FOI release

Art sold by Council

Case reference FOI2026/00811

Received 27 July 2026

Published 24 August 2026

Request

1. Could a list please be provided of all publicly owned works of art which have been sold by the council since January 2015? Could the name of the work, where it was being displayed, and the price it was sold for please be provided

Response

In accordance with section 1(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), Oxford City Council (OCC) confirms that it has considered the recorded information identified as falling within the scope of your request.

The relevant service has confirmed that no works of art have been sold from Oxford Town Hall since January 2015.

No further sales of OCC-owned works of art have been identified in the information provided for the purposes of this response. Accordingly, OCC has not identified any works, display locations or sale prices to provide.

For completeness, OCC's published Council records show that a member motion entitled “Consultation on the Sale of Council Art Works” was included on the agenda for the Council meeting held on 20 March 2023.

The motion proposed that the Council conduct a public consultation on a one-off sale of selected artworks from its collection and sought reports concerning the cost, process and timetable for such a consultation.

The official minutes record that the motion was not taken as the time allocated for debate had finished. The minutes therefore do not record a decision by OCC to proceed with the proposed consultation or sale at that meeting. The agenda, motion and minutes are publicly available through OCC's published meetings, agendas and minutes records.

In accordance with section 16 of the FOIA, which relates to the duty to provide reasonable advice and assistance, if you have a particular work of art, collection, civic collection, public artwork, sculpture or OCC location in mind which you consider may fall within the scope of your request, you are welcome to identify this in a further request. OCC can then consider whether any further recorded information is held in relation to the particular work, collection or location specified.

OCC also publishes information concerning meetings, agendas, minutes and decisions on its website, which may assist in identifying any particular work or proposal about which you require further information.

If you disagree with any part of the response to your request, you are entitled to ask the Council for an internal review of the decision(s) made. You may do this by writing to the Monitoring Officer, by either email monitoringofficer@oxford.gov.uk – or by post to Monitoring Officer, Oxford City Council, Town Hall, St Aldate’s, Oxford, OX1 1BX. After the result of the internal review, if you remain dissatisfied, you may ask the Information Commissioner to intervene on your behalf. You may do this by writing to the Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Yours sincerely,

Freedom of Information Officer

Documents

There are no documents for this release.

This is Oxford City Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.

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