A pastel by Edgar Degas led £59.7m worth of artworks into UK public collections last year, as donors used government-backed cultural schemes to settle £39.3m in tax liabilities.
Figures released by Arts Council England (ACE) show that works accepted through the Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) and Cultural Gifts Scheme (CGS) between April 2024 and March 2025 ranged widely, from Impressionist pastels and modern British painting to photography, manuscripts and historic furniture. For museums facing ever-narrowing acquisition budgets, the schemes remain one of the few reliable routes for major works to enter public ownership.
Degas’s Ballet Dancers (1888), a pastel showing four figures paused between rehearsals. Accepted through AIL from the estate of Ann Marks, the work settled £7.9m in tax and was allocated to the National Gallery in London. The gallery contributed a further £1.6m to secure the acquisition.
British modernism followed close behind. Four works by Ben Nicholson were accepted from the estate of Angela Verren Taunt. Three paintings, including Kingwater Valley, Cumberland (1929), were allocated to Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, while 1974 (Moonrise) went to Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. ACE noted that all four works were in good condition and valued fairly.
Photography made a strong showing. Tate received 73 prints by Bill Brandt under the Cultural Gifts Scheme, donated by John-Paul Kernot. Spanning the 1930s to the late 1970s, the group includes wartime scenes and landscapes, among them Tree in Autumn with Crescent Moon (1942). Many of the prints were made close to the time the negatives were taken, strengthening their historical value.
Vanessa Bell’s Vase, Flowers and Bowl (c.1918–20) was gifted to the Charleston Trust in Lewes and will be displayed at Charleston House in Firle. ACE described the painting as a transitional work, bridging Bell’s earlier abstract experiments and the more representational style she settled into during the 1920s. The painting came from the Radev Collection, which has previously used the scheme to place works by Duncan Grant into public hands.
Since 2015, objects valued at £543m have entered UK collections through AIL and CGS combined. Recent beneficiaries have ranged from National Museums Liverpool, which acquired Monet’s L’Epte à Giverny in 2023, to National Museums Scotland, which secured carboniferous fossils through the scheme.
Not all the allocations went to major national institutions. Four medieval deeds linked to the murderers of Thomas Becket were assigned to the South West Heritage Trust in Taunton. A Regency mahogany desk once used by both Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill was accepted by the National Trust for Hughenden Manor. At the same time, Churchill’s Freedom of the City of London award entered the London Archives.
Literary archives were also represented. The Bodleian Library in Oxford received 38 boxes of papers belonging to Watership Down author Richard Adams, described by ACE as a rich resource for the study of late-20th-century fiction.
Sir Nicholas Serota, chair of Arts Council England, said the schemes remain essential as financial pressures on public collections intensify. “At a time when acquisition budgets are under considerable strain, Acceptance in Lieu and the Cultural Gifts Scheme remain crucial,” he said, pointing to the range of material distributed across the UK.
Culture minister Baroness Twycross described this year’s transfers as “remarkable”. Michael Clarke, chair of the Acceptance in Lieu panel, noted that 2024–25 was the most productive year for allocations since 2020, both in volume and in the breadth of institutions benefiting.