British contemporary art collector Charles Saatchi, who is better known as the patron of young artists, has decided to gift over 200 artworks, worth over £25 million, and the Saatchi Gallery, which is located in Chelsea, London, to the nation.
Among the 200 artworks which will form the museum’s permanent collection, Iraqi-born Saatchi has included Indian artist Jitish Kallat’s sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi’s speech on the eve of Dandi March. Made of 4,500 bone-like alphabets, the sculpture called Public Notice 2 has been exhibited in the gallery since the show on Indian contemporary art called “The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today”.
The sculpture, which lines the entire wall in one of the display halls, is a play on the opposite concepts of violence and non-violence.
Media-shy Saatchi, 66, is famous in Britain for having an incredible eye for modern art and for making top artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin famous and rich by buying and displaying their works when no one knew about them. Last year, the Saatchi Gallery had exhibitions of his Chinese, Middle Eastern and American collections. This year, he turned his focus on Indian artists.
The Saatchi Gallery is one of the largest in the world and has over 70,000 sq ft space for art. It will now become Museum of Contemporary Art for London.
“The artworks will be donated to a foundation, MOCA London, and the Saatchi Gallery is currently in discussion with potential government departments who would own the works on behalf of the nation,” the Saatchi Gallery announced on Thursday afternoon.
Alongside the permanent collection, the gift will include many works which the management of the museum may trade, using the revenues to acquire new works. The new acquisitions will all be added to the foundation’s holdings, the gallery added. “The museum must always be able to display a “living” and evolving collection of work, rather than an archive of art history,” according to Saatchi.
Reacting to the news about his sculpture being part of Saatchi’s gift, 36-year-old Kallat said: “This is wonderful news indeed. Public Notice 2 recounts a moment of sub-continental colonial history that is inseparably tied to modern British history; so donating the piece in a national holding fittingly delivers Gandhi’s words and his poetic call of combining truth and non-violence with civil disobedience, into the custodial possession of the state.”
The gift will not cost the UK government in taxes and the gallery said that all costs associated with the storage, restoration or cataloguing the collection will be borne by the new museum.
“The entire gift will be unveiled in three exhibitions that fill the Saatchi Gallery, starting in 2012,” the gallery added.