Saatchi donates pounds 500,000 Britart package to nation

CHARLES SAATCHI, the contemporary art collector, is donating 100 works of art to the Arts Council's 7,000-strong collection. The gift, estimated to be worth pounds 500,000, will join the collection which is administered by the Hayward Gallery at South Bank in London and is used for touring exhibitions and loans to galleries and museums in Glasgow, Liverpool, Penzance and Newcastle.

Mr Saatchi's gift includes some of the more bizarre offerings from his angst-ridden Young British Artists - such works as Rose Finn-Kelcey's Steam Installation - a dancing vortex of steam contained in a giant "waffle" construction - and John Frankland's You Can't Touch This - a gold lobby and lift created entirely from laminated polythene stretched over a wooden framework.

Mr Saatchi said: "No institution does more than the Hayward Gallery on behalf of the Arts Council to curate touring exhibitions and loans to the nation's galleries and museums. It will give these artists a chance to be seen more widely across the country."