Art and the Wealth tax
Threatened heritage
Hugh Leggatt
Recent doctrinaire socialist utterances concerning the wealth tax proposals have revealed a quite extraordinary lack of comprehension as to the effects of this tax if applied to works of art in private collections. It has even been questioned, sneeringly, whether these works of art are indeed part of our national heritage or only gluttonous wealth still in private hands. The moment has clearly arrived for a careful examination of not only the effect of large numbers of works of art passing into public ownership but also the very desirability from the practical point of view of such a policy.
Although we are promised a shining new era of enlightened, albeit state, patronage by the socialists, past experience has revealed only too clearly the limitations of official taste as represented by even the most cultivated committee or board of trustees, and the extent to which public museums and art galleries, national and provincial, have had to rely on the pioneer collecting activities of men of vision like Lord Hertford (Wallace Collection), Sir William Burrell and Samuel Courtauld. To suggest that works of art in private ownership are not part of our national heritage is patently nonsense and a characteristic example of the almost total divorce of doctrinaire socialism from reality. However the implications of such views are profoundly disturbing, since if these works of art are excluded from the national heritage they can presumably be sold on the world market for maximum profit like any other commodity.
Assuming that the Government introduces the wealth tax, how are our public collections placed vis-d-vis any intended flow of works of art into their care, bearing in mind the avowed policy of allocating such works to the provinces? Little or no consideration has been given to the acute crisis already facing our provincial museums and art galleries, or indeed the physical problems which will result from the transfer of the works of art from country houses, in the main, to museums and art galleries in the city centres. For centuries much of our national heritage has been preserved in the relatively stable conditions of ill-heated country houses far frofn the industrial areas; and although this record can be criticised on doctrinaire political grounds the historical fact has had the fortunate effect of enabling these works of art to survive in relatively good condition until 1974.
. Since before 1900 there has been an inexorable decline in the numbers of works of art in private hands, mainly housed in the country areas, while large public collections have been
built up so that now many of our major provincial museums and art galleries possess collections of international importance. Unfortunately no policy, however desirable from the social point of view, could have been more disastrous for the works of art themselves. Taken from the relative stability of the country houses they have been exposed to the highest levels of atmospheric pollution, central heating with violent fluctuations in relative humidity, and excessive light levels.
Small wonder that every museum director in the provinces throws up his hands in despair at the appalling conservation problems inherited from earlier generations. In fact no policy could have been better devised to destroy in the leng, term the very works of art which the provincial museums and art galleries were ostensibly set up to preserve. The conservation crisis in the provincial museums and art galleries is the product of a misguided policy of accumulating works of art into public ownership in the city centres without making adequate provision for their maintenance.
Archaic and ill-maintained buildings with no atmospheric control, inadequate staff and a minimum of funds have been the gene,ral experience of our provincial museums In,,' decades. The vast numbers of works of art already in store, through lack of space to display them and lack of conservation facilities, questions the wisdom of any policy intended to transfer even more works of art into the provincial institutions unless this action coupled with a drastic revision of the attitude or the Government towards the local authority museums and art galleries. As trustees of a substantial proportion of the national heritage. the local authorities have a lamentable record. A brief survey indicayes only too clearly the record pf neglect, prevarication and delaY. After some thirty years Glasgow Corporation has at last seen fit to begin work on the new museum to house the Burrell Collection, enite, the most magnificent single gift to a provincial museum this century, while the extensions t,a, the City Art Gallery in Manchester are sti" under discussion after almost half a centuryin Leeds the entire City Art Gallery will now have to be replaced as the building is becoming unstable, and in Birmingham the space availa" ble on a long term basis for the display of works of art has declined by some 50 per cent since 1919. Indeed seven of its sixteen paintings galleries have been closed for various reasons during the last five years. In Bristol, the Museum is still sharing the premises of the Ad Gallery,Gallery, over thirty years after being bombe out. The failure of successive governments tn insist upon local authorities carrying out their., responsibilities has become a scandal, an° under their present political administrations few provincial museums and art galleries are in a fit state to receive large numbers of important works of art removed from private collections as a consequence of an ill-conceived wealth tax. Such a fiscal policy would indeed benonsenSi; cal, in view of the fact that the provincia' museums and galleries lack any proper financial support structure and are quite inadelina. tely staffed to undertake further major responsibilities. Mr Hugh Jenkins, Minister for the Arts, has recently made the wishful but quite unconvincing claim that, as far as the effect of !i wealth tax is concerned, "The impact of what is proposed has been greatly exaggerated." 1-1,.e also produces the palliative that "It is t"e Government's intention to cushion those owners of artistic objects who are prepared tof tmaekpeutbhi them available to be seen by memb h ers 0 But, as pointed out, the public facilities and down the country for receiving an_ displaying many more works of art evel.; though their owners might be prepared to len° them in order to be cushioned against the taX: are, as a matter of pure practical fact, alines' totally lacking.
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