AIB Bank Art Collection - Donated

Judgement Day

Interesting to hear Jimmy Deenihan on the news today regarding the 'donation' by the AIB of some of the more valuable items from its extensive collection to the State. It was laughable to hear the Minister parroting the bank's spin on things i.e. that they had built the collection to help Irish artists and keep the paintings in the country. Given that most of the 'donated' paintings are by long dead artists - Jack B.Yeats, Paul Henry, Sir William Orpen etc. I doubt whether they gained much from the bank's largesse. One of the paintings was "Lough Altan" by Paul Henry - please somebody tell me that this wasn't the same picture sold by Whyte's as recently as last November!!


"Lough Altan" by Paul Henry sold for €75,000 at Whyte's (Dublin) Nov.2011

Anyway, from this Irish art lover's point of view I would have preferred to see these paintings going on the market with the proceeds going to some worthy cause such as Crumlin Children's Hospital. As for the paintings being donated - I thought that the State already owned AIB.

More here: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0305/1224312792573.html

coylemj

Not all of the art was purchased to help Irish artists, some of it was purchased to adorn the offices of the senior execs so the motivation would have been more corporate vanity than munificence. I remember once being in the personal boardroom of one such person who later became CEO, on the wall was a Sean Keating I think of the workers building the Ardacrusha power station.

Judgement Day

Yep, the whole art collection thing was a 'willy waving' competition between so-called high flyers of Irish industry. If they flogged the entire AIB collection they might just scrape together the €8 million that's needed for Crumlin. http://www.cmrf.org/