In the first decade of the twentieth century, Britain experienced the foundation of an unprecedented number of societies, funds, trusts and publications concerned with the promulgation of art. Not a year passed without some group of high-minded people meeting in a room to pass a resolution or formulate a course of action to further the cause of the display, collecting or safekeeping of works of art. At the same time, a series of superb historical exhibitions high lighted the riches of British private collections. New galleries opened to the public – the Wallace Collection in 1900 and, in strong contrast, the Whitechapel in 1901 – as well as several dealers promoting art, old and new. The National Portrait Gallery escaped from Bethnal Green to its present home in St Martin's Place. Public interest was fired in 1905 when the directorships of the British Museum, the Nation al Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum all became vacant, a coincidence leading to much discussion on the roles of directors, trustees and their relation to government. Two years earlier The Burlington Magazine had been founded in a spirit of protest at the unaccountable lack in Britain of a serious journal devoted to the history of art. And in the same year, with an overlapping cast of characters, came the National Art-Collections Fund whose centenary has been celebrated throughout the country with exhibitions all through the year culminating in the current spectacular Saved! at London's Hayward Gallery.1

There has been some misunderstanding in reviews of Saved! of the purpose of the Fund. It was not established to buy works of art outright and present them to suitable galleries and museums (although it has done this on occasions), nor was it founded with the prime intention of stopping important works from being sold abroad. Its aim was to raise sufficient money through subscription and gift to contribute to the acquisition of works that institutions desired for their collections. This is still its essential role and as such it has been extraordinarily successful. Admittedly, its early activities were given some urgency by a climate in which the transatlantic drift of masterpieces from grand British collections began to seem inexorable with every liner that left Southampton. Certainly, at a time of 'lavish competition from America', the Fund helped to stop many important works from possible export, the Rokeby Venus being its most famous single act of salvage. Chiefly, however, it has helped museums in Britain to acquire works from dealers and from auction. The variety of works in Saved! is astonishing, as much due to the selector Richard Verdi's truffiing instincts as to the NACF's catholic remit. Reviewers have com plained that few great modern European works have entered British collections through the Fund, particularly in its first fifty or sixty years. But it was never the intention to buy such works. With more justification one might com plain of the shortcomings in that area of the Contemporary Art Society, set up in 1910 and sharing some of its personnel (D.S. MacColl, Roger Fry) with the Burlington and the NACF. While it acquired a number of 'difficult' modern British works for presentation to museums, its record on foreign acquisitions, in spite of a special fund for the purpose, was poor. Looking at the sampling of contemporary works at the Hayward, one would think that the Fund had acquit ted itself well in this particular field. But to study the extensive lists of acquisitions supported by the Fund in its annual Review is a somewhat different story. The drive in recent years to help museums acquire contemporary fine and applied art, admirable in itself, might be criticised, demonstrating that a wider expertise and more rigorous selection are needed on the Executive Committee.

The Fund's centenary has come at a time when debate is rife on the very meaning of what constitutes national heritage, that overworked phrase used as a catch-all for every conceivable kind of object, indigenous or not. When does something become a national treasure, one that, if allowed to go abroad, would impoverish the British people and be lost as a crucial piece of its cultural jigsaw? When is an object of such local importance that it must not leave the vicinity to which it is narrowly attached? What is loot and plunder, what is an ethical acquisition of a work by one civilisation from another? These were among the topics raised in a wide-ranging and stimulating two-day international conference organised by the NACF in London on nth and 12th November. Not surprisingly, Raphael's Madonna of the pinks emerged as a focus for the ensuing debates. It was sold ear lier this year by the Duke of Northumberland to the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, but its export was stopped in order for the National Gallery in London, where the painting has hung for a decade, to raise funds for its acquisition. 

At the time of writing, while negotiations continue over the tax status of Raphael's Madonna, its ultimate fate is unresolved. What is clear, however, is that, just as the Rokeby Venus was a leitmotif of discussions concerning heritage at the time of the NACF's foundation, so the case of the Madonna of the pinks has fuelled debates for our own period. Indeed, today's arguments would have been immediately familar to our Edwardian ancestors, while many of the points made in an Editorial in this Magazine in 1906 on the lessons to be drawn from the example of the Rokeby Venus are as pertinent now as then.2 Like Velazquez's Venus, the Madonna has achieved British nationality by virtue of her long residence in an English ancestral collection.3 The exceptionally high prices asked for both pictures – £45,000 for the Velazquez, up to £30 rnillion for the Raphael – led some to doubt their authenticity, quality and condition and others to question whether such sums might not be better spent on a greater number of objects. Then, as now, a pub he appeal was launched, backed by the NACF, but in neither case were the pennies dropped into collecting boxes sufficient to cover the cost. It was only the last-minute generosity of Edward VII, who donated £8,000 towards the Velazquez appeal, that secured the Rokeby Venus for the nation, while without the intervention of the Heritage Lottery Fund, which has pledged eleven and a half rnillion pounds for the Raphael, the National Gallery would have again fallen far short of its target. 

