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IT took 50 bids and half an hour to auction this RMB370m (£35m) scroll, by Qi Baishi (1864-1957) at Beijing's China Guardian on May 22 – the latest demonstration of the breadth of mainland demand for modern Chinese paintings by the country's most acclaimed artists.

THE Portable Antiquities Scheme has recorded a 36 per cent increase in finds since improving its database in 2010 and making it easier to register discoveries.

A THEFT of a rhino head from a museum in Surrey is thought to have been motivated by the hugely valuable trade in rhino horn.

THE man who oversaw the French Revolution's 'reign of terror' but who finally met his end at the guillotine himself, Maximilien de Robespierre, was back on the block again at the end of last month as Sotheby's auctioned an extraordinary cache of documents in Paris.

ED Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, has appointed London art dealer Lowell Libson as a member of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest.

IT is symptomatic of the changes in the Poole pottery market that the joint top selling lot in a large specialist sale last month was a 1960s rimmed dish.

A house clearer has won a High Court battle to regain possession of a pair of medieval embroideries thought to be worth millions after a longstanding dispute with a fine art specialist.

THE latest Modern British art sale at Christie's in London set a series of new benchmarks for the sector.

DONNINGTON Priory saleroom Dreweatts sold the collection of Bob Oliphant as part of a wider-ranging auction of traditional art and antiques on May 24-25.

ONE of the USA’s largest regional salerooms, New Orleans Auction Galleries, have filed for bankruptcy protection but struck a deal to keep trading that will ensure all consignors are paid.

SALISBURY auctioneers Woolley & Wallis saw two more lots make over £1m last week.

BONHAMS are to work with Cranfield University in Bedfordshire with the aim of making new technological advancements for authenticating porcelain more accessible for use in the art market.

THOMAS Grant Dixon formed his Worcester collection from 1940-70. This discerning collector was a great friend of H. Rissik Marshall, the famed Worcester collector and author whose collection now resides in the Ashmolean at Oxford.

CHINESE works of art dominated this month's Asian sales series in London but among the most successful auctions last week was Bonhams' dispersal of the second part of the Edward Wrangham (1928-2009) collection.

SOTHEBY’S made a profit in the first three months of 2011 – that profit may have been only $2.4m, but it compares with a loss of $2.2m for the same period last year.

THE latest sales of Contemporary art in New York produced some solid results, but buyers were selective and not all the projected highlights fulfilled vendors’ expectations.

THE Fifth Annual Art Investment Conference will take place on May 27 at the London Business School and this year’s theme is Art Investment in the New Information Age. It will focus on the impact of increasing transparency on the global art market and how to adapt.

IN a series of high-profile auctions in New York that saw an underperforming run of Impressionist and Modern art sales, the eye-catching price of the week by some distance came for a 19th century historical genre painting.

"The best piece of furniture sold in Shropshire in a decade," enthused Shrewsbury auctioneer Jeremy Lamond of Halls.

SOTHEBY'S will sell the earliest rules of club football on July 14. They are part of a lot which includes the historic archive of the world’s oldest football club, Sheffield FC.