Shopping For Posterity

Overview

The collections of the British Museum don't stand still, but funding for new acquisitions is in crisis. The money allocated to new purchases has decreased from around a million pounds a year in the 1980s to just £100,000 today. This programme follows curator Chris Spring's mission to buy La Bouche du Roi, an anti-slavery installation made of petrol cans. He can't afford it without help from the Art Fund, but will his pitch result in success? Meanwhile Philip Attwood is on a Rotterdam barge buying contemporary medals, and Judy Rudoe receives a Soviet style gift from the modern entrepreneurial Russian industry.