The question of whether museums should start selling their art for financial reasons was raised as early as last autumn when The Royal Opera in the UK sold a work by David Hockney for 18 million pounds.
Shortly afterwards, the Royal Academy of Art announced that they were planning to sell a marble statue, signed Michelangelo.
Since then, the Brooklyn Museum has also auctioned off twelve works, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is also planning to sell.
The reason for the need for sales is that the museums have lost almost all their ticket revenues as a result of the pandemic.
But in Sweden, none of the eight parliamentary parties want to see Swedish museums sell their art in order to survive financially.
- That museums should sell their art should not be seen as a last resort.
That situation should simply not occur, says Lawen Redar, cultural policy spokesperson for the Social Democrats.
"Important to get support packages in place"
According to Lawen Redar, Sweden, unlike countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, has a strongly publicly funded museum activity in which the state, region or municipality is the principal.
The museums therefore have stronger protection and not the same loss of income as they would have had if they had largely been financed by ticket revenues.
The private museums are the ones that have had the toughest time during the pandemic.
Instead of being forced to sell their art, the museums' loss of revenue should primarily be compensated with the help of state cultural support.
"It is unfortunate if financial problems as a result of the pandemic force a museum to sell things that it considers important for the collections to be as good as possible, or for other artistic reasons.
That is why it is so important that we get a support package in place ", writes Christer Nylander (L), chairman of the Culture Committee, to Kulturnyheterna.