Bristol City Council under fire for art collection worth £134m

A council has come under fire after new figures revealed it owns £134m worth of art – yet almost 90% of the collection is not on display.

Campaigners have criticised the value of the collection, owned by Bristol City Council, which is believed to be the third highest for any local authority in the country.

Pressure group the TaxPayers’ Alliance is urging the authority to sell some of the collection to help balance its books.

The council said Bristol museums’ collection is a “vital part of the city’s cultural and educational offer”, adding that there are “ethical principles and standards of practice” it must follow.

The council owns nearly 38,000 works of art, including five by Bristol street artist Banksy, with each worth an average of more than £3,500.

But only 4,245 pieces – 11.2% – are on public display, said the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

In February, councillors approved City Hall’s annual budget which contained £39.3m of cuts over the next five years, including £24m for 2024/25, after finance officers warned that the authority faces a peak funding shortfall of £32.2m in the period up to 2028/9.

The number of art items and proportion on public display was revealed in a response to the TaxPayers’ Alliances’ Freedom Of Information request, which it sent to all 397 councils and resulted in a report by the organisation in May called ‘Wasting Monet?’.

Bristol City Council withheld the total value of the collection but this is included in its own annual draft accounts, published earlier this month.

This meant it was not included in a table in the report naming the UK’s top 10 local authorities who own the most expensive amount of artwork.

If it had, the city council would have been third, behind Manchester’s £384m and Southampton with £190m – but ahead of fourth-placed Leeds which has a £110m art collection.

The average local authority collection’s is worth £8.7m, of which only 28% is on public display, with Bristol’s collection valued far higher and its proportion on show much lower.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance said that despite being in nearly £100bn of combined debt, UK councils had built up art collections worth almost £1.5bn.

Report author Jonathan Eida said: “These findings won’t paint a pretty picture for hard-pressed taxpayers who have been hammered year after year by record-busting council tax hikes.”

Bristol’s collection of 37,983 works of art is nearly 15 times bigger than the National Gallery’s and six times that for the average council.

A Bristol City Council spokesperson said: “Bristol museums’ collection is a vital part of the city’s cultural and educational offer, with a value that extends beyond an insurers’ estimate.

“Although some may call for cultural assets to be sold off, there are ethical principles and standards of practice that museums are expected to uphold and promote, which include how collections are treated and the sale of items for financial purposes.”