The collections of the British Museum don't stand still, but funding for new acquisitions is in crisis. The money allocated to new purchases has decreased from around a million pounds a year in the 1980s to just £100,000 today.
This programme follows curator Chris Spring's mission to buy La Bouche du Roi, an anti-slavery installation made of petrol cans. He can't afford it without help from the Art Fund, but will his pitch result in success? Meanwhile Philip Attwood is on a Rotterdam barge buying contemporary medals, and Judy Rudoe receives a Soviet style gift from the modern entrepreneurial Russian industry.
