The New UK Prime Minister and the Art Trade - Summer 2024

What will the UK's new Labour government mean for the art trade?

From the end of tax breaks on overseas income to new anti-money laundering laws, experts weigh in on what we can expect from the change

The Labour party won a landslide victory in the UK’s general election on 4 July, upending 14 years of Conservative rule and gaining a massive 411 seats out of 650 in total.

But what will be the impact on the art trade? Traditionally, the Labour party is perceived to be less on the side of the wealthy—those who often buy art.

For instance, for years before July’s result, the Labour party had promised to end the “non-dom” tax regime, under which certain affluent UK residents did not pay tax on their overseas income. That policy was then adopted by the Conservatives under then-chancellor Jeremy Hunt, and even before the election had led to many high-income individuals fleeing the country for more tax-favourable countries.

However, the newly appointed chairman of the British Art Market Federation (BAMF), Martin Wilson, is optimistic about the impact Labour will have on the art trade.

Wilson is a lawyer and since 2018 has been the chief legal counsel and head of Fiduciary services at Phillips, having been previously been at Christie’s for 10 years, so he is perfectly placed to understand the complex issues involved.

“There have been gloomy voices claiming arts and culture are not a priority for the new government and that tax changes will upset things,” he says. “But I take the opposite view.” For a start, he says he is encouraged by the energy that comes with any new government, and he points out what the fact that the British art market is a “huge success story. Look at what the art market here creates in terms of tourism, and our position as a cultural hub. This government is, as they say, laser-focused on growth, so I think this is an opportunity to build on the existing success”.

What would he and BAMF like to see, and what is possible in this new environment? His answer is clear: “Just make doing business easier, notably for the import and export of art works, easing the administrative pressure put on large and small businesses.”

BAMF is already in talks with the Treasury about anti-money-laundering regulations, according to Wilson: “We would like to see the government and the Treasury reduce the administrative burden.” The other issue which he mentions is the possibility of simplifying Temporary Admission, which allows no duty to be paid on goods imported into the UK that will be swiftly re-exported, and which had already been under discussion before the election.

Overall, he hopes that the amount of paperwork could be alleviated. “When you look at the US—which is by far the largest art market in the world—they have the same concerns as we do but somehow manage to alleviate these with a lighter touch.”

Paul Hewitt, the director-general of the Society of London Art Dealers, reflects the same optimism. “Historically, the art industry has done well under Labour,” he says: “The past 14 years have seen growth impeded but now the new government is all about growth.” However he mentions one cloud on the horizon: the new import restrictions for cultural objects coming from outside the EU, which will be applicable in a year’s time.

However, Eva Langret, the artistic director of Frieze London, is a little less positive. “There are so many things on the agenda for the new government,” she says: “I fear that it can’t give priority to art and culture, that will come behind many other issues that are more pressing, but I am hopeful for change.” https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/07/11/what-will-the-uks-new-labour-government-mean-for-the-art-trade?utm_source=The+Art+Newspaper+Newsletters&utm_campaign=fbceed9b85-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_07_04_10_07_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-856e02fd9f-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

17. Looted Asante treasures find a new palace home in Ghana

Objects from the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum are on loan to the Asante king, while the Fowler Museum has transferred ownership of seven items

Martin Bailey

10 July 2024

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Victoria & Albert Museum director Tristram Hunt meets the Ghanaian Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II at a ceremony marking the return of Asante treasures at the Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi © Elijah Donkor

Victoria & Albert Museum director Tristram Hunt meets the Ghanaian Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II at a ceremony marking the return of Asante treasures at the Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi

© Elijah Donkor

Strutting peacocks greet visitors outside the Manhyia Palace Museum in the centre of Kumasi, Ghana, where Asante royal treasures from two of the UK’s leading museums have recently gone on display.

Built in 1925 by the colonial authorities as the residence of Prempeh I, the Asante king who had been exiled to the Seychelles in 1900, the palace partly represented a symbolic act of reconciliation after five 19th-century Anglo-Asante (Ashanti) wars in what became the colony of the Gold Coast. It was during these wars that loot was seized, some of it ending up in UK museums.

