Art Fund

A record-breaking year for Art Fund, including the purchase of £5.5m of art, is a ‘step in the right direction’ as the national charity seeks to increase its annual grant giving to £10m.

The triumphal portrait of Elizabeth I has become public property with the help of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant and £1.5m pounds raised in public donations.

The Bowes Museum has secured funding at a sum of nearly £2.3m to keep an exit-barred painting attributed to the workshop of Dieric Bouts the Elder in the UK.

A fresh warning has gone out to UK museums and galleries that they could face future funding cuts if they sell items from their collections.

A series of deals to safeguard the future of the Wedgwood Collection and ensure it will continue to be displayed in the Potteries have now been completed.

It has taken just over a month for the Art Fund’s £2.74m appeal to save the Wedgwood Collection to reach its target. It will now be gifted to the V&A but will stay in situ at the Wedgwood Museum in Barlaston, near Stoke.

Soon after ATG reported that the public had contributed £700,000 in a matter of days to help the final push to save the Wedgwood archive, the news came through that close to £2m had been raised. Some £1.3m was donated in just four days.

The Art Fund has launched an appeal to raise the remaining £2.74m needed to save the Wedgwood collection from being split up and sold off.

The Art Fund have launched a new crowdfunding scheme to help museums and galleries, the first of which should also help boost the art and antiques trade around Hastings.

Mystery surrounds the origin of a maple cabinet designed by Edward William Godwin and painted by James Abbott McNeill Whistler which has been bought by National Museums Scotland (NMS).

An appeal to buy Van Dyck’s final self-portrait for the nation, painted in England in 1640-41, has been given a boost by the news that a lower price is expected.

An appeal launched by the Art Fund to save a Poussin painting for the nation has hit its £3.9m target.

Negotiations on a new rescue package have raised hopes of saving the Wedgwood Museum collection. Those involved expect to be able to unveil an agreement within the next few months.

The Art Fund has launched a campaign to save a painting by Nicolas Poussin for the nation.

Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum has announced that it had succeeded in an eight-month campaign to save Edouard Manet’s ‘Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus’ for the nation.

WITH the arts budget severely squeezed in the government spending review, the announcement that The Art Fund will be dramatically expanding their funding programme provided some welcome news for Britain’s museums and public galleries.

THE Staffordshire Hoard has been saved for the nation – and a further £1.7m appeal has been launched to pay for its conservation, study and display.

TREDEGAR House in Monmouthshire has welcomed back this miniature piece of George I walnut thanks to a series of grants led by the Art Fund.

THE Art Fund have appointed Dr Stephen Deuchar, currently the director of Tate Britain and chairman of the 2009 Turner Prize, as its new director, with effect from January 4 2010.

LORD Ashcroft’s Victoria Cross collection – the largest in the world – is to go on public display following his £5m donation to the Imperial War Museum. The news comes as the museum has also received a donation from the Art Fund to purchase an important watercolur by Keith Vaughan (1912-1977) at auction.