Britain has a 'hidden' art collection worth £3.5bn

The government and local authorities own art worth at least £3.5 billion, but only a tiny fraction is on display, research from a pressure group claims, the BBC reports 

Just 3% of the government's collection is available for the public to view, said the Taxpayers' Alliance.

Its freedom of information requests showed that one local council - Carlisle, in Cumbria - displayed just 0.02% of the 864,100 works it owned.

The alliance called on the government to improve the number of works on show.

It acknowledged that selling off items, many of which were bequeathed specifically to be put on public display, could be "inappropriate", but suggested councils could consider loaning artwork to schools and community centres.

"No one is proposing a wholesale sell-off of art owned by the government but, nonetheless, the scale of the collection is staggering," said Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the alliance.

"Public bodies and local authorities should make an effort to display more of their art for people to enjoy, and they also need to take a good, hard look at their art portfolio and think about what does and does not need to be retained."

The most valuable item owned by the state is Henry VIII's armour for field and tournament, which was acquired by the Royal Armouries in 1649 and is now estimated to be worth £53.6 million.

A painting by LS Lowry, called Lancashire Fair: Good Friday, Daisy Nook, is the most expensive item in the collection not owned by a museum or gallery.

Bought in 1947 for just £120, it is now worth an estimated £3.5 million. It currently hangs in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport - but has been loaned to several institutions, including Tate Britain, the Ulster Museum and The Lowry, over the last five years.

It is also available to see on the BBC's Your Paintings site, which aims to catalogue every oil painting in the UK national collection.

Amongst local councils, Manchester City Council owns the most valuable collection - of 46,347 pieces, worth some £347 million. Of those, 1,017 (2.1%) are on display.

North Hertfordshire council did not reveal how many pieces it owned, but it has the largest collection of any local authority, with "over a million pieces".

The Taxpayers' Alliance also noted that, since austerity measures came into place, the government had continued to buy pieces for the national collection.

Between 2010 and 2015, the state bought art worth £361,320, including a £40,000 sculpture by the contemporary Brtitish artist Mel Brimfield, and a £22,500 work by Jim Lamble.

"At a time when we are making necessary savings, it is only reasonable to ask whether some of the recent purchases represent value for taxpayers' money," said Mr Isaby.

A spokesman from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said the suggestion that only 3% of publicly-owned works were on display "does not apply to the Government Art Collection, which has 58.3% of its artwork currently on display in British government buildings in the UK and around the world".

"The works of art are seen by thousands of visitors including heads of state, public figures and the general public."

The Government Art Collection was founded in 1898 to promote British art and culture to the world and includes more than 13,000 items, dating from the 16th Century to the present day.

It includes works by, among others, John Constable, William Hogarth and Lucian Freud. Hundreds of them were displayed at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 2010 and 2011.