Madam, – There is no logic to the sale of the Bank of Ireland’s art collection, the catalogue for which has just been published. The proceeds from the sale will be an infinitesimal drop in the ocean of the bank’s debt, and the promise that the sale of the work of these dead or established artists will eventually benefit “younger artists” rings hollow.
It will certainly at this time have precisely the opposite effect, further deflating an already depressed market. Those individuals and institutions who still have the money and inclination to buy art will spend at this auction as a safe investment rather than take a chance on living, working artists through direct purchase or through the commercial galleries.
The bank would have benefited more in the long run in terms of publicity and much-needed goodwill by donating its collection to the public. At least it would have indicated a belief that art has something to do with our collective cultural heritage, and is not just another saleable commodity.
My own practice in the last 30 years has been largely in the field of “public art”, in a half-held belief that in a true Republic all art, or the greater part of it, should be public.
The great 19th-century artist, designer and theorist of the arts and crafts movement, William Morris put it succinctly: “I do not want art for the few any more than I want education for the few, or freedom for the few”.
– Yours, etc,