Museums and Institutions

The antiques trade descended on The Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle for the opening of an exhibition celebrating dealers’ shops, tastes, practices and their role in the creation of museum collections.

The University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries has acquired a rare 15th-century French Gothic coffer – one of the largest-surviving examples of a late medieval box used for transporting precious books.

A public fund-raising effort to purchase the ‘lost’ portrait of Charles Dickens for the nation from dealership Philip Mould & Company has reached £60,000, a third of the asking price.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has bought a painting by Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) barely months after it fetched a major sum at a Christie’s auction.

A rare Anglo-Saxon pendant found in Norfolk by a metal detectorist has been voted Britain’s favourite work of art bought by a museum.

This week members of the market reacted to the coming ivory ban, the sale of a Star Wars sketchbook and the rise in finding treasure.

Bronze Age golden jewellery and a Roman goddess kept in a margarine tub are among the discoveries dug up across the UK.

An exceptionally rare Western Zhou bronze, taken when the Summer Palace was sacked by British troops in 1860, has been returned to China.

Dealer and Fake or Fortune? presenter Philip Mould has rediscovered a portrait miniature of Charles Dickens which will now go on public display.

The right of French museums to claim a lot offered at auction as soon as the final price is determined by the fall of the hammer always adds an extra dimension to any auction in France.

The National Maritime Museum and National Museums Northern Ireland claim the bidding process in the sale of more than 5500 artefacts from the wreck of the doomed Titanic prevented them from submitting a formal offer.

A rare 17th century Chinese silver ewer has been acquired by the Palace of Versailles in a private treaty sale conducted by the auction firm Beaussant Lefèvre. It is the only known surviving piece of silverware from a lavish diplomatic gift presented to Louis XIV by the King of Siam (Thailand) in 1686.

A silver teapot that belonged to the last colonial governor of Virginia has been donated by a British descendant to the Colonial Williamsburg collection.

Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism is postponing the unveiling of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ at The Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Christie’s has helped broker the sale of portrait of a young Dylan Thomas by Augustus John (1878-1961) to the National Portrait Gallery.

A large 19th century panorama of London, completed towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars, has entered the Museum of London’s permanent collection after the institution acquired it at a recent Sotheby’s auction.

Eight Sumerian antiquities seized by the Metropolitan Police from a London dealer in 2003 are to be returned to Iraq after identification by the British Museum.

Along with national characteristics such as moaning about the weather, constantly saying sorry and an eagerness to join a queue, the British love of gardening is very well known.