Following the row over the Great Southern Hotels' collection, what about other art paid for by the taxpayer, asks Aidan Dunne, Art Critic
The Great Southern Hotels art collection should be returned to the State in its entirety, the Minister for Arts, John O'Donoghue, insisted in a strongly worded statement last weekend. His intervention followed reports that in May, as the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) prepared to sell the hotel group, artworks were removed from Kerry's Parknasilla Hotel and sent to Dublin for valuation.
There are an estimated 56 or so works in the Great Southern collection, purchased during the 1960s and 1970s with funding from the Arts Council and when the company, then part of the CIÉ group, was in public ownership .
However, this case raises similar issues in relation to the larger number of works acquired by other companies in the CIÉ group. At this moment there is no reliable inventory of the collections, but the Arts Council has assigned an expert with extensive experience of Irish art to establish exactly how many paintings and other artworks are involved, and where they are.
The Great Southern collection is believed to include works by many of the best-known names in 20th-century Irish art, including Louis le Brocquy, William Leech, Harry Kernoff, Norah McGuinness, Patrick Scott, Patrick Collins, Maurice MacGonigal and Cecil King.
They were acquired under the Arts Council's Joint Purchase Scheme in the 1960s and 1970s, whereby the council contributed half of the cost of the purchase of an artwork. At a time when the Irish art market was in its infancy, the scheme was designed to foster interest in Irish art and to generate income for artists. The terms of the scheme meant that the State and the taxpayer were both directly and indirectly funding the purchases. Hence, the Minister can point out that, morally, the State should have first call on the collections.
In June, both the Minister and Labour TD Michael D Higgins expressed concerns about the intentions of the DAA. Higgins even referred to "the removal of the paintings by stealth". At the time, the Minister alluded to a circular issued previously by the Department of Transport which specified that in the event of "art valued at more than €10,000 being put on the market by a State entity [such as DAA] that the State, through either the OPW or the national collecting institutions, had to be given first option on that art".
This is not taken to mean that the State should have an option to purchase the works. The Government interpretation of the circular is that artworks deemed to be of cultural value should be passed on to the OPW or national institutions for public display. Once concerns were raised, the DAA promptly indicated that it would adhere to Government policy on the issue and consult with both the Arts Council and the Department.
IT MAY SEEM surprising that some paintings from the collection are believed to have been sold in the 1980s and 1990s. In fact the terms of the Joint Purchase Scheme did not preclude those who availed of it from selling work on. The rules stipulated that work could not be sold on at less than the original purchase price, and that the Arts Council should be reimbursed for its portion of the price. "It was never intended that the works be used for short-term pecuniary gain," the Minister said.
Indeed not: rather, the worry at the time was that art released into a depressed market might undermine rather than aid artists. What has changed, of course, since the acquisition of the works several decades ago, is the economic situation. Compared to the present day, interest in Irish art at the time was negligible, and the scheme was a much needed, imaginative initiative designed to improve matters. Now there is a large, lucrative market for Irish art at auction, and a particular demand for work of real quality. The Great Southern collection is likely to be worth millions, although prices would vary greatly depending on the artist and importance of each work. However, a Le Brocquy could fetch €1 million at auction.
Significantly, we now also have a network of national institutions for the display of artworks.
The Irish Museum of Modern Art did not exist until 1991. Because it is a relatively late arrival on the scene, the problem of building a representative collection of modern Irish is all the more difficult. Acquiring important works at auction in an overheated market is not feasible or desirable.
It sounds as if some of the works from the Great Southern Hotels collection would find appropriate homes at IMMA, as well as the National Gallery, and perhaps other national institutions, where they could be enjoyed by the public.