Is the UK hiding a treasure trove of publicly owned art?

According to Shadow Cultural Secretary, a treasure trove containing 22,000 prints, sculptures, and paintings by some of the Britain’s biggest artists are being hidden from public view despite being publicly owned.

Michael Dugher is the one who brought this fact out in the public. According to him, only a few privileged ones are allowed to see these art pieces, which are worth tens of millions of pounds and are spread across MPs’ offices, ministries, British embassies overseas, and buildings such as 10 Downing Street.

Dugher is on a ‘free the art’ mission

That is why Dugher is now calling for a new, free public gallery to be opened in Parliament to showcase works spanning six centuries from the parliamentary and government art collections. To do that, he is seeking cross-party support and also writing to Speaker John Bercow to find space in the parliamentary estate for these art pieces.

There is no exact estimate of how many pieces there are, but it is believed that there are about 8,500 pieces in Parliament’s collection and 13,500 in government offices. These pieces include works by William Hogarth, John Constable, Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol, and many other lesser-known names but with major historic importance.

Dugher said, “Although the buildings the art pieces are spread across are publicly owned, in practice many are kept behind closed doors in places few members of the public will ever have a chance to visit.”

“Only a small portion of those on display in the Houses of Parliament, for example, be seen by members of the taking a paid tour of the complex. The Government Art Collection is even further removed from the public. Many of its items are dispersed across almost every country in the world, on display in embassies and ambassadors’ residences to showcase British talent,” he added.

Treasure trove has some very remarkable masterpieces

Some of the most talked about pieces in the treasure trove are the screen prints of the Queen done by the famous American artist Andy Warhol. These pieces were bought at auctions at Sotheby’s and Christies in the 2000s. These are now present in the British diplomatic buildings in Washington, D.C. and New York.

These paintings have a reason for not being available to the British crowd: they are on an absolutely different continent. But even those pieces that are kept in Great Britain are in buildings with only occasional, and very limited, public tours.

“A small part of the Palace of Westminster should be put aside to become a free public art gallery. The works from the Parliamentary Art Collection and the Government Art Collection could then be rotated on a regular basis so that all art lovers, academics and art students would be able to access the historic collections. All these great works of art are publicly owned so it is only right that everyone, not just a privileged few, should have the opportunity to see and learn from them.”

But to “create” this free art gallery, the government would require taxpayers’ money, which would obviously create a controversy among the ministers.

The British government hasn’t responded or given a statement about Dugher’s request.