Museum acquisitions

THE London Jewish Museum of Art (the Ben Uri Gallery) have announced that they have purchased a crucifixion by Marc Chagall for what they believe to be a fraction of its real value at a Paris auction.

THE two museums hoping to provide a home for the Staffordshire hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold will be asking arts charities and other funding bodies to pay for it.

WHILE £50m was finally raised in February to keep the Duke of Sutherland's Titian painting Diana and Actaeon in the UK, an attempt to raise a further £50m by 2012 for the Duke's Diana and Callisto is already underway.

Liverpool World Museum’s Japanese holdings have been given a significant boost by the donation of 128 netsuke. The gift represents around half the collection of the late Jonas G Gadelius donated by his widow Gabita.

The Tate announced a record year for acquisitions in their 2007/8 Annual Report. The Tate Collection aquired 494 works, valued at £63.1m, of which 320 were gifts and bequests from collectors and artists.

The British Library has secured the oldest surviving roll of arms in English history after a successful fundraising effort to keep it in the UK. The Dering Roll dates from the last quarter of the 13th century and depicts 324 coats of arms, approximately a quarter of the English baronage during the time of Edward I, making it a vital record for the study of heraldry in medieval England.

This Carrs of Carlisle biscuit tin looks like pretty much any other Christmas biscuit tin from 1941 – except that it happens to be unopened.

AN historic and important medieval scientific instrument, known as the Canterbury Quadrant, has been saved for the nation. St James’s specialist dealers Trevor Philip and Sons have sold the quadrant to the British Museum for £411,250.

The Louvre have secured the return of a French Crown Jewel after 121 years, through a private sale with Christie’s New York.

Kensington Church Street dealer Paul Reeves did a double-take at Sotheby’s earlier this month. As well as curating their March 20 mixed-owner decorative arts sale titled The Best of British, he also mounted a week-long selling exhibition of his own stock under the same title in their Bond Street Galleries.

IT’S the sort of find that every dealer dreams of – a unique and valuable antique lying unrecognised and just waiting to be snapped up.

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

Dukes have negotiated the sale to the nation of two major Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Music by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones and Hamlet and Ophelia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti were found in the Oxfordshire home of the late Jean Preston that also yielded two panels from the San Marco altarpiece by Fra Angelico sold by the Dorchester auctioneers last year for £1.7m.

THE closure of Sherborne House in Dorset leaves a question mark over the future of the Elizabeth Frink Archive, the premier assemblage of the sculptor’s work.

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.

Soon after marrying his young wife Jane, William Morris commissioned his friend Philip Webb to build them a house. The end result, completed in 1859, was Red House, named after its steep red-tiled roof.

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

ROYAL Doulton Ltd are looking for a new owner for their Minton paper archive – the collection of thousands of original watercolours, drawings, pattern books and other manuscript material relating to designs for the Minton factory dating back to 1793.

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.