Auckland art gallerist on why NZ urgently needs a cultural gifting programme

But there is a fix. And it’s not radical, expensive or untested.

A Cultural Gifting Programme (CGP) would allow individuals or organisations to gift artworks to public institutions and receive tax relief equivalent to the work’s fair market value – just as they would for cash donations. These programmes exist across Australia, the UK, Canada and the US. They are carefully regulated, well understood and demonstrably effective. New Zealand is a notable outlier. We are one of the few countries in the OECD without such a scheme.

Introducing a cultural gifting programme would make a meaningful difference. It would allow public collections to grow again. It would encourage collectors to place important works in public hands. It would support artists at critical points in their careers. It would send a clear signal: that Aotearoa values the long-term cultural contribution of contemporary art and help grow – as it has in Australia – a robust philanthropic culture that effectively supports our public institutions.

Sir Nicholas Serota, former director of the Tate Modern, identified the adoption of a CGP in the early 1990s as a game-changer for Britain. He stated it was instrumental in allowing their cultural institutions to remain relevant and keep pace with other major galleries and museums across wider Europe and globally.

A cultural gifting programme is a sensible accompaniment to the recently implemented Resale Royalties Scheme (RRS), which came into effect late last year as part of a tranche of reciprocal policies under New Zealand’s free trade agreement with Britain. Like this scheme, a cultural gifting programme would directly benefit artists and their families. A well-designed and implemented programme would be particularly beneficial to senior artists – especially women and indigenous practitioners whose work has been historically overlooked and underpriced – enabling them to materially benefit by giving significant works to public institutions. For younger artists, a CGP would help ease the pressure on acquisition budgets often consumed by landmark “gap-filling” purchases, thus making it easier for public institutions to proactively collect current work by emerging and mid-career practitioners. Moreover, it would allow these artists to consider donating works from exhibitions should they so wish – knowing that such gifts could be properly valued, recognised and rewarded.

Significantly, it would also reward those rare collectors with vision, ambition and aptitude who have chosen to collect more challenging work that is deemed significant by museums and their curators but perhaps is less well understood or appreciated by the general public. By doing so, the collectors help institutions broaden public understanding and deepen knowledge by exposing audiences to a wider range of art.

Critics will argue that a CGP only benefits the wealthy. But that argument misses the point. Wealthy donors already receive tax relief for cash gifts. A CGP simply extends this same principle to cultural assets. The real beneficiaries are institutions, artists, and the public – who gain access to significant works that might otherwise remain hidden, in private homes or sold offshore.

A Cultural Gifting Programme won’t solve every problem in our art ecosystem, but it is a necessary and overdue step in developing a well-functioning, thoughtful nation. It will empower institutions to collect, collectors to give and audiences to have access to art that challenges, reflects and expands their understanding of the world.

Dan du Bern is director and co-owner of Sumer Fine Art, a commercial gallery in central Auckland, opened in mid-2023. The gallery represents artists from across Oceania and beyond. An inaugural graduate of Massey College of Creative Arts, Wellington, Dan has lived and worked in both Melbourne and London, and has collaborated with galleries across Europe, North America and Asia.