France’s Bayeux Tapestry is ready to be lined by a UK Treasury assure of round £800 million ($1 billion) when it goes on loan to the British Museum in 2026.
Which means British taxpayers will finally foot the invoice to guard the 230-foot-long tapestry in opposition to injury or loss throughout its journey from France to the UK. It’s a part of the UK authorities’s indemnity scheme, which acts because the insurer as a substitute of paying for business insurance coverage. Nevertheless, nothing can be paid upfront; the £800 million is a contingent legal responsibility, solely coming into play if one thing goes improper.
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The Treasury says the scheme has already saved UK museums about £81 million and has lined loans resembling Vincent van Gogh’s The Bed room (1888) on the Nationwide Gallery in 2024-25.
UK ministers imagine the chance of injury to the tapestry could be very low, due to strict transport and show measures. The Treasury instructed the Monetary Instances it had “obtained an estimated valuation” of the tapestry, which has been “provisionally authorised.” Sources anticipate the ultimate determine to be roughly £800 million. Whereas the Treasury didn’t dispute that, it refused to touch upon the precise valuation.
Earlier than the indemnity can go forward, it wants approval from chancellor Rachel Reeves. It’s a part of a broader cultural settlement between Britain and France, introduced by President Emmanuel Macron throughout his state go to to London in July.
Not everyone is happy about shifting the practically 1,000-year-old wool embroidery, although; some figures within the French artwork world are apprehensive it might be broken on the way in which to the UK.
A lately launched six-page settlement between the British and French tradition ministries lays out precisely how the tapestry will journey and be displayed. It’s described as a “fragile and degraded thousand-year-old textile” and should be transported in a specifically designed crate and displayed behind a protecting display. France may even oversee a trial run of the switch utilizing a duplicate fitted with vibration-monitoring gear. Officers anticipate the tapestry to journey by truck through the Channel Tunnel.
As soon as it’s in London, the British Museum will handle it till July 2027 and can fund a situation report when it goes again to Bayeux. George Osborne, former chancellor and now British Museum chair, has referred to as it probably “the blockbuster present of our era,” evaluating it to the Tutankhamun exhibition of 1972.
The tapestry, thought to have been made in Eleventh-century England, probably by nuns, tells the story of the Norman invasion of 1066 in a comic-strip model. The museum expects the exhibition to generate loads of merchandising income.
The mortgage may even coincide with restoration work at Bayeux. As a part of the deal, British artifacts, together with the Sutton Hoo treasures, can be despatched to museums in Normandy in alternate.
