'Saved'
Art Treasures Go on Display
An exhibition of 400 art
treasures saved from being acquired by overseas buyers is being held at a
London gallery.
Photo: Canova's The Three Graces is among the
works featured
The paintings, sculptures and archaeological
pieces were acquired with the help of the National Art Collections Fund. The
charity is celebrating its centenary with an exhibition entitled Saved! at
the Hayward Gallery. It features works by Picasso, Mondrian, Rodin and
Titian, among others. The Fund has prevented masterpieces ranging from
Antonio Canova's The Three Graces to Picasso's Weeping Woman disappearing
from public view or going abroad.
It has also saved works such as Velazquez's The Rokeby Venus and
Michelangelo's chalk sketch of the figure of Adam in the Sistine Chapel.
Since it was set up 100 years ago, the Fund has saved half a million works
of art for public museums and galleries. The most important will now take
center stage at this exhibition - which will focus attention on the role of
the Fund. Some critics have questioned whether its work deprives people
abroad of the chance to enjoy some of the world's greatest art treasures.-
Rebecca
Jones
Generous
Donation Saves Turner Paintings.
A
pair of Turner masterpieces in London's Victoria And Albert Museum have been
restored following a donation from a reader of The Times.
Brian Murgatroyd, from West Sussex, gave £13,000 to the museum to repair the paintings after reading in the paper that they were disintegrating. The 76-year-old, who died earlier this year, was an admirer of the artist. Turner's Life-Boat, painted in 1831, and East Cowes Castle (1827-28) were the two paintings to benefit. According to Mark Evans, the V&A's senior curator of paintings, M.r Murgatroyd contacted him after the article was published. "It was a bolt from the blue for us," Dr Evans said. "I hoped to show him the paintings, but I was very distressed that he'd passed away before being able to see them". Mr. Murgatroyd, who worked as an investment banker, had made similar donations in the past after reading stories in The Times. In 1996, he gave £80,000 to Oxford's Ashmolean Museum to save a sculpture by Antonio Canova from being sold to a foreign museum. The same Times article prompted a similar donation from an anonymous reader, who gave £28,000 to Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum to restore a 16th Century Flemish triptych. The two Turner paintings will hang in the V&A's new Paintings Galleries, which form part of a planned redevelopment for the South Kensington museum. The Medieval and Renaissance Galleries are being funded by an anonymous donation of £1m as reported by the BBC.