Museums and Institutions

LAPADA have confirmed that their Royal Academy fair will go ahead from May 10 to 13 next year.

SCOTLAND Yard’s Art and Antiques Unit are staging an exhibition at the V&A to raise awareness among museums, galleries and art dealers of the problem of fakes in London.

EBay (UK) have given permission for members of the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme to monitor the trade in antiquities on the website.

MICK Jagger and Keith Richards may be doing well for 60-somethings, but they’ve got nothing on this old rocker. Dated to 1610, it is thought to be the oldest known rocking horse in the UK and was quite likely made for Charles I.

THE Whitewebbs Museum of Transport is holding its annual antique and collectors’ fair at the museum in Whitewebbs Road, Enfield on Sunday October 22.

LAST week's fire at the Royal Academy building at 6 Burlington Gardens is unlikely to affect the fairs scheduled to be held at the premises next year.

A NEW code of conduct has been agreed to offer standard guidelines for locating and unearthing treasure trove.

LESS than two months remains to find the final £116,057 towards the £1.4m price of a unique portrait of the 17th century poet John Donne.

A magnificent Charles II silver fluted fruit sideboard dish saved from export in 2005 is now on display at the Royal College of Physicians. It will be displayed alongside their existing collection of memorabilia relating to Sir Francis Prujean, the President of the Royal College of Physicians (1650-1654) whose life-saving cures were recorded in Pepys’ diaries.

The UK’s leading art charity has commissioned its first-ever work by a contemporary artist as part of a campaign to boost funding for the arts.

A THIEF who used a key to get into a display cabinet and avoided being filmed on CCTV has made off with two unusual artefacts from a museum in Surrey.

This medieval bronze jug was the talking point of Sotheby’s sale of the contents of Easton Neston last year when it was bought by London dealer Daniel Katz for a premium-inclusive £568,000 against expectations of £60,00-80,000. The rare jug is cast with a slew of insignia including the Royal arms as used between 1340 and 1405, a maker’s mark and the inscription To My Lord Wenlok.

A LOOPHOLE in the export law has forced the British Museum to pay almost £100,000 more than the original auction price for the most expensive British coin ever sold. The museum believes the case highlights the need for Britain’s laws on exporting art to be reconsidered.

The Victoria & Albert Museum’s sculpture collection will be redisplayed this spring in the new Dorothy and Michael Hintze Galleries.

A funding package worth £7m has been agreed allowing construction to begin on a new Wedgwood Museum in the heart of the Potteries at the company’s Barlaston headquarters.

Next month the Royal Observatory, Greenwich will unveil four new galleries designed to tell the story of precision timekeeping.

There will be a rare chance to glimpse some of the long unseen areas of Beijing’s Forbidden City on November 28, when Henry Tzu Ng of the World Monuments Fund will deliver a lecture at the Royal Academy in conjunction with their forthcoming exhibition – China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795.

With perfect timing in advance of the forthcoming biopic starring Renee Zellweger as Beatrix Potter, the lecture at this year’s AGM of the British Antique Furniture Restorer’s Association was entitled Beatrix Potter – A Pioneer in Regional Furniture Discovery.

LAPADA will launch a new London flagship fair next year when LAPADA@TheRoyalAcademy opens from May 4 to 7 at the Royal Academy.

LAW Fine Art could hardly have timed their latest sale better: a collection of Cotswolds Arts and Crafts with primary provenance by leading practitioners Barnsley, Gimson and Lethaby to be sold on April 5.