ABSTRACT
The objective of the offence is to protect works of art which are put on public display, without the need to prove an intention permanently to deprive. Such items may be irreplaceable and are at greater risk than those held in private collections. But the section actually protects ‘any article’ kept for the purpose of display to the public, there is no need for it to be of great value. Even a saucepan would warrant the protection of s 11 if it were displayed for the purpose of exhibition in a place to which the public have access in order to come and view it.7 Section 11, together with ss 12 and 12A,8 are all that emerge from the CLRC’s lengthy deliberations about whether to extend the offence of theft to include temporary deprivations, or to create an entirely new general offence of temporary deprivation of property.9 In the end, they decided to recommend neither and settled on confining protection from temporary deprivation to the removal of articles from places open to the public, which is the subject of this chapter, and the taking of conveyances, which is the subject of the next.
