The Tate was embroiled in controversy again yesterday as another Turner Prize-winning artist on its board of trustees was accused of benefiting from his association with the gallery.

An investigation by the art journal The Jackdaw will reveal this month that, in the 12 months since Jeremy Deller’s appointment as a trustee in January last year, he has voluntarily absented himself a number of times from meetings as his colleagues discussed the acquisition of his art, a commission and an exhibition at Tate Liverpool.

Deller’s fellow trustees never turned down proposed acquisitions and exhibitions of his work.

The investigation does not accuse any trustee of illegal activity, but any acquisition or display by the Tate almost automatically raises the price of an artist’s other works.

David Lee, editor of The Jackdaw, said: “Minutes of meetings reveal the constant stream of trustees skipping out to the passage while conflicts involving them are being discussed.”

The revelation comes two years after the Charity Commission ruled that the Tate had broken the law by buying art produced by serving trustees, including a £600,000 work by Chris Ofili, a Turner Prize-winner.

The gallery had refused at first to reveal how much it had paid for Ofili’s installation of 13 paintings of monkeys but it had to disclose the figure under the Freedom of Information Act.

Yesterday the head of the parliamentary watchdog for culture spoke of potential conflicts of interest in the choice of trustees of public institutions. John Whittingdale, chairman of the all-party Culture Select Committee, told The Times that embarrassment from apparent conflicts should be avoided at all costs.

Most major art institutions are set up as charities. By law, trustees cannot receive monetary benefit from their charity without permission, usually from the commission, whose chief executive, Andrew Hind, refused yesterday to discuss the latest investigation.

A second trustee mentioned in The Jackdaw’s investigation is Melanie Clore, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and co-chairman of Sotheby’s Worldwide Impressionist and Modern Art. Mr Lee accuses her of failing to declare an interest in the Tate’s planned exhibition devoted to Peter Doig when Sotheby’s was selling some of his works privately.

One painting by the artist, White Canoe, went on to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in February last year, a few months after the trustees meeting, for a record £5.7 million, five times its estimate. Another, Concrete Cabin – in which Sotheby’s has a financial interest – is to be sold on February 27 for an estimated £600,000.

Ms Clore said: “This was not a conflict of interest . . . the Sotheby’s deal on a group of Doig paintings was completed on September 25, 2006, well before the show was first announced to the Tate trustees meeting of November 15, 2006.”

She added: “Knowing that it was highly sensitive, I did not speak to anyone at Sotheby’s about the intended Doig show at Tate until it became public knowledge.”

Mr Lee said: “What on earth is a trustee of a major gallery doing sitting there as a representative of a company which the gallery is going to be dealing with?”

Trustees are appointed by the Prime Minister. Downing Street declined to comment. A spokesman for Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, said: “Clearly we will be keeping an eye on what has been claimed and, if necessary, will seek further information.”

A Tate spokeswoman said: “The Charity Commission has recently acknowledged that Tate has undertaken a significant review of its policies, and praised our recent work in managing potential conflicts.”

Troubled times

— When Peter Doig was a trustee from November 1995 to November 2000, three of his print portfolios and his painting Echo Lake were bought by the trustees as a gift for the Tate in 1997 and 1998

— In 2006 German police investigated whether the Tate had broken federal law by paying a ransom for information stolen from an exhibition

— A Turner Prize nominee faced accusations of plagiarising the work of another artist in 2001. The science-fiction artist Anthony Roberts pursued legal action against Glenn Brown, whose The Loves of Shepherds 2000 was exposed by The Times as an almost identical copy of the cover of a science-fiction paperback

— Descendants of J. M. W. Turner condemned the Tate in 2005 for planning to spend millions generated by the 19th-century master’s work on buying up “modern rubbish”. They accused the gallery of riding roughshod over the terms of a Turner bequest

Source: Times Database

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