British museums priced out

British museums are being priced out of the market when it comes to acquiring artwork, a survey has suggested.

Research conducted by a UK charity, the Art Fund, found New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art spent £53.5m buying new works in 2004 and 2005.

The city's MoMa gallery spent £20m. The Louvre in Paris allocated £16.8m.

But London's National Gallery only spent £6.3m. . .

The UK's four Tate Galleries spent a combined total of £4.8m in 2004 and 2005, while the British Museum spent £761,000.

From the BBC. The article notes the more liberal tax incentives offered in the USA for donations to museums; it does not mention, however, that the British museums are further hamstrung by their inability to deaccession artworks in order to pay for new acquisitions.

Posted by David on November 26, 2006 4:16 PM