80 minutes
November 2003
R0 (PAL), SD mp4
5060033839294

Saved! A Century of Art for Everyone

Saved! A Century of Art for Everyone celebrates the work of the National Art Collections Fund (the Art Fund) during its first one hundred years. Since 1903, the Art Fund has helped museums and galleries in he United Kingdom acquire more than half a million works of art.

Ten of the greatest artworks bought with NACF help, among them Velasquez‘s ‘Rokeby Venus’ and the Beckett Casket, are celebrated by curators and guests including author Ben Okri, broadcasters Joan Bakewell and Loyd Grossman, and Tony Banks MP. The film also explores the history of the Art Fund and highlights some of the most significant losses to Britain’s collections over the last century.

Paired here with Saved! is the film Rodin in London, which tells the story of one of the NACF’s greatest gifts, Auguste Rodin‘s The Burghers of Calais. Recently cleaned and restored, this radical, expressive and moving monument was unveiled in 1915. It is one of the Art Fund’s greatest gifts to the nation.