Recent news reports have suggested that the British Council's art collection is under threat as it struggles to manage a £197 million debt and potential insolvency. Half of the 9000-item collection is protected by agreements with donors that restrict work being sold, but the remainder are potentially under threat of disposal, unless the government steps in to support the Council. As Jenny Waldman from the Art Fund notes if the British Council were to sell off art work it would set a precedent that could see cash-strapped local authorities and even national museums consider raising funds from sales.
The British Council has been collecting works of art, craft and design since 1938. It has no permanent gallery and uses the collection to promote British culture overseas through loans and touring exhibitions. A photograph was first added in 1969 with a Euan Duff print of a Richard Hamilton work The Critic Laughs (1968), but the first photograph collected in its own right was Sir George Pollock's Cibachrome print Spectrum No. 6 in 1970. Thereafter photography was actively collected to support exhibitions and acquired through donation, as examples, in 1972 twenty-five Bill Brandt prints were acquired and in 1975 forty-five David Hurn prints, amongst many other examples.
The photography collection numbers some 630 photographs.* From its initial rapid expansion in the 1970s, the arrival of Brett Rogers OBE at the British Council in 1982 until 2005, saw the collection added to in a more managed way. During her tenure she was Deputy Director and Head of Exhibitions and curated an acclaimed programme of international touring exhibitions on British photography, using the Council's own collection and loans.
From a photography perspective the collection includes a significant number of photographs from well-known British photographers and artists using photography including Martin Parr, Chris Killip, Richard Hamilton, Richard Arnatt, Victor Burgin, Homer Sykes, Patrick Ward, Chris Steel Perkins, Sharon Kivland, Hamish Fulton, Paul Hill, David Nash, Paul Trevor, Fay Godwin, Cecil Beaton, Bob Chaplin, George Rodger, Bert Hardy, Thurston Hopkins, Tony Ray-Jones, Ian Berry, Bryn Campbell, Raymond Moore, Laurence Cutting, Calum Colvin, Richard Long, Helen Sear, Boyd Webb, Matt Collishaw, Michael Landy, Clare Strand, Angus Bolton, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rut Blees Luxenburg, Mark Power, Lala Meredith-Vula, Sarah Lucas, Tacita Dean, Jane Simpson, Marcus Haydock, Ann Doherty, Adam Chodzko, Peter Liversidge, Dominic Pote, Shirley Baker, Gabriella Sancisi, Martin Creed, Chloe Dewe Mathews, Tracey Emin, Hew Locke and many others.
(*) The graph above is based on the searchable online collection database and shows acquisitons of photographs from 1969 to the last recorded acquisition in 2018. This includes a small number of photographs of artwork, and, of course, the work of artists using photography as part of their wider practice. Not all work, includign recent additions may be online.
See: https://visualarts.britishcouncil.org/collection/search-9
News reports: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/feb/06/the-british-council-will-trash-a-precious-national-asset-if-it-sells-its-art-collection and https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/02/03/british-council-art-collection-at-risk-debt-to-government and https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/british-council-considers-selling-half-collection-debt-1234731681/
Comments
A fascinating graph. Thank you!