Museums and Institutions

THE second week of London’s prestige midsummer sales saw the Modern given way to the traditional with a flurry of exceptional prices for Old Master paintings and drawings and Renaissance works of art.

UK: THE panel looking into whether UK collections and institutions should return Nazi looted art to its original owners or compensate them has unveiled the criteria and procedures which will determine its judgements.

US: ONE OF the rarest chairs in the world has met with an unexpected fate at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. A 17th century Chinese folding armchair, which had accomodated the highest dignitaries of the Imperial court, was unable to bear the weight of a weary museum visitor who had disregarded the ‘do not touch’ sign and sat down to rest his feet.

US & FRANCE: TWO works by Philippe de Champaigne have been withdrawn from the sale of the Karl Lagerfeld collection, in New York on May 23, and offered to the French State.

UK: LEADING London art dealer Simon Dickinson has announced the sale to the Brooklyn Museum of Art of the 14th century Florentine gold ground painting of Christ in Majesty which he bought for £66,000 at Dorchester rooms of Hy. Duke & Son on March 9

UK: LADY Charlotte Schreiber was a celebrated 19th century collector numbering ceramics, enamels and fans amongst her passions.

UK: ONE of the bargains of the year must be the British Library’s purchase of the Letters of the Earl of Essex to Elizabeth I, which sold at Phillips on June 11 for a low-estimate £150,000 plus premium.

UK: PRINCIPAL FOCUS of attention at this auction was the range of private press, limited edition and other modern illustrated books on offer.

UK: THE Government has saved one of Van Dyck’s finest paintings for the nation and is blocking the export of two further paintings, a Rembrandt and a Ben Nicholson.