Private Property and 'National Heritage': Art, Tax and the State (Helen Rees Leahy)
Helen is currently developing a new project within CRESC (ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change) entitled which explores the ways in which fiscal mechanisms have been, and continue to be, deployed by the British state both as an assertion of the national interest in privately owned works of art and also as a means of transfer to public ownership in museums. The project addresses the question, what social relations are produced and reinforced by the patterns and tensions of this heritage assemblage?
Read Helen's article on the campaign to acquire the Sutherland Titians here: Assembling Art, Constructing Heritage: Buying and selling Titian, 1798 to 2008