AN ORCHESTRATED campaign in favour of selling objects from national collections seems to be gathering momentum. In the National Audit Office report, Management of the Collections of the English National Museums and Galleries, vigorously pursued disposal policies' are one of the few positive options considered by the Comptroller and Auditor General in an otherwise unrelieved litany of problems - shortage of display space, inadequate storage, backlogs in conservation, inexistent stocktaking. Although legal im-pediments and curatorial objections to de-accessioning are noted, the report gives the impression that the sale of ob-jects would provide a solution to otherwise intractable dif-ficulties such an inference would be wholly mistaken. 

It is the Auditor General's job to be bleakly materialistic. His office is to report to parliament on the 'economy, efficiency and effectiveness' with which public bodies use public funds. In this case he limits himself to the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate Gallery - only three of the nineteen UK museums defined as National. These last are reviewed in a separate, and more encouraging, report by the Museums and Galleries Commission, to be published on 16th May. This restates the principles and goals proper to National Museums, and the necessity of 'basic' public funding to fulfil their functions. It will be discussed in next month's Editorial. 

Of the three museums reviewed in the Audit Office report, the Tate Gallery is the odd man out, in terms of both its much smaller size, and the character of its collections, which include what the report uneasily describes as 'the dif-ficult area of modern art'. Unlike the BM and the V & A, the Tate - together with the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery- has at present no power to sell items from its collections, although a parliamentary bill scheduled for 1988-89 would, if enacted, force this power upon the Trustees of these three Galleries. All three boards have clearly stated that they do not wish to have powers of disposal. But the tone of the NAO report is symptomatic of the times. Once the Trustees of all the major museums have powers to sell, there will doubtless be increasing pressure for them to do so. A policy of selling would be nonsensical for the tiny and well-housed collections of the National Gallery (some two thousand paintings all on view to the public), or for the National Portrait Gallery, which has a partly archival character. But is it reasonable to object to pruning in the 'overgrown' collections of the BM and V & A (7 million objects between them, many in storage), or in the 'difficult' holdings of the Tate Gallery, if it can be shown that disposal would solve or even alleviate the problems of display, storage, conservation and stock-taking enumerated in the Audit Office report? 

It is worth asking whether these problems have been correctly identified. In places the report exhibits the same lack of comprehension of the relationship between display and storage in museums that has been evident in recent press coverage. The public needs informed help to under-stand that many categories of objects, such as textiles, prints and drawings, would be irrevocably damaged by permanent display, and that the arrangement of reference collections with adequate access must take priority over exhibition in these cases. At the V & A re-ordering of storage is actively underway in tandem with re-organisation of the public galleries. It is ironic that the alarming statistics cited on conservation backlogs reflect rising standards in conservation as much as the inevitable decay of things. In a report of 1980, for example, a 'substantial proportion' of the 11,000 objects in the V & A's European sculpture col-lections were said to need conservation treatment, 'although they were in a stable condition'. Seen against the problems of sculpture in the open air, exposed to atmospheric pol-lution, such statements are less worrying than a casual reader might suppose. Here, and in many other sections of the report, it is acknowledged that inadequate staffing is at the root of the problem. 

The NAO report rightly stresses the need for adequate stocktaking in the National Museums, based on up-to-date computerised inventories. It is a shock to look back at the Rayner scrutiny of the V & A published only six years ago, where the expert stocktaker from the Cabinet Office argued against computerised systems of record-keeping on grounds of cost and impracticality, and recommended the abandon-ment of quinquennial stocktaking, suggesting that annual checks be limited to 'the most valuable and attractive items in, each collection'. The new emphasis on adequate stocktaking is welcome, but the report states - without comment - that chronic staff shortages make it unlikely. 

It is clear that the Audit Office's drift to de-accessioning is a counsel of despair, in the face of inadequate funding. But it must be stressed that the sale of objects- in so far as it is permitted by statute at the BM and the V & A - would in any case make no significant inroads into prob-lems of storage and conservation. Disposal is rightly per-mitted only of 'duplicates', of objects rendered useless by damage, or of pieces deemed 'unsuitable for retention', whose disposal would not be detrimental to the interests of students or other members of the public. Revenue raised from sales may be used only for further acquisitions. At-tempts to dispose of large numbers of objects by Trustees would bring them into clear conflict with the law. The danger is that readily quantifiable criteria, such as frequency of consultation, might be sought by irresponsible Trustees as grounds for retention or disposal. The BM's clear state-ment of its belief in the value of 'virtually all' of its collections must be supported by all who have ever used even a fragment of its incomparable holdings. 

National museums have a statutory duty to add to their collections, and there is no suggestion in the NAO report that levels of acquisition have been irresponsibly or un-predictably high. Indeed it is hard to see how this would be possible given successive cuts and freezes in purchase grants, together with soaring market prices. The supple-ment of recent acquisitions of ceramics and glass made by the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities at the British Museum published in this issue (p.399) is a rep-resentative and telling example of the National Museums' continued pursuit of excellence in researching and cata-loguing their acquisitions. If they are to continue to 'excel in scholarship' which the Museums and Galleries Com-mission rightly takes to be one of their distinguishing characteristics and most important functions they will need the resources of the totality of their collections.