The National Galleries of Scotland roadshow will include a £50 million Titian saved for the nation after being put up for sale by the Duke of Sutherland, and the trip will herald a campaign to purchase a second painting by the Italian master from the aristocrat for a further £50m.
Thirteen Italian works worth hundreds of millions of pounds, including Titian’s Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto and works by Veronese and Tintoretto, are to be exhibited in Atlanta, Minneapolis and Houston from October to August, 2011.
The tour is the first expression of a new relationship between the National Galleries of Scotland and the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia’s state capital, which will bring about a series of exhibitions over the next four years.
It is also the first concerted attempt by the National Galleries to tap into the fundraising potential of the 10 million Americans and Canadians considered part of the “Scottish diaspora” in north America.
The High Museum in Atlanta is a large venue with 3,000 square feet of exhibition space, and has a recent history of forming relationships with major European art institutions, recently completing a three-year deal with the Louvre in Paris, whose shows attracted 1.3 million people, as well as working with institutions in Florence, Italy.
Yesterday John Leighton, director general of the National Galleries, said there would be considerable “intangible and tangible” rewards from the galleries’ new American relationship.
Fundraising outside the public purse is vitally important to the galleries, as they still need to raise £50m to buy Diana and Callisto outright.
The deal to buy Diana and Actaeon secured for another generation the rest of the Duke’s Bridgewater Collection, which includes three paintings by Raphael, a signature self-portrait work by Rembrandt and the Seven Sacraments by Poussin.
However, government money is unlikely to be forthcoming for Diana and Callisto, and the economic downturn in the UK and the US will make it difficult to attract contributions from other public bodies.
The Bridgewater Collection, of which Diana and Callisto is part, is considered to be the core of the NGS collection, and vital to its reputation as a world-class gallery.
In return for the loans, for which the American galleries will pay insurance of about $800m (£525m), Mr Leighton said the galleries would receive confidential “participation fees” and other, less tangible benefits.
Mr Leighton said: “A key part of this is the profile-raising abroad, and although I don’t like the phrase, the ‘friend-raising’, too. We have done a lot of work in the last five to ten years raising our profile on a national level, but it is very important to develop and extend our international audience and reputation as well.
“It is very easy to sit here and think the world knows we exist, but that is not always the case. Not only is this a chance to attract the audiences of Atlanta, Houston and Minneapolis, but it’s a fantastic opportunity to tell a whole other audience about our entire collection.
“You can sit and wait for donors and benefactors to come to you, or you can be proactive, and that is part of what we are doing with this arrangement.”
Mr Leighton said the galleries would retain the first option on the second Titian until the end of 2012, and after that payments could be made in instalments.
“We know it is going to be tough and we know this is not going to be the answer to all the problems we will have raising the money, but it can be one element in turning a very difficult situation into a positive one,” he said.
Mr Leighton was asked how he might respond to any criticism of the paintings leaving the country for such a long period of time.
“We have to see this arrangement as a great opportunity. These paintings have been with us for a very long time, and will be with us for a very long time,” he said.
“They will remain in Scotland for many generations to come. This is a very small window and an opportunity that only comes around very infrequently, so I do not see this as a frivolous endeavour, but an opportunity to fulfil our potential.”
Michael Shapiro, director of the High Museum of Art added: “With this exhibition, we hope to help raise awareness of how vital it is to keep masterpieces like this accessible to the public. It also continues our program of bringing great works of art from around the world to Atlanta and then to the other cities across the US.”
The exhibition, called Venetian Masterpieces, will first be in Atlanta from October 16 to January 2 before moving to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and then to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
Scotland’s new special relationships
Atlanta The capital and most populous city in the state of Georgia, it hosted the Olympic Games in 1996. It is home to the world’s busiest airport and headquarters to corporations such as Coca Cola and, AT&T. The High Museum of Art is part of the huge Woodruff Arts Centre, and the biggest museum in the southeast of the US. It holds 11,000 works of art and features three new buildings designed by leading architect Renzo Piano.
Houston The fourth largest city in the US, and the largest city in Texas, with a population of about 2.2 million. It is named after Sam Houston, a legendary 19th century American general. Only New York City is home to more leading Fortune 500 companies. Its Museum of Fine Arts is one of the largest in the US, and is home to 56,000 works of art.
Minneapolis Along with St Paul, it forms the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Its Museum of Fine Arts is home to 80,000 objects. Minnesota has a population of 5.2 million, and many Minnesotans are of Nordic or German descent: their American football team, the Vikings, is named for this reason.
