Show me the Monet, Telstra
By Lauren Martin, The Sydney Morning Herald
October 13, 2005
"We could be part of a team to recommend [to the fund's board] works of the highest quality. It has been proven that art of this period is the safest investment - far outstripping shares and property."
Colin Radford, Director, National Gallery of Australia
Has the National Gallery of Australia got a pitch for you! Sell Telstra, buy Van Gogh.
The gallery's director, Ron Radford, admits his plan is audacious, but also calls it "a very safe business preposition for Australia". He wants the Government's Future Fund to invest 1 or 2 per cent of its initial $16 billion in "blue-chip art", particularly late 19th-century and 20th-century European and American masterpieces.
The gallery needs a Kandinsky. And a Mondrian. A major Picasso, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Whistler, Braque and Klee, and Barnett Newman would be good, too.
"Our idea would be to house them," Mr Radford said in the Canberra gallery yesterday, "and show them in our context.
"We could be part of a team to recommend [to the fund's board] works of the highest quality. It has been proven that art of this period is the safest investment - far outstripping shares and property."
The head of the gallery's acquisitions committee, Rupert Myer, said the idea "really excited" the gallery council, which includes former Westfarmers chief executive Michael Chaney, Normandy mining founder Robert Champion de Crespigny, Goldman Sachs adviser Charles Curran, Elizabeth Nosworthy, and Roslyn Packer.
The gallery's chairman, Harold Mitchell, said he was offered more than $US100 million recently for Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles, which the gallery bought in 1973 for $1.3 million.
He said many super funds included art in their portfolios. "We're going to give this a pretty good shot," he said, adding it would be "a fantastic source for ... works on our walls."
A spokesman for the Finance Minister, Nick Minchin, said the fund's mandate had not been determined. However, the fund's board, which to be independent of the Government, will be charged with maximising the return.
Mr Radford said: "It would seem desirable that the planning for the structure of the Future Fund take into account the potential to invest in cultural assets such as those that can be provided with the highest-quality custodial environment."
He conceded that the fund "will have to eventually sell them, but in the meantime we'll have the use of them".
"Because I can't see how it's going to be easy for us to raise $30- or $40 million to fill those gaps" in the collection otherwise. The gallery recently considered buying a $35 million Kandinsky but could not afford it.
Mr Radford has asked the Treasury to arrange a meeting for the gallery's council with the fund's yet-unnamed chairman, tipped to be former Commonwealth Bank chief David Murray.