Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Britain’s state art collection needs to be more visible across the country while remaining a prized tool of soft power overseas, the arts minister has said. Sir Chris Bryant told the Financial Times that the Labour government was “tweaking the dial” of the Government Art Collection — which is 125 years old this month — in order to boost public engagement. “In the past, it’s got a bit stuck in embassies, consulates and ministers’ offices, and we’re very keen to change that,” he said in an interview. “As a new government [we are] wanting to say: a bit more of this should not just be reserved for what might feel like rather posh venues, like my office, or the ambassador’s residence in Washington, and should be more available to the general public.” Founded in 1899, the Government Art Collection displays works of art in UK government buildings, including Downing Street, Whitehall departments and embassies. It comprises 15,000 prints, paintings, drawings and works in other media by artists such as JMW Turner, L.S. Lowry, Dame Paula Rego, Dame Sonia Boyce and Sir Grayson Perry. The GAC also lends to museums and galleries around the world; works that it owns will appear in two exhibitions in 2025 in Bradford, to mark the northern English city’s status as UK City of Culture, and in London for the second anniversary of King Charles and Queen Camilla’s coronation.This year the Fabian Society argued that the collection should “be shared much more widely” with public buildings, including hospitals, schools, libraries and courts. The Labour-affiliated think-tank noted in a report that the GAC did not contain fragile objects and was “designed to be loaned”. Asked if the GAC planned to expand loans to the public buildings, Bryant said: “Art is not just an economic reality, it’s also part of our wellbeing . . . so the more we can get some of these works of art out in front of the public, the better.” However, he insisted that the collection remained vital to UK diplomacy. “Soft power is a really important part of what we have in the UK, and our artistic community . . . are a really important part of projecting the UK to the rest of the world,” Bryant said. “I want any French person going into the British Embassy in Paris to go: ‘Oh my God, Britain’s got amazing artists.’”“When I go round foreign embassies in London, I would say their emphasis is all on the past,” he added. “All the artworks on the wall tend to be things from a long time ago, and you feel: ‘All right, well I understand your country is a museum.’ Yes, we’ve got great museums, but the UK isn’t just a museum for art. It’s a place for absolutely cutting-edge art.”The GAC, which is administered by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, spent about £555,000 on 96 acquisitions in 2022-23, the latest year for which data is available. In 2021-22, it acquired 118 works and spent just over £810,000. The biggest single purchase in 2022-23 was £126,000 for Alvaro Barrington’s Change the game, Frieze 2022, which explores themes of migration and sport. In line with a 10-year project launched in 2018 to better represent UK diversity, other recent acquisitions include works by Dame Rachel Whiteread, Barbara Walker and Sir John Akomfrah, who represented Britain at the Venice Biennale international cultural exhibition this year. Noting that art by women constituted 12.5 per cent of the collection, Bryant said there were “amazing British women artists from the whole of the 20th century and today, and it would be good to see more of a mixture in the future”.Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer sparked a row in the autumn by taking down portraits of Liberal and Conservative leaders William Gladstone and Margaret Thatcher after arriving in 10 Downing Street. Chancellor Rachel Reeves meanwhile replaced a portrait of former Tory finance minister Nigel Lawson in her office in 11 Downing Street with one of Ellen Wilkinson, Labour education minister between 1945 and 1947.Bryant, who has chosen artworks by Boyce, Perry and John Minton for his own office, dismissed suggestions that the collection was being politicised and said “we swap paintings around all the time”. “There are very traditional paintings around and then there are completely new ones,” he added, describing the rehang of works all by or of women in the state dining room of 11 Downing Street as “absolutely stunning”.
