News

PHILLIPS de Pury look to have taken another step to increase their influence as a major player in London’s contemporary art market by forming a new partnership with The Saatchi Gallery.

LONDON has gained ground in the global art market during 2007 with over $2.35bn in sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s for the first six months of the year. In their US rooms the two leading auctioneers took $2.6bn over the same period.

This summer has seen a spate of sleepers awoken in provincial salerooms, but inevitably the one that grabbed the headlines in the national press was the tale of the rediscovered ‘Titian’.

After more than 50 years in the business, Worcestershire auctioneer Philip Laney is to close his firm and take up a consultancy post with chartered surveyors and land agents Doorbars.

THE Artists’ Collecting Society have completed their first year of collecting and paying out the Artists’ Resale Right. They have now been given the mandate to collect the resale right by 200 artists, including well known names like Lucien Freud and Anthony Caro.

HERITAGE grants have helped the British Museum acquire the 15th century illuminated manuscript known as the Wardington Hours.

IT must be every trustee’s nightmare. You dispose of vanloads of unwanted books for what you think is a realistic £36,000, but then over a period of less than a year you see the pick of them then raise around £500,000 at auction.