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Camden New Journal - by ROISIN GADELRAB
Published: 6 September 2007

‘Give paintings to Tate’ plea

A FORMER Middlesex Hospital consultant has called for four paintings which hung in the hospital lobby for years to be given as a gift to a public gallery.
Art galleries have only six weeks left to find cash if they want to prevent the works by Frederick Cayley Robinson falling into private hands.
The paintings, which hung in the Middlesex Hospital in Fitzrovia until it was sold last year, have been kept in a vault since University College London Hospitals Trust announced it would delay the sale for six months to give galleries such as the Tate time to find the funding to buy them.
But David Hill, an ear, nose and throat consultant who used to work at the Middlesex, believes the trust, which made £175 million from the sale of the hospital, should give them away for free.
Mr Hill, of Kentish Town, has written to health minister Lord Darzi and Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota asking them to intervene. He said: “I’d like to see them transferred as a gift to the Tate or the Imperial War Museum.”
Camden’s Lib Dem culture chief Councillor Flick Rea, and Highgate councillor Maya de Souza have joined the campaign to keep the paintings in public ownership. Cllr Rea said: “Everybody thinks they should be saved. It’s no good just preserving them if they are going to be locked away.”

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