Museums ‘outbid by foreign billionaires’

MUSEUMS have been priced out of the art market by the “stratospheric” sums being paid by billionaire foreign buyers, a report has warned.

The recent sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvatore Mundi to a Saudi prince for a record £342 million shows the “ever-widening gap” between the cost of works and the shrinking budgets of Britain’s museums and galleries. “Prices have been inflated to stratospheric levels by the advent of new billionaire purchasers from China, Russia, South Asia and the Middle East,” said the Art Fund-commissioned report.

Regional museums and galleries increasingly rely on donors and are culling their collections under pressure from cash-strapped councils. Selling works held in public trust for perpetuity was once “almost universally frowned upon” but is becoming more common, said David Cannadine, the report’s author.