
Museum Collecting: An International Comparison
The Art Fund has published research which compares the purchasing power of the UK’s major museums with some of their counterparts abroad. The new research, the first of its kind, shows that the UK’s leading art museums lag behind other world-class museums when it comes to money available to buy new works of art for their collections. |
The Collecting Challenge: The Art Fund Museum Survey 2006
The Art Fund published the full report of its UK-wide research into acquisitions in May 2006. The findings reveal a crisis in funding but also a lack of will on behalf of central and local government to support collecting. The Art Fund is calling on both central and local government to recognise the importance of collecting to the work of museums. |
Art and Tax
Private Collections in the Public Domain
In 2007 The Art Fund worked with tax lawyers Allen & Overy to compile a study of tax regimes in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the US, to examine the extent to which they facilitate the enjoyment of privately owned collections. In particular, the paper highlights the kind of mechanisms that governments have developed to encourage private owners to open up their collections for enjoyment by the public, or to transfer ownership of their collections to the public domain. It reveals that most jurisdictions offer incentives to encourage outright gifts of works of art to cultural institutions with the conspicuous absence in the UK of income tax relief for gifts of works of art. |
