Bank of Ireland's break-up of collection makes artists see red

A planned auction of its art holdings by Bank of Ireland has been met with calls for a boycott, but the bank says all the money raised will be used to fund arts projects nationwide

ON NOVEMBER 24TH James Adam & Son, on St Stephen’s Green in Dublin, will auction artworks from the Bank of Ireland art collection, estimated to be worth €4 million. Since the decision to sell them was announced, a few months ago, it has been provoking discussion and controversy among artists.

Last Tuesday the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, Mary Hanafin, said at the opening of the Moderns exhibition at Imma in Dublin that she “would like to invite Bank of Ireland to donate more of their collection to our national cultural institution”. She went on to say: “The difference it can make to collections like we have here [at Imma] would be very significant not just for us but for future generations.”

On Wednesday the artist Robert Ballagh wrote to this newspaper about the auction. He said he now felt he had “no choice but to sever all business connection with [Bank of Ireland]. I urge all Irish artists to immediately close any accounts they may have with the bank in order to register their disapproval with that financial institution.”

Also on Wednesday, the Royal Hibernian Academy sent a delegation of artists, including James Hanley and its president, Des McMahon, to meet representatives at the bank. “We were asking them to reverse the decision,” Hanley said. “It’s an act of cultural vandalism. It’s not really about swamping the art market. It’s about the signal they’re sending out about culture. The collection was bought in good faith as an investment and to encourage artists, and it was a very important thing to be in the collection in leaner times. It was an imprimatur. Some of the artists in the collection are dead now, but if a musician is dead, does his record become less important when you listen to it?”

When asked what response the delegation received to its request to cancel the auction, Hanley said: “That the lady is not for turning.”

On Thursday Dan Loughrey of Bank of Ireland’s PR department responded in this newspaper to Ballagh’s letter. Loughrey wrote that the bank would “re-invest the proceeds to support a new generation of Irish artists at work in communities around Ireland. As such, the proceeds from the sale of art produced by artists whose careers have prospered will be directed towards artists whose careers are still developing and arts projects at a local community level.”

“What does that mean? I don’t know what that means,” says Diana Copperwhite, an artist with a piece in the collection. “I don’t understand why they’re selling the collection yet saying they’re funding young artists. Does the older artists’ work now have no value?”

Also on Thursday, Loughrey told the Irish Timesthat Adam's was waiving its fee for the auction. "We will be donating all the money to arts activities and community projects around the country. We are currently constructing the mechanism to do this and will be announcing more details around the time of the auction. It will include all the arts, not just visual arts."

Droit de suite– the right of an artist to a percentage payment when their work is resold – is now established in Ireland. This is largely due to the efforts of Robert Ballagh, who campaigned for years for it. So any artists whose work is sold on November 24th and who are on the droit de suite register in Ireland will be entitled to a resale payment.

One artist who did not want to be named said he wished people would boycott the auction. Another said she had just been approved by Bank of Ireland for a mortgage when no other financial institution would give her a loan. Although she approved in theory of Ballagh’s plea for a boycott of the bank, in reality, she said, artists in the early stages of their careers would not be able to make that kind of grandiose gesture. “For me, what he’s asking is unreasonable.”

“I’d have great sympathy with Ballagh’s call,” says Nick Miller, an artist who currently has a show at the Rubicon Gallery in Dublin. “I don’t have an account with Bank of Ireland, but I feel the auction is a very poor decision on their part. I have one big piece for sale in that auction – and I also have a show on right now. Obviously, people are looking for bargains. For artists like me who are trying to live and sell through galleries, it undermines the market.”

Another artist who did not want to go on the record says artists are in a dilemma about the auction. “Everyone loves a bargain, and there will be vultures there at the auction. But we know that a lot of these people collect us and support us, so we can’t be seen to be publicly calling them vultures.”