People

Perhaps more than any other year in recent memory, 2016 was the year of the move. ‘Restructuring’ across all three major auction houses led to an unprecedented number of high-profile departures. Here is a summary of the key changes and the occasional game of employment musical chairs.

A celebrity endorsement by actor Richard E Grant gave Sunbury Antiques Market at Kempton Park a boost in the run up to Christmas.

Julian Dawson is retiring from Gorringe's and held his last auction yesterday at the Lewes auction firm.

Property developer and collector Harry Hyams, who died in December 2015, has left much of his £487m estate to a charity that will preserve his collection for the nation.

Asian art dealers Roger and Miranda Keverne donated a Chinese export painting, depicting pirates on the China coast, to the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.

Christie’s Guillaume Cerutti has been promoted to become the auctioneer’s chief executive, replacing Patricia Barbizet who will become vice chairman.

MP and BADA president Victoria Borwick has given a passionate defence of the antique ivory trade in Parliament, strongly arguing against a total ban.

Medals specialist David Erskine-Hill has left Dix Noonan Webb to rejoin former employer Spink.

Christie’s contemporary art chief Brett Gorvy is leaving the firm to become an art advisor.

A media report of a spat between two of television’s best known art detectives – dealers Philip Mould and Bendor Grosvenor – has not been denied by the dealers when contacted by ATG.

Antiques Roadshow expert and militaria specialist Graham Lay has passed away. A well-known personality on the show for more than 25 years, his death was announced by the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow.

Do you know who this bespectacled gentlemen is? Or whose hand is behind this painting of ‘Laomedon Refusing Payment to Poseidon and Apollo’? If you think you do, you could become an art detective for the nation.

Art Recovery Group, founded by Chris Marinello three years ago as a rival to long-established The Art Loss Register, has split the firm to create a not-for-profit organisation called Artive.

US billionaire investor and art collector Steven Cohen has sold his stake in Sotheby’s by offloading his remaining one million shares.

Anthony Pratt, managing director of The Canterbury Auction Galleries, has been portrayed as The Knight from the Canterbury Tales in a mural unveiled earlier this month in the Kent city’s high street.

Christie’s have appointed the former Metropolitan Museum curator Stijn Alsteens as international head of the Old Master drawings department.

Well-known general valuers Rachel Doerr and Sean McIlroy launch a new UK valuations firm this month.

Phillips have appointed design specialist Alexander Payne as deputy chairman.

Auctioneer, valuer and ‘Antiques Roadshow’ expert Michael Newman died last month, aged 80.

Adam Schoon has joined Duke's in Dorchester to head its Asian art department.