It's a long time since I've been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York so I was getting a little lost today.

But even so – and with the slight caveat I may just have missed them – I was surprised at how few paintings by JMW Turner it had.

This may seem parochial. There are fabulous collections of American art, ethnographic material from the Americas and Oceania, Old Masters, Greek and Roman statuary, whole rooms of Corots and pastels by Degas, a cornucopia of delights.

And it's not as if there aren't any British artists – although they are generally labelled English, Welsh and Scots (and, I presume, Irish, though I missed them too).

But, I guess, the Turner bequest to the Tate means we, in London, are amply endowed with the most wonderful of his works so I've come to view them as a glory of our nation.

What this made me consider was the wisdom of stopping art going abroad.

Neil MacGregor at the British Museum quite rightly argues that it is a repository of the histories of the world, all there for the world to view.

So is the Met - although there is a major difference between them: the British Museum is free, allowing the peoples of Africa, Asia or wherever the chance to view, without charge, objects they might rightly consider theirs, while the Met now charges $20 (though not, to be fair, to arts correspondents).

So though the natural home for The Building of Westminster Bridge by Samuel Scott might seem London, it was rather good, I thought, that another world away was displaying this view of my adopted home city.

But it left me rather sad that New Yorkers and their visitors seemed rather deprived of one of our most brilliant artists. And it was a salient reminder of how skewed even major national collections can be by the whims of taste, collecting policy, work availability and (lack of) cash.

That said, I'm still very keen that no one else is allowed to get the Titians that the National Gallery and the National Gallery of Scotland are so desperate to keep.

They have a long connection to Britain and are part of a significant and sizeable collection that could all be lost if the break-up of it begins. Neither is there any certainty that they would end up on public view elsewhere if the (initial) £50 million fund-raising campaign fails.