The peacocks are the descendants of the birds given to the Asantehene (Asante king) by the Shah of Iran in the early 1970s. As Ivor Agyeman-Duah, the museum’s director, points out, they “scream to welcome” new arrivals.

Prempeh I lived in the Manhyia Palace until his death in 1931, when he was succeeded by Prempeh II. After the latter died in 1970 his successor moved into a more modern residence. Five years later the Manhyia building was opened to visitors as a museum (“manhyia” means “gathering of the people”).

Ivor Agyeman-Duah, director of Manhyia Palace Museum, anticipates that the loans could increase visitor numbers from 90,000 to 200,000 a year

Nkansahrexford

The palace’s ground floor remains much as it was, filled with 1920s British middle-class furniture. Among the curiosities on view are a vintage telephone and a radio encased in a replica of a symbolic Asante stool. Another object on display may come as a surprise: a medal awarded to Prempeh II in 1937, when he was made a knight of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Adjacent to the ground floor is a modern extension, which houses effigies of earlier Asantehenes, wearing traditional garb.

The objects from the British Museum (BM) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London were unveiled on 1 May in an impressive ceremony presided over by the present Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II. The V&A was represented by its director Tristram Hunt and the BM by a trustee, Chris Gosden.

Speaking at the event, Hunt acknowledged the sentiments that surround the returned objects. He spoke of “history tainted by the scars of imperial conflict” and recognised “the enduring cultural, historical and spiritual significance these artefacts hold for the Asante people”.

Important distinctions between UK and US items

The UK loans are displayed in three glass cases. Most important are gold items, including soul-washers’ badges, a figure of an eagle and a symbolically charged peace pipe, as well as the important ceremonial sword known as the Mponponsuo. There are 15 objects from the BM (although Agyeman-Duah would ideally have liked 20) and 17 from the V&A. A fourth case has seven items from the Fowler Museum at the University of California in Los Angeles. Few other historic traditional objects are displayed elsewhere in the building.

Most of the returned items are colonial loot, seized by British troops during the Asante wars. During an 1874 operation the British looted and then blew up an earlier palace of the Asantehene. A few other loans were legitimately acquired, not in battle.

There is an important distinction between the items being returned from the UK and the US. Ownership of the seven Fowler items, which were donated to the Californian museum in 1965 by the UK’s Wellcome Collection, has been formally transferred to the Asantehene. He now holds ownership and is free to use the regalia for ceremonial purposes. The BM and V&A objects, however, are required to be treated as artworks. The UK museums are prohibited from deaccessioning, under acts of Parliament, and are therefore returning material as loans. This is initially for three years, with the option of a three-year extension. The delicate loan negotiations were led on the Asantehene’s side by Agyeman-Duah and his colleague Malcolm McLeod, a former BM curator.

Barnaby Phillips, who is writing a book about the Asante loans, attended the ceremony. “It was a moving event, the culmination of years of diplomacy,” he says. “Although the concept of a loan leaves many dissatisfied, there was a tangible sense of satisfaction that these objects were returning home.”

There are also differences between the two UK museums on colonial loot. Hunt would like to be able to restitute ownership of colonial loot, but is unable to deaccession. The BM is less keen on the idea of restitution (partly because of the Parthenon Marbles dispute), although it is open to loans.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the Manhyia Palace Museum received 90,000 visitors a year—60% Ghanaian and the remainder international. Agyeman-Duah hopes that with the new loans the number will rise to 200,000.

In a surprise move, Tutu II used the return of UK museum objects as an opportunity to question the sale of artworks by contemporary Ghanaian artists to buyers outside the country. He commented that much of their work is “bought by non-Africans with [an] interest in them, branded and marketed for bigger profits”. The Asantehene added: “When I next travel to England in the coming months [probably July], I will be meeting some of these Ghanaian artists, painters, goldsmiths and see how we can collectively work with some of the traditional art groups. When the modalities are set up, we will also work with private galleries in the country [Ghana] to at least retain some of their collections.” https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/07/10/looted-asante-treasures-find-a-new-palace-home-in-ghana?utm_source=The+Art+Newspaper+Newsletters&utm_campaign=9f0dec5360-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_07_04_10_07_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-856e02fd9f-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D