Museum Sales

Question

If your office is responsible for multiple councils, please treat this as a separate FOI request to each council.  

• How many museums does your council run?
• How many items are there in your museums’ collections? What is their combined value?
• How many of those items are currently on display? What is their combined value?
• For each of the last four financial years, ending with 2017/18:
  1. How many items have been sold by your museums? What is the sum of money those sales have raised?
  2. How much of that money was kept within museums rather than going to other parts of the council?
  3. How many items have been bought by your museums? How much, in total, was paid for them?
• Over the last four years, what is the single biggest amount raised by selling an item? What was the item in question? How and to whom was it sold?
• Even if no sales have been made, has the council considered selling any of its collection at any point over the last four years?

Answer

1)      How many museums does your council run? Two

2)      How many items are there in your museums’ collections? What is their combined value? Approx 11,200, £2,488,000

3)      How many of those items are currently on display? What is their combined value? 240, £120,000

4)      For each of the last four financial years, ending with 2017/18:

a.       How many items have been sold by your museums? What is the sum of money those sales have raised? None

b.      How much of that money was kept within museums rather than going to other parts of the council? N/A

c.       How many items have been bought by your museums? How much, in total, was paid for them? 3 purchases, total of £2,580 (£2,550 of this was payment of a ‘finders fee’ for items reported to Treasure Trove and awarded to Museum nan Eilean via the Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel.  The National Fund for Acquisitions and Artfund contributed towards these payments.

5)      Over the last four years, what is the single biggest amount raised by selling an item? What was the item in question? How and to whom was it sold? N/A

6)      Even if no sales have been made, has the council considered selling any of its collection at any point over the last four years? No