Modern art benefactor on a mission with 18 more free shows in pipeline

Art dealer and philanthropist Anthony d'Offay, whose "gift" of hundreds of artworks has taken contemporary art to the furthest reaches of Scotland and the UK, plans to create 18 more "Artist Rooms" in touring shows of major modern works, The Scotsman can reveal.

D'Offay sold 125 million-worth of contemporary art to the nation in 2008 at a "cost price" of 26m.

He estimated the collection is now worth close to 200m, on the heels of rapidly rising prices for the artists from Andy Warhol to Jeff Koons.

Mr d'Offay's plans for future shows include an exhibition of about 120 classic photographs from his latest fascination, the United States civil rights era, ranging from gruesome lynchings to scenes of anti-segregation protests.

He sees photography as a major attraction for the young audiences he wants to introduce to art.

Mr d'Offay spoke exclusively to The Scotsman as he toured the latest Artist Rooms show in Edinburgh's Dean Gallery, which features evocative portraits of German society in the decades leading to the Second World War by photographer August Sander.

Another major show, of 18 Koons works, opens next weekend at the neighbouring Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Both run until July.

In three years, touring exhibitions based on the d'Offay collection of about 750 works, by 25 artists from Joseph Beuys to Damien Hirst, have been seen by an estimated 12 million people from Aberdeen to Southampton.

Mr d'Offay is described as one of Britain's biggest philanthropists. Some critics claim his collection was not quite a gift - with joint funding from the UK and Scottish governments, his 26.5 million payment was tax-free. But he has since added other major works to the collection. "I do not have any money," he said. "I gave it away."

The long-time art dealer remains a man on a mission to take iconic contemporary art across the UK, and says he is determined to keep entry to the exhibitions free. In the coming year some 16 UK galleries will show works.

He plans to create 18 new rooms, with more works by existing artists and by adding new names.

Of the collection of civil rights photographs, Mr d'Offay said: "People couldn't believe this stuff when it went round the world, and Americans couldn't believe it either.

"It's important that young people know about what's happened in the 20th century, the idea of what it's like to be a black American."

The Sander show includes arresting images that show ordinary Germans in and around the photographer's studio in Cologne, before the Second World War, from local Nazi officials, to leftist students, the unemployed, boxers or cooks.Artist Rooms shows by art photographers like Diane Arbus or Robert Mapplethorpe "have been enormously successful, because apart from anything else people feel there is no barrier between them and what they are looking at," Mr d'Offay said.