Museums and Institutions

Franz Xavier Messerschmidt (1736-83) was one of the most extraordinary figures in the history of Western art.

The £1.7m price tag needed to keep the Macclesfield Psalter in the UK has been found.

FOR its seventh London staging, The Watercolours and Drawings Fair leaves its long-time home at the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly, and moves deeper into Mayfair to The Royal Academy, 6 Burlington Gardens, W1 where it will run from February 3 to 6 with a charity preview on the evening of February 2.

The Victoria and Albert Museum will open a new Portrait Miniatures Gallery on March 2.

THE V&A has appealed for help from the art and antiques world in tracing the eight bronze plaques thought to be worth a total of £450,000 stolen in the third raid on the museum in three months.

LAUNCHED with a deal of success last year, when it attracted 10,000 visitors, COLLECT 2005 will be held at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum from January 12 to 17.

The Victoria and Albert Museum have updated security following a second theft from their Ceramic Galleries in as many months. While the new systems were installed, the galleries were closed for a week.

A LEADING figure in the world of heritage is calling for a change in the export licence rules – after the decision to keep a valuable work of art in the UK.

THE Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has acquired a devotional panel of the Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna (active by 1278; died 1319) from the Stoclet family in Brussels.

POLICE investigating the theft of Tang and Yuan dynasty jewellery and body ornaments from the British Museum on October 29-30 believe the raid could be linked to the theft of Chinese jades from the Victoria and Albert Museum earlier last month.

GLASSWORKS by Emile Gallé thought to be worth over £1.5m have been stolen from a Swiss museum. Thieves seized 15 items by the French master craftsman in the raid on the Neumann Foundation, housed in the castle of Gingins overlooking Lake Geneva, on October 27.

THE V&A have opened the first new gallery in their £30m transformation programme.

BUYING and selling art and antiques is one thing, but what about transporting it from the place of sale to its destination?

NEXT year’s Watercolour and Drawings Fair will move to a new venue, the Royal Academy rooms at 6 Burlington Gardens, London W1, where it will run from February 3 to 6 with an opening evening preview on February 2.

THE National Maritime Museum has purchased two prints from a London dealer following its appeal in the Antiques Trade Gazette for information about two missing William Hodges paintings.

PLANS are advanced for a new international London art fair next summer at the Royal Academy’s Burlington Gardens premises.

ASIAN Art in London will open with what promises to be a spectacular launch party at the Victoria & Albert Museum on Friday, November 5.

THE National Art Collections Fund (Art Fund) has criticised the state of public collecting in the UK on the same day as announcing a £500,000 offer to help keep the Macclesfield Psalter in the UK.

ONE of London’s most treasured small museums faces a funding crisis after a rent rise and the rejection of its grant application by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Badges by Philip Atwood, published by the British Museum Press. ISBN 0714150142 £7.99sb AMONG the British Museum’s priceless antiquities is the museum’s collection of some 12,000 badges. A small, hard-to-find exhibition, showing at the museum until January 16, presents just a tiny fraction of this archive.