The Arts Council Collection is the largest loan collection of modern and contemporary British art in the world. With presently over 7500 works of art spanning more than sixty years, the Collection can be seen in exhibitions and displays at home and abroad, as well as through long-term loans to public buildings across the UK.
The Collection, which was formed in 1946, includes works by major British artists of the twentieth century and continues to acquire innovative and significant work by emerging artists today. It maintains a policy of adventurous and timely acquisitions, responding rapidly to developments in artistic practice. The collection is managed by a Curator while purchases are advised by a panel of artists and experts whose membership lasts for two years.
The Arts Council Collection is managed by the Hayward Gallery, South Bank Centre on behalf of Arts Council England and is based at the Hayward Gallery in London and at Longside, Yorkshire Sculpture Park. As a collection ‘without walls’, it has no permanent gallery; however, changing displays of sculpture, video and installations from the Arts Council Collection are regularly on view at Longside Gallery. Survey exhibitions from the Collection have been held at the Hayward Gallery entitled 'British Art 1940-80' and 'How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art'.
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“Musick is certainly a very agreeable Entertainment, but if it would take the entire Possession of our Ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing Sense, if it would exclude Arts that have a much greater Tendency to the Refinement of human Nature; I must confess I would allow it no better Quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his Common-wealth.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“Daughter to that good Earl, once President
Of England’s Council and her Treasury,
Who lived in both, unstain’d with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content.
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
Kill’d with report that old man eloquent;—”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“You know, many people believe that we archaeologists are just a collection of old fogies digging around in the ruins after old dried up skulls and bones.”
—Griffin Jay, and Harold Young. Stephen Banning (Dick Foran)