Supplementary memorandum submitted by
The Art Fund
1. This supplementary memorandum follows
on from the written evidence submitted by The Art Fund to the
Committee's inquiry in September 2006. This memorandum focuses
on philanthropy.
THE FUNDING
CHALLENGE
2. At present in the UK, the financing of
our museums relies neither on the generosity of private philanthropists
nor on the patronage of the state but on an uneasy combination
of the two.
3. The Art Fund Museum Survey 2006. The
Collecting Challenge, revealed that UK museums struggle to
collect actively; less than 10% of UK museums allocated a fixed
proportion of their income to collecting in 2005.
4. The international perspective is also
of concern. New research from The Art Fund—a survey of international
collecting trends—showed that our national museums lag far
behind other world-class museums when it comes to money available
to buy new works of art. In 2004-05 The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, for example, was able to spend more than eight
times as much as the National Gallery, London and a staggering
70 times as much as the British Museum.
PHILANTHROPY
5. The Art Fund believes that new tax incentives
(relating to income tax—rather than inheritance tax liabilities)
for gifts of cultural assets would stimulate individual philanthropy
at marginal additional costs to the taxpayer and should result
in a significant enrichment of our collections.
6. Museums in the US and France, most notably,
benefit from significant income tax incentives; for example, in
the US there is an income tax deducation for 100% of the value
of gifts of cash or works of art to museums (in our survey) from
their American Friends in 2004-05 amounted to more than the value
of the works they received under the Acceptance in Lieu scheme
(£5,762,744, compared to £5,169,290) and considerably
more than they received from individual givers in the UK.
RECOMMENDATIONS
7. There is no single solution but it is
vital that we think more creatively about how best to attract
private money and encourage a culture of giving.
8. The Government should examine the benefits
of both corporate and individual tax incentives.
9. The Art Fund will continue to promote
a relief against income tax for gifts of cultural assets ("Living
and Giving" was rejected by the Treasury 2005).
January 2007
| 
