This is the e-mail address for enquiries about portraits and the collections and history of the National Portrait Gallery (including requests for information made under the Freedom of Information Act). The Gallery usually responds to portrait enquiries within 15-20 working days (except over the Easter and Christmas periods when there may be a delay). Freedom of Information requests are answered within 20 working days.

If you would like to make an appointment to visit the Archive & Library please contact: [email address]. The Public Study Room is closed from 24 December to 1 January inclusive.

For other types of enquiries please refer to the Gallery's website for contact details.

Note: we are not able to respond to enquiries about foreign portraits and non-portrait works of art, and neither are we able to provide advice on valuations. For subjects unrelated to British portraiture please contact a general art reference library and for valuations please contact a fine art auction house or dealer.

Images of portraits and correspondence sent to the Gallery may be kept for reference and research purposes.

Yours sincerely
Robin Francis
Head of Archive & Library

Dear Cheryl Hall

Thank you for your request for information about the net profit made from
image sales by the National Portrait Gallery over the past ten years.

I am afraid we are unable to supply the specific information you request
as the Gallery does not calculate net revenues generated from image sales
exclusive of other goods and services supplied by our Rights & Images
department and the Gallery Shop, which are both responsible for image
sales in one form or another. 

Such information as we hold relates to gross income generated by these
departments, which includes licensing sales by Rights & Images and the
sale of other goods in the Shop as well as image sales.  This information
is included in the Annual Report and Accounts (Section 2c Activities for
Generating Funds against the lines Picture Library and Retail) – the last
ten years of which are published on our website:
[1]http://www.npg.org.uk/about/corporate/ac....

Yours sincerely

Robin Francis

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References

Visible links
1. http://www.npg.org.uk/about/corporate/ac...
2. www.npg.org.uk
http://www.npg.org.uk/
3. www.npg.org.uk
http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/news2/news...

Dear Cheryl Hall

Thank you for your email - I note that you have requested an internal review of our response to your request for information and I have therefore forwarded this to our Trading department.

Yours sincerely

Robin Francis

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Original Message-----
From: Cheryl Hall [mailto:[FOI #175260 email]]
Sent: 11 September 2013 11:20
To: Robin Francis
Subject: Internal review of Freedom of Information request - Image sales

Dear Robin Francis,

Thank you very much for your reply, I'm sorry to say I am unsatisfied with the answer.

Is it possible to measure some of the direct and easy to equate costs e.g staff wages and website costs?

It seems important for a publicly funded educational organisation to know wether restricting access to educational material for profit is productive.

Many thanks for your time

Yours sincerely,

Cheryl Hall

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Dear Cheryl Hall

Further to your recent request for an internal review of the response my
colleague Robin Francis made to your request for information under the
Freedom of Information Act, I have looked again at the information that
was supplied and believe we can provide some cost details that relate to
the income figures you were referred to in our Annual Reports and
Accounts.

The following information is taken from monthly detailed management
reports in which departmental level costs are given.  The presentation of
this information changed in 2011-12. Prior to this date, indirect
overheads (for instance cleaning, utilities, maintenance etc) and
allocated support department costs (including Finance, Personnel and IT)
were not assigned to individual departments in these reports.  You should
bear in mind that the cost figures given below, as with the gross profits
referred to by Robin Francis previously, will include aspects of Retail
and Picture Library activity that are unrelated to the supply of images. 
The Gallery does not hold information that specifically records the costs
only associated with the sale of images by these departments as this is
not required for practical, management or governance purposes.

