High Museum of Art in Atlanta are going into a four-year partnership to tour Edinburgh's paintings in America

Scotland to loan Titian masterpieces to Atlanta

Launching a four-year partnership with the High Museum, the paintings will leave the UK for the first time in over two centuries to tour the US later this year

By Martin Bailey

Diana and Actaeon, jointly bought by the National Galleries of Scotland and London's National Gallery, is to go on a tour through the US later this year

 

The National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta are going into a four-year partnership to tour Edinburgh’s paintings in America, to raise money. Opening on 16 October, the first exhibition will include Titian’s two Diana masterpieces. The NGS and the National Gallery in London jointly bought Diana and Actaeon from the Duke of Sutherland last year and are trying to raise a further £50m to acquire Diana and Callisto.

The two Titians have never left the UK since their arrival in 1798. They will form the centrepiece of an exhibition on “Venetian Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland”. After its presentation in Atlanta, the show will go to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (opening 5 February 2011) and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (21 May 2011).

Further NGS exhibitions are promised for 2012, 2013 and possibly 2014. These will focus on other aspects of Edinburgh’s collection. Although details are not being released, one is expected to focus on Scottish art. After opening at the High Museum, the later shows will each tour to two other North American venues.

Announcing the tour on 26 February, NGS director-general John Leighton was candid about the need to raise money in America. “We have a big bill for Titian’s Actaeon, there is the upcoming Callisto campaign, we have the £17.6m renovation of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, corporate sponsorship has fallen drastically and we are about to go into the tightest era of public spending for many years,” he told The Art Newspaper.

Actaeon was bought in February last year, and funding included a £4.6m commitment from the NGS’s own resources (purchase funds, trust funds and reserves). Callisto will also cost £50m, and a purchase agreement needs to be signed with the Duke of Sutherland by December 2012.

The NGS is not disclosing the fee from the High Museum deal, but an arrangement with the Louvre in 2006 raised $6.4m for the French museum. With the Louvre, it was a three-year programme, involving one-year major exhibitions (as well as shorter and more focussed shows) at the High. The Louvre’s “brand name” is obviously particularly valuable, but the NGS contract should yield over £1m in fees, and possibly up to several million pounds.

Equally important, the NGS’s touring shows will enable the gallery to raise its profile and hold fundraising events in the United States, where there is a large community that traces its roots back to Scotland. As Leighton points out, 4.8m Americans claim Scottish ancestry, which is almost as many as the population of Scotland today.

The idea for the partnership came during an international meeting of leading museum directors (the Bizot group) in Paris in October 2008, when High Museum director Michael Shapiro heard Leighton speak about the campaign to acquire the Titians. Shapiro initially suggested the idea of borrowing the Diana paintings and this developed into a larger exhibition on Venetian art and later to a four-year programme.

Touring the two Diana paintings will launch the partnership with a fanfare, although is may come as a surprise that the pictures are leaving the UK quite so soon after one has entered into public ownership.

Leighton points out that there is a temporary “window of opportunity” to lend Actaeon. It is currently at the National Gallery in London, and is touring to Aberdeen, Glasgow and Dundee from May to September. It will then go to America in October, returning in August 2011. The National Gallery is planning to tour Actaeon to Cardiff, and probably to two other English regional venues later next year. The painting will then return to London for 2012, for the Olympic year and the fundraising drive for Callisto.

The National Gallery in London, co-owner of Actaeon, has agreed to the American loan. The Scottish Government, which provided £12.5m towards the purchase of Actaeon, supports the venture, although its formal approval is not required.

The Duke of Sutherland, owner of Callisto (currently on long-term loan to the NGS), has agreed to include his picture for the American tour. He is also lending another of his Titians, the Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist, which is also on long-term loan to Edinburgh. Altogether there will be 13 Venetian paintings going to America (4 by Titian, 2 each by Bordon, Veronese and Tintoretto and follower, and 1 each by Bassano, Cariani and Lotto), together with 12 drawings.

The Venetian paintings currently hang in the first two rooms of the National Gallery of Scotland. During the US tour, they are likely to be temporarily replaced with highlights from the portraits collection, since the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is now closed for major renovations.

Shapiro is looking forward to the arrival of the Venetian pictures, saying that they will raise awareness of the importance of “keeping masterpieces like these accessible to the public.” Leighton sees the American initiative as “a creative effort to look into the future, for the next five to ten years”—and to develop the NGS’s international links.