We appreciate the Gallery's efforts to keep the Raphael at Trafalgar Square, and applaud the Heritage Lottery Fund for resisting pressure to declare the picture outside its domain. At the same time, however, we acknowledge the views expressed by Sir Nicholas Serota, director of Tate, in a provocative (albeit widely misreported) contribution to the NACF conference.4 Tate itself has been campaigning this year to buy Reynolds's Portrait of Omai from Castle Howard, sold at auction to a private collector in 2001 and subsequently deferred for export. (Although an anonymous benefactor has offered £12.5 million to match the sale price, its future is also uncertain.) There can be no disagreement about this splendid portrait's status as part of the national heritage, nor any question that it does not satisfy the three criteria of the Waverley rules on export. There is no doubt that the Tate, as the national gallery of British art, would be its most fitting home. But Sir Nicholas is right, nonetheless, to challenge the belief that every work, even by a native artist, is automatically better seen in a British rather than a foreign public collection and that this presumption 'needs to be tested by reasoned argument rather than simple appeals to national or social chauvinism'. He cites the example of Turner's Whaling, the presence of which in the Metropoli tan Museum of Art, New York, surely does more to enhance the artist's international reputation than would its inclusion in the Turner Bequest at the Clore Gallery in Lon don. In Italy, for example, there is a proud record in modern times of protecting its patrimony but a lamentable one in placing its art in a wider context: to enter the National Gallery at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome and encounter room after room of Italian pictures – some of them master pieces, many of them not – can be a dispiriting experience. Such parochialism should have no place in public collections. As politicians, businessmen and the media insistently remind us, the world is shrinking and the ability to travel freely, and cheaply, has never been easier. In these circumstances, proprietorial attitudes to owning works of art become perhaps less defensible. Recently, schemes of co ownership have been developed within Britain as well as internationally; and neither the Getty nor the National Gallery has discounted the possibility that they might end up as joint custodians of the Madonna of the pinks. Along with other cooperative ventures between museums, such collaborations can be of great benefit to the public. 

Of course, these arrangements owe more to financial imperatives than altruistic intentions. Underlying all the discussions at the NACF conference was the acceptance that state funding for acquisitions, already at a historic low, are likely to fall even further. With governments everywhere in retreat on state funding, attempts to persuade them to forego revenue, in the form of tax breaks, will probably prove more successful than pleas for increased grants. Earlier this year a Treasury-sponsored committee, under the chairmanship of Sir Nicholas Goodison, was asked to assess the impact and effectiveness of current support for museums to acquire works of art. Reform of the tax system, especially in relation to incentives, reliefs and exemptions, is expected to be high on its list of recommendations when it reports this month. It is to be hoped that the government, which is constantly urging museums to find 'imaginative solutions' to their funding problems, will be equally imaginative in its response to any proposals from the Goodison Review to create a more favourable environment in Britain for individual and corporate philanthropy – such as has existed for many years in the US and has recently been introduced, with encouraging results, in France. 

Because the sale of major works of art is often occasioned by death, divorce or urgent financial crisis, the timing of their appearance on the market is bound to be unpredictable. We therefore welcome the establishment of a new panel called 'Treasures for our Future' (a private body, sup ported by the government) which will advise private owners on how best to dispose of their cultural assets. Already, it has its first case on its hands. The Church Commissioners have announced their intention to sell the set of paintings by Zurbarán of Jacob and his sons which have hung in the Bishop's Palace at Auckland Castle, County Durham, since the mid-eighteenth century. The panel hopes to facilitate their sale to the nearby Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle. The NACF is represented on 'Treasures for our Future' and will continue to play an important campaigning and funding role in future appeals to save such works of national heritage. But increasingly it will need to adopt a less reactive approach to helping museums build their collections. The hope was expressed in these pages in 1995 that the establishment of the Heritage Lottery Fund would encourage museums to 'see beyond the necessity of "saving" export-stopped works to make enlightened acquisitions outside existing patterns of British collecting', such as buying works of art from abroad.5 In reality, however, almost ninety per cent of Lottery monies for acquisitions have been used to 'save' works that were already in the country. Given public and political scrutiny of the Lottery Fund's activities, it would be optimistic to expect a reversal of this policy. Here, then, is a challenge for the Art Fund as it enters its second century, invigorated by the success of its first hundred years, as spelt out so magnificently at the Hayward Gallery.

1. The exhibition continues at the Hayward Gallery to 18th January. Catalogue: Saved! 100 Years of the National Art Collections Fund. Edited by Richard Verdi, with contributions by Martin Bailey, Philip Conisbee, Juliet Gardner, Flaminia Gennari Santori, James Hall, Lynda Nead, Robert St?nuit, Polly Toynbee and Roderick Whitfield. 312 pp. incl. 246 col. pis. + 33 figs in col. + b. & w. (Hayward Gallery and the National Art Collections Fund, in association with Scala Publishers, Lon don, 2003), ?29.95 (HB); >Ci9-95 (PB). ISBN 1-85759 3049/332 234 2. 

2. Editorial, 'The Lessons of the Rokeby Velasquez', The Burlington Magazine 8 (January 1906), pp. 225-28.

3. See N. Penny: 'Raphael's 'Madonna dei garofani' rediscovered', The Burlington Magazine 134 (February 1992), pp.67-81. 

4. Sir Nicholas Serota's speech, 'Why Save Art for the Nation?', is published in full in this month's edition of The Art Newspaper. 

5. Editorial, 'Museums and the Lottery', The Burlington Magazine 138 (July 1995), p.427.