Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will allocate funding to support proposals for a permanent home for the collection of designer, Abram Games.

We are not aware of plans to find a permanent home for Abram Games’ collection. The National Army Museum are currently hosting a major exhibition featuring the wartime poster of Abram Games (called The Art of Persuasion), running until 24th November. The exhibition features 49 original artworks from Abram Games that are part of the Museum’s permanent collection and is the majority of his wartime work. Seven of these works are on display in their permanent galleries and all items in the Museum’s Abram Games’ collection is available to access via our Online Collection. Most of the other items in the current exhibition are on loan from the Estate of Abram Games.

Other national museums also hold significant collections of his works, including the V&A, and the Imperial War Museum holds the official war artist archives of his work.

There is no central fund for museum acquisitions; there are though a number of government-backed initiatives that help museums acquire nationally significant collections. Arts Council England runs, on behalf of DCMS, the Cultural Gift Scheme, through which donors receive a tax reduction based on a set percentage of the value of the item they donate. And the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund supports the purchase of a wide range of material for the permanent collections of non-nationally funded organisations in England and Wales.