Gloomy picture on purchases for museums

Britain's museums and galleries have fallen along way behind their international counterparts when it comes to acquiring new works for their collections, according to figures released yesterday by the Art Fund.

The figures compiled from nine leading international institutions for the year 2004-05 show New York's Metropolitan Museum spent twice as much on a single painting - Duccio's "Madonna and Child", bought for $50m (£26m) - as the total spent on acquisitions by Britain's four leading museums and galleries: the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate galleries.

The Metropolitan Museum spent £53.4m on acquisitions, more than eight times the amount spent by the National Gallery (£6.3m) and 70 times the amount spent by the British Museum (£761,000). David Barrie, director of the Art Fund, the main charity devoted to saving works of art for Britain, said the research showed that "even our greatest museums and galleries can no longer compete effectively on the world stage".

"The sums of public money that [museums] are spending on collecting are in steep decline, while the incentives that exist to encourage private giving are insufficient . . . If the money cannot come from public funds, then steps must be taken to encourage private philanthropy, through better tax incentives."

He said the research showed the extent to which British institutions were reliant on US organisations to raise money for acquisitions: 44 per centof money spent on acquisitions at Britain's "Big Four" came from US donors.

The league table of spending on acquisitions is topped by New York's Metropolitan Museum and Museum of Modern Art, but even European institutions, such as the Louvre in Paris and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, with spending of £16.8m and £9.7m respectively, leave Britain's museums some way behind.

Mr Barrie described the figures as "startling", and said they had more than confirmed his worst fears. "It is a grim and depressing picture - and if things go on like this, our major institutions are going to be out of the market."

He said the government should look at the US example of tax incentives - cash donations to US museums are 100 per cent tax deductible - to improve the situation. "The culture is different over there. Nobody is embarrassed about being rich. It is a mark of having arrived, writing big cheques at charity dinners. The situation here is almost the exact opposite." France had also developed a scheme to encourage donations.