Yet the reality is that some work on public gallery walls is quietly, discreetly up for sale.
Any work lent by a dealer or a living artist is theoretically available for a price.
That applies as much to the Dale Frank exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art as to the recent Dale Chihuly glass exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. These are some of the questions raised following the surprising suggestion by the MCA's director, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, that she would consider holding selling exhibitions. They are questions likely to be debated when the heads of Australian public galleries meet in Adelaide on Monday. Internationally, these issues have surfaced in the wake of the Sensation exhibition that revealed a complicated commercial web. Macgregor has advocated selling exhibitions not primarily to raise money but as a service to artists and to encourage people to buy art.