As regards the constitution of A. U., the following arrangements may be stated to be common to them all. Each member, in return for an annual contribution (in Britain, usually a guinea), receives an acknowledgment, which acts as his ticket in the lottery by which the works of art, purchased with the sum thus contributed, are distributed amongst the members. Generally, a fixed proportion of the contributions is retained and devoted to the preparation of an engraving, which is presented to those who have drawn blanks in the lottery. The engraving is usually executed by a local engraver. after a work of the local school intended to be patronized. The association further makes provision for an exhibition, either permanent, as at Munich, or annual, as in Lon don and Edinburgh, consisting mainly of the works of local artists, though most associ ations now admit those of strangers. A diversity of practice has existed as to the mode of distributing the funds of the unions, and much controversy has taken place between their respective partisans. The first, common on the continent, and adopted in Edin burgh, consists in putting the whole sum collected for each year into the hands of a com mittee of gentlemen, who are chosen for their supposed aesthetic acquirements and impartiality, and requesting them to select the pictures and other works of art afterwards, to be distributed to the subscribers by lot; the second is the London plan of distributing the money itself by lot, and then permitting, or rather compelling, the prize-holders to expend it on the pictures exhibited, the selection of the pictures, however, being left to their own taste and judgment. If the object of these institutions be to cultivate an
artistic taste higher than that which exists in the general community for the time being, the advantages of the first over the second of these modes of distribution seem scarcely to admit of question. The subject was eagerly canvassed before the select committee, and their report was that the constitution of the Edinburgh association was preferable to that of the London union. The principal of the A. IT., under some modifications, has been extended to the patronage of art manufactures. The difficulty in distinguish. ing between the lottery as part of the art union and lotteries of an unquestionably illegal kind led in 1840 to the passage of a special act for legalizing bond-fide A. U. main tained solely for the encouragement of art. See EXHIBITIONS.