April 23 (Bloomberg) -- When the director of the National Gallery handed in his resignation, he confided in friends that he was tired of the endless committee meetings, lack of money and smoldering institutional animosities at the London museum.

That was in 1945, and the director was Kenneth Clark, not Charles Saumarez Smith, who last month said he was quitting the post. Some of his reasons may have been similar, especially the lack of money.

``Year after year, you negotiate for things that you aren't in a position to acquire,'' Saumarez Smith told the Observer newspaper. ``I didn't really want to go down in history as the person who acquired least.'' Earlier in the year, he bravely attacked government policy -- that is, Gordon Brown's policy -- over funding museum purchases. Brown's policy is not to fund them, nor to encourage others to do so by means of tax breaks.

For the second time in just over five years, the London gallery is searching for a director. Setting aside who might get the post, what might the job description look like? ``Wanted: Capable administrator and art world diplomat, able to conjure tens of millions of pounds out of thin air, time and time again.''

To some extent, fundraising is the function of every modern museum manager. The director of a great U.S. art institution, who shall remain nameless, told me his duties prominently included taking little old ladies out to lunch. Like that director, and Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks's ``The Producers,'' the next director of the National Gallery will probably be doing something similar.

Space: The Last Frontier

The gallery's need for money is desperate, and also specific. Most gallery directors these days like to leave a monument in bricks and mortar: a new wing, conservation block, at least a new shop and restaurant. The National Gallery badly requires more exhibition space, but its site on Trafalgar Square is so hemmed in that it's far from clear another structure might be fitted in.

The National Gallery is facing a crisis. Art-market prices are reaching heights that may trigger a stampede of masterpieces out of the U.K. The owners of the remaining old masters in private hands, many of which have hung in the gallery on loan for years, will be tempted by sums comparable to the gross domestic product of a Third World country or the income of a hedge-fund manager.

Saumarez Smith's one major purchase was Raphael's ``Madonna of the Pinks,'' bought in 2004 from the Duke of Northumberland for 22 million pounds ($44 million), which looks like a bargain. Last year, the Earl of Halifax turned down a joint offer from the National Galleries of London and Edinburgh for a Titian portrait.

This month, the gallery was worried that the Duke of Rutland may withdraw a loan of five Poussins. These are valued at more than 50 million pounds. The list of 25 paintings that should never leave Britain, compiled for Apollo magazine earlier this year, was valued, obviously very approximately, at a billion pounds.

Enough Already

One reaction to these circumstances might be simply to give up. The National Gallery collection is already an extraordinarily rich and well-balanced one, the best in the world from that point of view. Even without these paintings, it has numerous Titians and Poussins. Neil MacGregor, Saumarez Smith's predecessor, identified two gaps, a truly great Gauguin and a work by the 14th-century artist Simone Martini. (Neither would be easy or cheap to fill.)

Otherwise, one could accept that the National Gallery, with a few minor additions, has reached its natural limits. Like, say, the Dresden Gemaeldegalerie, it is complete. There's a natural process going on here. Once, old masters were plentiful and cheap. Kenneth Clark counted as one of the successes of his directorship that, ``I made a number of good purchases for incredibly small sums.'' Those days have gone. Now, the masterpieces outside museums are as rare as snow leopards or Yangzi dolphins.

Saumarez Smith doesn't accept that the National Gallery collection is essentially done and dusted. He was unhappy, it was reported, about the notion that it should simply reshuffle the paintings that it already owns. If his successor also takes that line, he or she will face one tremendous financial struggle after another. An ability to charm old ladies would be an advantage.

(Martin Gayford is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this review: Martin Gayford at martin@cgayford.freeserve.co.uk.

Last Updated: April 23, 2007 01:50 EDT