Year Retail Picture        
direct Library direct
overheads overheads
(including (including
salaries) salaries)
2002-03 373,314 244,651        
2003-04 305,000 151,000        
2004-05 454,000 200,000        
2005-06 454,000 263,000        
2006-07 458,000 243,000        
2007-08 438,000 242,000        
2008-09 497,000 255,000        
2009-10 539,000 263,000        
2010-11 565,000 227,000        
Year Retail Retail cost of Retail Picture Picture Picture
salaries sales expenditure Library Library Library
salaries cost of expenditure
sales
2011-12 466,000 734,000 315,000 199,000 10,000 14,000
2012-13 508,000 755,000 330,000 265,000 25,000 21,000

In your email you specifically ask if it is possible to equate costs e.g.
staff and website costs.  The staff costs associated with the two
departments that are directly involved in the sale of images are included,
subject to the caveats already outlined, in the above table. These figures
include the cost of servicing the majority of requests for prints, but not
those of making the images available in the first place. In 2010, the
Gallery estimated the costs associated with digitising Collection images,
by calculating an average unit cost for making images available on the
website. The costs took into account the work of several Gallery
departments – Collections, Photographs, Archives, Digital Programmes and
Rights & Images. Approximately 8,601 images were digitised in 2010, at a
total estimated cost of £192,468, making the average cost per image
digitised £22.00

You state that it seems important for a publicly funded educational
organisation to know whether restricting access to educational material
for profit is productive.  However, the Gallery does not restrict access
to its images for educational purposes. 

Since 1997 over 100,000 portraits from the Gallery’s collection, including
paintings, photographs, drawings, prints and sculptures have been
digitised.  The Gallery was among the first UK institutions to publish
images online in a searchable database, where they are freely available
for educational purposes.  Such revenue as has been generated by the sale
and licensing of these images for commercial use contributes to the
ongoing process of cataloguing and digitisation so that we can continue to
open up more of the collection online for educational and other uses. 

You should also be aware that since 2012 the Gallery has provided free
downloads of a large range of images from its collection for academic and
non-commercial projects, including educational usage, through an online
licensing interface.  Over 53,000 low-resolution images are available free
of charge to non-commercial users through a standard ‘Creative Commons’
licence and over 87,000 high-resolution images are available free of
charge for academic use through the Gallery’s own licences.

Yours sincerely

Rob Carr-Archer

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References

Visible links
1. http://www.npg.org.uk/
2. http://www.patronmailuk.com/bnmailweb/Pa...

Thank you for your e-mail.

I will be attending the Frankfurt Book Fair this week, returning to the Gallery on Monday 14 October. For anything urgent, please contact my assistant, Pam Jahn: [email address] (020 7312 2482) or Perry Bushell for matters relating to Retail: [email address] (020 7312 2498).

Many thanks,
Rob

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Carr-Archer
Director of Trading, National Portrait Gallery
St Martin's Place
London WC2H OHE

T 020 7312 2441
www.npg.org.uk

This e-mail, and any attachment, is intended only for the attention of the addressee(s). Its unauthorised use, disclosure, storage or copying is not permitted. If you are not the intended recipient, please destroy all copies and inform the sender by return e-mail. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Cheryl Hall,

Thank you for your email. I am writing on Mr Carr-Archer’s behalf as he is
currently away from the Gallery. Please find attached in PDF format the
email he sent to you on 24 September 2013.

Please let me know should you have any trouble opening the document.

Best wishes

Pamela

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Dear Cheryl,

Thank you for your email. I am so sorry that you are still unable to view the data correctly. Did you look at the PDF file that was attached to my previous email, and is again attached here? It clearly shows the table after the second paragraph.

In case you still can't view the data in the correct table format, I am attaching it here in a Word document as well, which I hope you will be able to view.

Please let me know if you still experience problems opening/viewing the attachments.

Many thanks

Pamela

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Original Message-----
From: Cheryl Hall [mailto:[FOI #175260 email]]
Sent: 10 October 2013 10:31
To: Pamela Jahn
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information request - Image sales

Dear Pamela

Thank you for your reply, the information is still in the same format meaning it's not possible to tell what information is there, for instance, this is part of the pdf, there are 3 lines that all say Picture, this doesn't make much sense.

Year
Retail
Retail cost of
Retail
Picture
Picture
Picture
salaries
sales
expenditure Library
Library
Library
salaries
cost of
expenditure
sales
2011-12
466,000
734,000
315,000
199,000
10,000
14,000
2012-13
508,000
755,000
330,000
265,000
25,000
21,000

Please would you be able to resend the information in a table?

Yours sincerely,

Cheryl Hall

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