Council Art Sales

"Should councils cash in on art?" wonders the BBC, citing Bolton Council's need to replace it's leaking storage sheds which hold museum goodies (title link). Allowing things to rot isn't an option, so Bolton Council is selling some of its 1,100 oil paintings, watercolours and drawings, worth about £16m. Here are two British works up for auction: Robert Gemmell Hutchison's Seagulls and Sapphire Seas (1912) and Sir John Everett Millais' The Somnambulist, with hoped-for price tags of £180,000 and £100,000 respectively. The council is also selling an etching and a lithograph by Pablo Picasso. The latter sale I agree with. Picasso wasn't British; his tripe holds no historical interest for the UK, but it is fetching top prices on the world art market. It's no loss to British heritage to sell them. But cashing in on British art as though it's some trifling luxury is short-sighted and deplorable.