Council to sell El Greco, Goya to stop budget cuts

The Royal Academy's latest exhibition is showing the public the treasure stores of the regional museums. But many collections are starved of funds, like that at Barnard Castle which Simon Tait says is threatening to sell some of its finest works to keep the wolf from the door.

Durham County Council is threatening to sell art treasures from one of Britain's leading regional museums, including paintings by El Greco, Goya, Turner and Canaletto, to stave off budget cuts.

The pictures, which could raise much more than the pounds 5-pounds 8m the council needs to find, could go for auction if the Government does not step.

The paintings usually adorn the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle, but eight of its most important ones are on show in the Royal Academy's exhibition, "Art Treasures of England", partly mounted to highlight the plight of some regional collections. They include Goya's Don Juan Antonio Melendez Valdes and El Greco's Tears of St Peter - bought by the museum's founders in the last century for just pounds 8.

Durham, whose arts, libraries and museums committee meets later today to decide whether to push recommendations through, are also proposing to close the Bowes for five months from November to save pounds 35,000.

The museum was built by John and Josephine Bowes to house their collection and opened in 1892. Last year, it was designated as being of national importance by the Museums and Galleries Commission.

Alan Borg, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, said: "The Bowes collection is stuffed full of master works of one sort of another whose overall value to the museum runs into millions, but the value to the nation is beyond price. It must be kept together ... and we will do whatever we can to help ensure that."

The threat to sell is a direct challenge to the Government and to Chris Smith, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who has commissioned a review of museums funding which is due to report in the summer. Last autumn, the Government failed to honour an election pledge to abolish museum admission charges.

Patrick Conway, director of arts and museums for Durham said: "It is a very unpleasant decision we have to make, but year on year we have had to find cuts which have included closing 24 libraries. "We have been talking to the Government about them taking national responsibility for the Bowes collection, as they have for collections in Tyne and Wear and Manchester and York. They agree that the Bowes pictures are of international importance and deserve support but that if they provide funding something else would have to be cut so we have got nowhere."

Income from the sale of paintings would be used to create an endowment fund for the future upkeep of a museum. Mr Conway added: "I want to make it plain that this is a very, very last resort. I don't want to have to do it."