True value of our art is not measured in cash

IN his letter, prompted by recent articles discussing the potentiual for sales from the Kirklees art collection, Kenn Winter (Feedback, December 31), poses some interesting questions.

He asks whether the integrity of the collection should be maintained, or if sales (and presumably purchases) might be a way of rotating displays and bringing change into the galleries.

Mr Winter notes that Kirklees owns some 700 oil paintings which can be viewed on the ArtUK website. Not all these can be displayed at any one time in Huddersfield Art Gallery and Kirklees museums. One gallery, on the top floor of the Huddersfield Central Library, is currently devoted to a long-term display featuring highlights and themes from the collection. Last year another gallery housed the very popular exhibition, Victorian Miscellany, which included almost 50 works of art drawn from the collections held in store.

Reserve collections allow for a programme of changing exhibitions.

Not all temporary exhibitions comprise works entirely from the Kirklees collection. Some might be wholly made up of works from elsewhere, providing new opportunities for gallery visitors and sometimes the chance to make comparisons with objects in the Kirklees collection. In the current retrospective of the work of Huddersfield-born artist, David Tindle, two paintings from our collection hang alongside comparative works drawn from a number of public and private collections.

Huddersfield Art Gallery is able to loan works from other galleries because it reciprocates. Galleries do not charge for such loans, but pay transport and associated costs and provide insurance cover. Works from the Kirklees collection have been seen in major exhibitions in Britain and as far afield as Japan.

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Before Bacon’s masterwork was exhibited at Tate Britain, it was examined by the leading technical expert on the artist’s