Tower Hamlets: Cuts force Moore sale

I often feel the necessity of responding to every press release that arrives in my in-box. Consequently,  I have four hundred draft posts, many of them half-completed meditations on events that I have no chance of seeing. However, when I get something from a state organisation, my new political intentions encourage me to think about it in more detail.

But I have come up blank on this one. Tower Hamlets council have decided to sell a Henry Moore sculpture "due to the massive government cuts we are facing. With unprecedented government cuts to local authority budgets, the council finds itself in a difficult situation and being forced to make hard decisions."

Needing to save £100 million by 2015, the council, although reluctantly and bemoaning that it "should not have to choose between keeping a valuable cultural asset or protecting frontline services," decided to sell Draped Seated Woman (1957-8), which has been in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for the last fifteen years.

Originally, the statue was situated on an estate, but that got demolished.The council has noted that the sculpture might be valuable, but it was not really feasible to put it up in Tower Hamlets - another big sculpture got robbed a couple of years ago, and the insurance to protect a Henry Moore is slightly more expensive than third party cover on a car.

At this point, I ought to have an opinion: either condemning the council for being philistines - it's not like this is some obscure conceptualist that only I like, it's Henry Moore, a national treasure - or agreeing that art is not as important as things like housing benefit.

There is a list of problems faced by the council ("48.6% of children in Tower Hamlets live in poverty – 27,915 children. This is the highest rate in the UK... 11.2% of households are in fuel poverty, meaning they would need to spend more than 10% of their income on heating their home to a satisfactory level."). I am not impressed that the list includes figures for immigration into the area - not a problem in itself, Tower Hamlets - but the figures make grim reading.

Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman laid out the options. “We are faced with a stark choice in these times of recession. Do we keep this valuable sculpture in Yorkshire or do we try to sell this globally important artwork in order to release much needed funds to invest in local heritage projects we can sustain, affordable housing, improving opportunities and prospects for our young people and keeping our community safe?”

The press release had a further comment from  Cllr Rania Khan, cabinet member for Culture. “I find that Tower Hamlets is being judged rather harshly by the art world with regards to our decision to sell the sculpture. We are not the first council to do this in order to benefit our residents and I am sure we will not be the last."

Khan was not lying - Bolton council had a sale offer on 35 works, including a Picasso. In 2006, Bury Council raised £1.4m by selling LS Lowry's A Riverbank. As someone who has been shocked by the amount of money splashed around on art - remember the fuss about Hurst's prices? - I can see how using art as capital for social improvement is a solution to the apparent economic crisis.

But all I am left with is a nagging doubt about the terms of this debate. At some level, art is about more than its cost - when Moore said he wanted the sculpture to benefit the people of Tower Hamlets, it is unlikely he meant it to be a commodity and the post-war optimism that encouraged the purchase was the same optimism that saw council housing being built - not to be sold off but to provide sustainable homes for the less wealthy.

It is impossible to insist that an art work is worth more than the National Health Service, or that money for schools would be better spent on a symphony orchestra: yet as long as a sculpture or painting belongs to a council, it becomes part of the nation's cultural stock. Rahman seems aware of the tension between these positions and I am in the fortunate position of not having to make a decision, only gesture towards a discussion about the matter that doesn't take a simple dualistic position of deal or no deal.