From the NS archive: Hanging’s too good for them 12 June 1998: On the unofficial secrets being peddled about Labour’s attitude to art. By Wendy Baron A 1998 BBC2 programme, “The Secret Art of Government”, had columnists speculating on the meaning of prime minister Tony Blair’s choice of art in No 10. But, wrote Wendy Baron in the New Statesman, the story is far more complicated than one may assume. Baron, a former director of the Government Art Collection (GAC), described the purpose and problems of the GAC, then comprised of around 13,000 items distributed globally in diplomatic missions, government offices, and residences. The GAC had to contend with ministers who borrowed art from public galleries and then moved on to another country – as diplomats often do – without returning the works. Then there was the problem of what went where. It made sense to hang a Paula Rego in the British embassy in Lisbon; but what about sending valuable works to countries with sauna-like climates, or termite problems? “Because those eligible to borrow from it are practised in the use of power,” wrote Baron, “one of the GAC's most fraught duties is to resist attempts to use it as a lending library. A delicate touch is needed to disabuse those who believe that works of art are a perk or status symbol: a ministerial equivalent of the key to the executive loo.”