Britain: An official handbook > 1956

RELIGION, SCIENCE, AND THE ARTS 3^7
In the United Kingdom itself, the Council arranges study programmes for
scholars and teachers from overseas, and other professional visitors. It also provides
a wide range of services for students from overseas (particularly those from the
dependent territories) who are studying in United Kingdom universities and other
educational institutions.
Unofficial institutions concerned with the promotion of the arts include many
charitable trusts and foundations, e.g., the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust and
the Pilgrim Trust, and a large number of societies, associations and other organiza¬
tions concerned with separate aspects of the arts, some of which are mentioned
later in this chapter.
The Carnegie United Kingdom Trust was founded in 1913 by the late Andrew
Carnegie. It was incorporated under Royal Charter in IQ1?* The Trust, which was
initially founded for ‘ the improvement of the well-being of the masses of the people
of Great Britain and Ireland’, consists of 25 life trustees, 6 trustees nominated by
the Corporation of Dunfermline and 3 trustees nominated by the Fife County
Council. Its cultural policies include the support of adult amateur activities in
music, drama and the visual arts. It also supports non-national museums. Grants
totalling approximately £21,124 were made for these purposes during the year
ended 31st December 1954.
The Pilgrim Trust was founded in 1930 by the late Edward Stephen Harkness, an
American citizen. The Trust, which has an income of about £140,000 a year, is
administered by a body of trustees who are empowered to make grants towards
any legally charitable object within the United Kingdom. In fact, the greater part
of the Trust’s income is at present being used to help to preserve the nation s
heritage of architecture and history, and for the advancement of learning and the
arts. The grants made for these objects during 1954 amounted to £115,562.
VISUAL ARTS
The fine arts of painting and sculpture in Britain receive State support by grants
to national institutions and, indirectly, through grants made to the Arts Council,
to municipal art galleries and museums, and to local education authorities for art
schools and other means of promoting education in art. There are at present a
number of British painters and sculptors of international repute as well as younger
artists of great promise; and interest in their work and that of their contemporaries
overseas, as well as in that of British and foreign artists of the past, is most marked
in all sections of the community.
In the year April 1954 to the end of March 195 5 the Arts Council arranged 82
separate art exhibitions in Great Britain; 323 showings of these exhibitions were
given in 157 different places. Knowledge of British fine arts is fostered overseas by
the British Council by means of exhibitions, the dissemination of reproductions and
photographs, lectures, and the provision of information and advice to inquirers
abroad and to visitors in Britain. In the year ended March 1955, 26 different exhi¬
bitions organized by the Council were shown in 35 countries. The Council was also
responsible for British participation in 10 international exhibitions.
Museums and Art Galleries
There are in all about 750 museums and art galleries open to the public m Great
Britain, though many are only small collections or merely a few rooms set aside in
a public building for the display of local treasures. _
The national museums and art galleries in London probably contain between
them the most comprehensive collection of objects of artistic, archaeological.