Revealed: 15,000 artworks in Wolverhampton council stores

The council owns approximately 17,000 pieces of art but 90 per cent remains locked away at any one time.

There were calls today for more of the pieces to be made available to help put Wolverhampton 'on the map nationally'.

But Keren Jones, the council's service director for the economy, said it was common practice for art galleries to rotate their collections.

"Although we can only publicly display a fraction of our collection at any one time, our reserve collections are always available to view in our store by appointment," she said.

"Thousands of schoolchildren, researchers and special interest groups who visit every year have enjoyed access to our stored collections.

"In recent years we have also improved accessibility to the collections through a searchable archive. This includes images, subject to copyright, of hundreds of thousands of items in collections from galleries and museums in Wolverhampton, Sandwell, Dudley and Walsall.

"Items from Wolverhampton Art Gallery are also at times loaned to other galleries nationwide and internationally for specific exhibitions and on a similar basis the art gallery can receive loans from other galleries. The lender's name always appears next to the item being exhibited, extending Wolverhampton's cultural reputation beyond the region."

Conservative councillor Wendy Thompson said she wanted to see more art on display.

She said: "I really would like to see more of the art put on show, especially from the Victorian period. We could have some work in there that none of us have ever seen that could help put us on the map nationally.

"But I don't necessarily think we should be selling some of the art off. A great deal of care needs to be taken around selling off artwork that has been donated to the council by local artists. What might be a horrible piece of art to someone might be a brilliant piece to someone else - art is very subjective and we need to take great care when thinking about selling some of it off."

The 10 per cent of Wolverhampton council's art on display compares to the 0.80 per cent of Dudley Council's, with just 80 pieces of work from its 10,000-strong collection on show to the public at any one time.

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