UK GOVERNMENT ART COLLECTION TO OPEN GALLERY AFTER BACKLASH OVER LIMITED PUBLIC ACCESS

UK’s Government Art Collection, comprising fourteen thousand works by mainly British artists, has announced that it plans to open a new exhibition space, Martin Bailey of the Art Newspaper reports.

The collection, which is stored in Queen’s Yard in Central London, has been widely criticized over the last decade due to the lack of public access to its holdings. The works that aren’t in storage hang in government offices in the UK and abroad.

Penny Johnson, director of the GAC since 1997, said that, despite being funded by taxpayers, the GAC is “not a public collection,” partly because “it has no gallery where it can display its wares.” Currently, people interested in viewing the works are able to book a tour of the storage space or attend one of the few shows that feature loaned pieces from the collection, such as an exhibition presented by London’s Whitechapel Gallery in 2011.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, which oversees the GAC, said that plans to move the collection to a venue with a “display space that everyone will be able to enjoy” are underway.