The London Borough of Tower Hamlets owns a valuable Henry Moore sculpture known as “Old Flo”, not the London Borough of Bromley, the High Court ruled today.
The 16-page ruling walks the reader though the history of London’s local government over the last half century, the place that public art has had in planning policy over the years, and the history of the statue itself since Moore sold it to the now long-defunct London County Council in 1962.
Although Mr Justice Norris, the judge who made the ruling, found that the title to the statue had been transferred to Bromley in the 1990s as an indirect result of the abolition of the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1986, he ruled that through “inaction,” Bromley’s claim to the sculpture has been “extinguished.”
The ruling may be seen by some as controversial as Tower Hamlets had planned to sell the sculpture, which has been on loan to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for almost 20 years, saying it needed the money because of cuts to the local government budget.
The sculpture’s official title is Draped Seated Woman, but it was soon dubbed “Old Flo” by Stepney residents. It is a large seated figure in bronze weighing 1,500kg. According to the ruling, Moore intended it to be a reflection on the London Blitz. Six casts were made and the other five bronzes are in Cologne, Brussels, Yale University in the USA, Melbourne and Jerusalem.
The London county council (LCC) bought the final cast in 1962 and placed it in the recently completed Stifford Estate in Stepney (now Tower Hamlets) in 1962. It stayed there until April 1987 when Tower Hamlets lent it to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for six months. It was then returned to its place on the estate until is suffered graffiti damage. In February 1992 Tower Hamlets sent it for restoration, returning it in November that year. When in 1996 Tower Hamlets decided to demolish some tower blocks in the area they lent it again to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It has remained there ever since.
The judge ruled that the sculpture was sold by Moore to the LCC, making the LCC the owner. The LCC was abolished in 1965 and the GLC was created along with the various London Boroughs. The judge found that the bronze was transferred to the GLC, not the newly-created London Borough of Bromley.
In 1982 the Stifford Estate was transferred from the GLC to Tower Hamlets. Then in 1986 the GLC was abolished and its assets placed in the hands of the London Residual Body.
Tower Hamlets, the judge said, appeared to believe that the statue was now theirs, and behaved as if they owned it. Even so, the judge ruled that it belonged to the London Residual Body. In the mid 1990s the undistributed assets of the London Residual Body, including the statue, were transferred to the London Borough of Bromley, which gives rise to Bromley’s claim.
The judge ruled that when Tower Hamlets took the sculpture for restoration and lent it to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park it was acting “inconsistently with Bromley’s entitlement to use the sculpture at all time and in all places.” The fact that Bromley raised no objections for many years means that Tower Hamlets has “converted the sculpture” into their own ownership.
This is because of “the inaction of Bromley (in failing to bring proceedings within a statutory period) even though the sculpture which it now says was intended to benefit and enrich all Londoners was openly on display in Yorkshire”.
As an interesting aside, the judge quotes a local newspaper report from 1962 criticising the statue.
“What is this?” the article reads. “Is this monstrosity supposed to represent womanhood? Surely there is something wrong with Art when it deliberately sets out to portray a malformed, ill-proportioned wench as a woman.”
In 1987, when the statue was about to be sent off to Yorkshire, a correspondent to the paper wrote: “How is it that the lovely feminine incarnation of beauty like Old Flo be loaned or given away without anyone in the Town Hall or art department caring?”
Over a 25-year period opinions had clearly changed.
The London Borough of Tower Hamlets v The London Borough of Bromley (in its capacity as successor to the London Residual Body) Chancery Divions, (Norris J) 8th June 2015.
Nigel Giffin QC and Christopher Knight (instructed by the Legal Services Department of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets) for the claimant.
Timpothy Straker QC and Dilpreet Dhanoa (instructed by Trowers & Hamlins LLP) for the defendant.
