Beaverbrook's 'gifts' weren't really that, foundation insists

Last Updated: Tuesday, December 5, 2006 | 9:43 AM ET

CBC News

The semantic-driven final arguments in a dispute over 133 paintings and sculptures at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton came down to obscure interpretations of the word "gift" on Monday.

Lawyers for the foundation trying to claim the artworks, which are worth millions of dollars, say an old fundraising campaign that uses the word gift in an inexact manner is damaging to the gallery's case.

The gallery and the Beaverbrook U.K. Foundation are scrapping over the artworks in an arbitration hearing that began in Fredericton more than a month ago.

The gallery insists the artworks were outright gifts from newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook, but the foundation, which is run by Beaverbrook's descendants, says they were merely on loan and wants the right to take them back.

The foundation is presenting its closing arguments this week. On Monday, lawyer Kent Thompson pointed to a 1988 gallery fundraising campaign called Cherish the Gift, which referred to the facility and all of its holdings as a gift.

Thompson said the wording is important, because the gallery did not believe the paintings in dispute were outright gifts until officials checked the records in 2004.

Prior to 2004, the gallery believed the paintings were simply on loan.

Thompson raised the issue because the gallery has entered as evidence news articles from the time the gallery opened in 1959, which referred to the works of art as gifts. The gallery says this shows that Beaverbrook himself intended the paintings to stay in the gallery forever.

But the foundation disputes that, and Thomson says if the gallery used the term gifts loosely in 1988, even when it thought the works were actually on loan, it may be that Beaverbrook was doing exactly the same thing back in 1959, and therefore the word gift can't be relied upon to prove anything.