Arts Council Reports on Acceptance in Lieu Scheme

The UK’s Acceptance In Lieu scheme has helped to secure a wide number of truly exceptional works of art into public collections in the last year, according to the Arts Council’s Annual Report.

Acceptance in Lieu is administered by the Arts Council and allows those who have to pay Inheritance Tax to do so by offering important cultural, scientific or historic objects to the nation.

The taxpayer is given the full open market value of the item, which then becomes the property of a public museum, archive or library.

The works of art secured for the nation under the scheme include:

• One of the most important topographical paintings of Oxford by one of England’s greatest artists, JMW Turner which joins the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford
• The only known portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie painted during the 1745 Jacobite rebellion for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery
• A sheet of incredibly fine drawings related to figures in the decoration of the Magi chapel in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence by Renaissance master Benozzo Gozzoli
• Further works from the estate of Lucian Freud comprising the artist’s sketchbooks, drawings, letters and an unfinished self-portrait which reveal much about one of the greatest artists of recent times.

“I am delighted that in the past year thanks to Acceptance in Lieu and the Cultural Gifts Scheme so many important and wide ranging masterpieces have entered public collections across the UK,” commented Edward Harley, Chairman Acceptance in Lieu Panel. “New acquisitions are the life blood of collections and these schemes provide a vital mechanism through which public museums can acquire outstanding works of art at no cost to themselves.”

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