Sketching out a more sensible approach to art exports

There must be little chance that anyone in Britain will be able to raise the £7.5m needed to keep a recently-discovered Michelangelo sketch in this country. Tessa Blackstone, the arts minister, has put a temporary ban on the export of the sketch, and a Benjamin West portrait, in order to allow time for a British bid to be organised.

But no gallery or museum in Britain has that kind of money. Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate, recently complained that he was unable to raise the funds to buy Georges Braque's Atelier V. He has only £2m a year for acquisitions, and the Braque painting, which had been hanging in the Tate on loan, went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York for £4m.

Private subscription by an enthused citizenry is hardly likely to raise the required amount – which is either a regrettable commentary on popular philistinism or a tribute to Britons' powers of discrimination. The only plausible source of funds on that scale is the Heritage Lottery Fund, but it has already turned down a request from the National Galleries of Scotland to chip in £4m of the purchase price (on the grounds that, because the sketch is on paper, it cannot be put on public display for more than one month a year for fear of its fading).

It is hard to see, therefore, the purpose of Baroness Blackstone's intervention in delaying the inevitable for two months. But it can do no harm, and should at least satisfy critics that the nation was given the chance.

We should not panic about the loss of artworks to rich US galleries. It is not as if Michelangelo is directly part of our national heritage; even in the case of West, an American who lived in Britain and painted British subjects, the historical interest does not justify state interference or subsidy.

It is not up to the Government to decide what we should keep and what we should sell: the most it should do, as it has, is delay the process. This country has a vast collection of paintings and sculptures of great variety and quality – and can only display a tiny proportion of the total.

When Britain was the world's pre-eminent imperial power, we could afford to buy what we liked. Now it is the turn of America.