THE ART NEWSPAPER Number 284, November 2016 11
News United Kingdom
PONTORMO: DCMS
MARK DI SUVERO
NOVEMBER 3 – DECEMBER 10, 2016
PAUL A COOPER GALLERY
534 W 21ST STREET NEW YORK 212 255 1105 WWW.PAULACOOPERGALLERY.COM
Mark di Suvero, Heraldic Bourgogne, 1995, steel, 78 x 85 3/4 x 89 3/4 in. (198.1 x 217.8 x 228 cm) © Mark di SuveroGianni Colombo, Strutturazione pulsante, 1959ARTE PROGRAMMATA
Italian Kinetic Art from the 1960s
4 October – 20 December 2016
15 OLD BOND STREET, LONDON W1S 4AX
[email protected] | WWW.MLFINEART.COMFight to save
art history exam
More than 200 British academics
express “grave concerns”
EDUCATION
London. Academics, curators and artists
have reacted angrily to the announce-
ment last month that the last examina-
tion board in England to ofer A-level art
history will drop the subject from 2018.
The move by London-based AQA means
that art history, which is taught mainly
in private schools, will vanish from the
curriculum. The director of the National
Gallery in London, Gabriele Finaldi,
who began studying for an A-level in
art history aged 16, expressed his disap-
pointment and concern in a letter to the
Guardian newspaper.
More than 200 academics and art
professionals have written an open
letter to the chief executive of AQA,
expressing their “grave concerns”
about the education charity’s decision.
The signatories include Ben Burbridge,
a senior lecturer in art history at the
University of Sussex, Susanna Brown, a
curator of photographs in the word and
image department at London’s Victoria
and Albert Museum, professor David
Ekserdjian of the University of Leicester
and Sam Thorne, the director of Notting-
ham Contemporary.
Louise Bourdua, the head of the
history of art department at WarwickUniversity, says that she is appalled
by AQA’s decision, “particularly given
the tremendous amount of work that
has been carried out in recent years by
my colleagues in the Association of Art
Historians and at a time when art is
perhaps more than ever on everyone’s
radar in Britain”.
Universities do not expect appli-
cants to have completed an A-level in
art history to be admitted to study the
subject, Bourdua stresses. “But what
kind of signal does the axing of a histori-
cal discipline send to our young people?”
Not a soft subject
Deborah Swallow, the director of the
Courtauld Institute of Art in London,
says: “The perception of art history as
a ‘soft subject’ and the demise of its
existence as an A-level seriously misun-
derstands a subject that is enormously
important to the economy, culture and
well-being of this country... art history
as a subject needs to be much better
known and not denigrated.”
In a statement, AQA says that the
“existing specification is challenging
to mark and award because of the spe-
cialist nature of the topics, the range
of options, difficulties in recruiting
suicient experienced examiners, and
limited entries”. Only 839 students took
the A-level exam this summer.
Meanwhile, a campaign to persuade
the UK government to include art and
other creative subjects in the English
Baccalaureate (EBacc) is ongoing. Critics
argue that to exclude art, music and
drama from the “core subjects” studied
by 14- to 16-year-olds will have long-term
negative consequences for the arts and
creative industries in England.
Gareth Harris- For comment, see p
“What kind
of signal
does the
axing of a
historical
discipline
send to
our young
people?”London’s
National Gallery
makes matching
£30m offer
for Pontormo
portrait
The painting had been
bought, and paid for,
by a US collector
ACQUISITIONS
London. The National Gallery in London
looks set to buy a portrait by Jacopo
Pontormo for just over £30m, after the
UK government privately agreed to ofer
an unprecedented £19m grant to cover
tax. On the eve of the 22 October dead-
line for the export licence deferral, the
gallery succeeded in raising the full sum
and was able to formally make a match-
ing ofer.
Pontormo’s Portrait of a Young Man
in a Red Cap (1530) depicts Carlo Neroni,
a Florentine aristocrat. It is one of only
15 surviving portraits by Pontormo,
and was believed to have been lost in
the 18th century until it resurfaced in a
private collection in 2008.
Last year, the work was sold by the
seventh Earl of Caledon to an anony-
mous foreign buyer for £30.6m. The Art
Newspaper understands that the new
owner is Tomilson (Tom) Hill, the New
York-based hedge-fund banker at the
Blackstone Group, although his spokes-
woman declined to comment.
Exceptional grant
In an unusual situation, the foreign
buyer paid for the painting before an
export licence application was made.This meant that a UK public collection
was unable to take advantage of the tax
concessions available on a private treaty
sale with the original seller. The conces-
sions on the work would have been very
considerable, so the painting could have
been bought by a UK public collection
for just under £12m.
After prolonged discussions, the
Treasury agreed to make an exceptional
grant to cover the loss of the tax conces-
sions, which amounted to nearly £19m.
This meant that the gallery had to find
just under £12m, and both the Herit-
age Lottery Fund and the Art Fund are
believed to have ofered grants.
A spokeswoman for the gallery says
that it is “delighted” with the special
government grant. She is hopeful that
the work will now be acquired, since
a matching ofer has just been made.
This would create the finest group of
Florentine High Renaissance paintings
outside Florence.
Martin BaileyJacopo
Pontormo’s
Portrait of a Young
Man in a Red
Cap (1530) is
set to join other
Florentine High
Renaissance
works in the
National Gallery