Fewer than one in 20 artworks owned by English councils are on public display, the BBC has found.
More than 500,000 pieces of art are held in the collections of 225 councils, but the vast majority is being kept in storage.
Local authorities remain “the biggest single constituent of public funding for arts and culture”, according to the chief executive of the charity Art UK.
Yet many face a strain on storage space and resources, with a real-term fall in spending for museums leading to challenges in displaying council-owned art.
Council art collections include works by notable artists like Tracey Emin, David Hockney, LS Lowry and Antony Gormley.
Some of those collections include tens of thousands of pieces, with the largest collection of 125,000 works belonging to Waltham Forest Council.
Only a fraction of councils were able to provide the value of the collection but even individual collections had insurance values worth millions of pounds.
As of April, just 26,899 of more than half a million works were being displayed by the 225 councils who shared data with the BBC. But what options do these local authorities have?
