HOPES THAT Anglo Irish Bank’s art collection could help to raise significant money for the State have been dashed by the bank’s discovery that many of the paintings “have no value” – just like its once highly rated shares.
When Anglo became the State-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), it inherited Anglo’s art collection – some 320 pieces – along with other assets and liabilities.
About one-third of the paintings have been valued as worthless – in financial, not necessarily artistic, terms – consisting of “the type of art that could be bought from the railings on Merrion Square”, according to a bank spokesman.
Another 100 paintings have an estimated value each of between “€0 and €500” while there are just 100 artworks that may be worth more significant amounts. The entire collection has been valued at “less than €1 million” and more likely just €750,000.
A spokesman for IBRC said it is “actively considering options” regarding how to dispose of the art “for the benefit of the State – in the months ahead”.
One option is to have the collection put up for public auction in Ireland. But some of the paintings are in Anglo’s overseas offices in the US and Britain and may not be worth shipping back here as the transport and insurance costs would probably exceed their value.
Unlike Bank of Ireland and AIB, Anglo appears not to have made a corporate decision to assemble an art collection and few of the artworks acquired were by “household-name” artists.
Instead, many were simply bought by managers from local artists “to have something to hang on the wall” and to brighten up the bank’s offices in Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Sligo and Galway as well as branches in London, New York, Boston and Chicago. These offices are closing on a phased basis.
The best pieces of art owned by Anglo have already been donated to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Imma). Last year, the bank made a gift of 18 artworks – paintings and sculpture worth an estimated €160,000 – to Imma in a gesture described as “very generous” by Minister for the Arts Jimmy Deenihan.
The IBRC has also taken over the Irish Nationwide Building Society, which, the spokesman said, “had no material art collection”.
The disposal of signage and logos from Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide is also under consideration. The infamous signage which hung over Anglo’s St Stephen’s Green headquarters – ignominiously dismantled in front of media photographers and TV crews last year – has also been donated to Imma but remains in storage pending the completion of paperwork as to how it might be used by the museum. It seems destined to become an unlikely star exhibit in the future.
