Turning Brits into Collectors

Turning Brits into Collectors

© Gillian Wearing. Photo courtesy Maureen Paley

Gillian Wearing, “Self Portrait as My Uncle Bryan Gregory” (2003). Ferens Art Gallery, Hull; purchased through the Contemporary Art Society Special Collection Scheme with Lottery funding from Arts Council England, 2005

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Founded in 1910, the CAS boasts an honorable history of supporting living artists, but has faced the perennial difficulties of functioning in a country where assumptions about paternalistic state involvement in people’s lives are deeply entrenched. In the UK, large-scale government funding of the arts is generally expected but rarely forthcoming, and—particularly outside of London—municipal museums are thought of as the proper place for art and its appropriate patrons. In addition, there is widespread public distrust of contemporary artists, and private collecting of art of any sort—apart from by the seriously rich—has, until recently, been regarded as eccentric, to say the least.

The CAS is a registered charity, a non-governmental not for profit, supported by bequests and grants—including an annual £80,000 from the Arts Council of England—and membership fees, but no direct state funding. As a recognized charitable organization it gets some tax breaks itself, though it is not able to pass these on to its members.

The organization works closely with its 65 member museums throughout the UK—from the Tate in London to the Piers Art Centre in Orkney. The majority of these museums are city council-run, and they depend for their budgets on the attitudes of local officers and councilors, few of whom have a background in the arts, which makes justifying spending on contemporary work difficult. In addition, few of these municipalities benefit from any local philanthropic support. Thus the CAS’s role is vital. Over the years, it has purchased and presented over 5,000 works of art by living artists to regional museums, and in 2005-06 it added a further 100 pieces to that total, at a cost of £125,000.

Alison Myners, CAS Chairman and an avid collector herself, stresses the importance of the Society’s commitment to emerging artists and its successful track record in being ahead of the game. “There are seven Francis Bacons in regional museums, purchased by us at a time when you could still buy them,” she said. All four of this year’s Turner prize nominees have been purchased repeatedly by the Society since 2000, she added.

Encouraging Private Collections

Working with museums is only one dimension of the Society’s work. They have also taken on the somewhat daunting task of “ensuring that the most challenging art being made today enters [not only] public, [but also] private and corporate collections.”

To this end, they operate three membership schemes for private collectors: the unnervingly titled Blood scheme for new collectors (membership costs £95 a year, or £50 for students); the Contemporary Collectors scheme for “more established” collectors (£275 a year, £225 for those who live outside of London); and the Contemporary Patrons scheme (£2,500 a year) “for collectors of contemporary art who want to make a real difference to the careers of living artists and to ensure that their work is seen by the public, both now and into the future.” (None of these fees is tax deductible.)

Although student paying £50 won’t be invited to the same “exclusive discussion dinners” as the patron coughing up £2,500, at every level, the emphasis of membership is on networking and mutual encouragement. Visits to artists’ studios, exhibitions, and art fairs, and meetings with arts professionals feature repeatedly in CAS programs. And every month, the Society organizes a bus tour around London’s studios and galleries.

Myners sees this encouragement of patronage as vital to the CAS’s work and believes that it feeds back into their support of museums, particularly outside of London. “There are not many regional collectors in the UK; it’s all very London based,” she says. “The regions don’t have that wonderful buzz that London does.” So the Society works hard to build the same sort of networks of philanthropic supporters around regional museums that arts organizations in the US have long seen as a fundamental part of their existence, but which remain a foreign concept for many in Britain.