Lottery Offers Museums lifeline

A new £3m fund to help museums whose art acquisitions budgets have been slashed to the bone or eliminated is announced by the Heritage Lottery Fund. This is a response to a passionate campaign, led by the directors of some of the world's most famous art collections, including the Tate, the National Gallery and the V&A, but reflecting the concerns of hundreds of less starry museums, which often have no purchase funds at all. They have watched helplessly as contemporary art collections become frozen, and historic art objects, often previously offered as loans for public exhibition, are auctioned off and frequently exported. The fund, established after months of discussions between museum-sector leaders and officers of the lottery fund, is also intended to help develop curatorial skills and research, as well as activities for the public. Grants of between £50,000 and £200,000 will be offered. The new fund will throw a lifeline to many museums for smaller purchases - many local museums and galleries can no longer afford to buy anything - but will not affect the headline cases. The entire fund would not pay for one elegant leather glove of Titian's Portrait of a Young Man, recently taken down from the walls of the National Gallery, where it had hung for the last 14 years, when the Earl of Halifax decided to sell - the estimate if it goes to auction is that it could fetch £60m. For the full story - click the title Irish Art