Museums and Institutions

A MAJOR policy shift by the Museums Association means British museums will now consider selling at auction as a way to safeguard core collections for the future.

A particularly impressive and well-provenanced example of cabinetmaking by the celebrated firm Gillows of Lancaster has returned home.

Sotheby’s have agreed to sponsor Tate Britain’s Duveens Commission, thereby allowing this site-specific sculpture commission to become an annual rather than a biennial event.

THE British Museum were credited with uncovering the fraud that led to the jailing of serial faker Shaun Greenhalgh two weeks ago, while auction houses and the trade were criticised for selling his work.

THE Gilbert Collection is to move from Somerset House on London’s Embankment to the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington next year.

A FUNDING crisis means the Percival David Foundation collection of Chinese ceramics will move from the University of London’s School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) to the British Museum.

Art dealer Andrew Sim has sold a watercolour by Richard Dadd (1817-1886) to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It is the first work by the enigmatic Victorian artist to enter the museum’s vast art collection.

Asian Art in London celebrates its tenth anniversary from November 1 to 10 and as part of the anniversary celebrations will join with the British Museum to hold a Study Day around the exhibition The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army on November 10. Tickets for the day cost £22 (contact 0207 323 8181).

HERITAGE grants have helped the British Museum acquire the 15th century illuminated manuscript known as the Wardington Hours.

The Victoria and Albert Museum have secured the funds to acquire this spectacular early 18th century French silver ewer and basin commissioned by John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough.

After a year-long fund-raising effort, The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has just secured the future of its most impressive Chelsea porcelain exhibit.

The Museum in Docklands have acquired a rare and significant archive of 18th century papers highlighting London’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.

The Louvre has more money to spend on buying art than the National Gallery, both Tates, the V&A and the British Museum put together.

A new exhibition to mark the 400th anniversary of the first permanent settlement in America opens at the Museum in Docklands this month.

More than 400 guests gathered to celebrate the Asian Art in London awards at the Burlington Gardens rooms of the Royal Academy on Wednesday night last week.

The Frederick Parker Collection of Chairs, whose long-term future once looked uncertain, has now found a secure home as a study collection at London Metropolitan University.

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.