Museums and Institutions

A new museum in Plymouth has acquired a ‘colossal and extraordinary grotesque grinning crab’ by the Martin Brothers after fundraising to keep the sculpture in the UK.

An Afghan limestone sculpture believed to have been stolen during the Afghan civil war (1992-94), when Kabul was besieged, surfaced at an auction house in the UK last year.

The UK government is seeking a buyer to pay £2.5m for a group of 18th century botanical drawings.

Three Impressionist paintings believed to be worth over £14m that were taken by the Nazis during the Second World War but recently restituted to the heirs of a French-Jewish art collector will be offered at Sotheby’s in London next month.

Two men pleaded guilty in connection with the theft of rare books and manuscripts from the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

An 18th century watercolour miniature by one of India’s greatest painters has been saved for the nation by the British Museum.

A rare Saxon walrus ivory seal matrix will go back on display in the British Museum – after the institution missed out on buying the object twice before.

A white porcelain sculpture made in the experimental years of the Chelsea factory has been acquired for the national collection of ceramics at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum has secured an 1830 autograph miniature manuscript by a 14-year-old Charlotte Brontë (1816-55) that was auctioned at Aguttes in Paris.

Sculptures of Buddha dating from the 4th-6th centuries smuggled out of Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago have finally been returned to the country’s national museum.

London’s National Gallery is asking for the public’s help to raise the final £2m required to buy 'The Finding of Moses' by Orazio Gentileschi (1563-1639) from its owner, entrepreneur and founder of the DFS furniture retailer, Graham Kirkham.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth in West Yorkshire has begun a public campaign to raise the final funds needed to bid for a rare manuscript from the Brontës' childhood.

‘Conversations on collecting’ is the theme of the inaugural London Art Week symposium, running for the first time this winter.

The government is hoping to find a buyer to pay £3.5m to keep an 18th century picture by Joseph Wright of Derby in the UK.