The British Council Collection [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION The British Council's Collection has grown, throughout almost the whole of the Council's own history, into a major public collection of twentieth-century British art. It has no claim to be a perfectly balanced représentation of each movement, fashion and médium, and does not contain work by every great name in the history of British twentieth-century art, but it forms nonetheless an important body of work the direct purpose of which is to be of active value within the British Council's operational needs. In order to place the Collection in a proper context it should first be said that the British Council exists, in the words of its charter, to promote a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and of the English language abroad and to develop closer cultural relations between the United Kingdom and other countries. Within that broad framework the Fine Arts Department of the Council is concerned with the présentation abroad of British art both of the past and of the present day in order to demónstrate its qualities and vitality. This is carried out largely through the provision of exhibitions, normally in response to invitations from muséums and other overseas institutions, and also through the circulation of works from the Collection to countries over as wide an area as possible. While the majority of important exhibitions organized by the department are assembled through the generosity of innumerable public and private owners, it has been of increasing value to the Council to own an adequately représentative body of work to deploy according to its spécial needs and priorities. A high proportion of acquisitions is made specially in order to make up the modestly-scaled Circulating Exhibitions, generally of two-dimensional, framed work which. can tour indefinitely throughout the world in a manner not feasible where material has been borrowed. Secondly the Council may buy works to supplément and strengthen a major loan exhibition, at least in part as an affirmation of confidence in the artist or in the theme of the exhibition. Last, but not least, the Collection enables the British Council to demónstrate on a longer term basis the achievement of British artists. A large quantity of works is displayed within Council offices and centres abroad and, more recently, larger works have been placed on long loan to foreign muséums to broaden their showing of British art. Short term loans are also made whenever possible to exhibitions organized by muséums and institutions in Britain and abroad. This last function can be said to exemplify the degree of mutai eo-operation between the Council and its professional associâtes, in that the Council's own loan exhibitions are greatly dépendent on the generosity of muséums and institutions such as the Arts Council of Great Britain or the Tate Gallery.