Category Archives: Art Loans

Sekhemka in the news again

Posted on: March 8, 2016 by Emily Gould

  There is rarely a dull moment in the long-running saga of the Sekhemka statue, the rare Egyptian Old Kingdom sculpture controversially sold by Northampton Borough Council for £15.76 million in 2014. The piece had been displayed at the Northampton Museum and was sold by the Council to raise funds, incurring the wrath of the […]

Government Indemnity Scheme changes for 2016

Posted on: February 11, 2016 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper

There have been several changes to the Government Indemnity Scheme (GIS) in the UK that were brought about as of 1 January 2016. The GIS is a scheme by which the UK government covers the insurance cost of loans brought into national and non-national UK institutions, rather than a private insurer. This allows museums to put […]

Guess who’s back?

Posted on: October 12, 2015 by Alexander Herman

Goya’s Marquesa de Santa Cruz is back in London. Those with long memories will know that this painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya had been taken out of Spain in the mid 1980s and brought to auction at Christie’s in London, only to incur the ire of the Spanish government. The work had left Spain in 1983 accompanied by forged […]

Proposed law in Scotland could affect museum objects

Posted on: September 25, 2015 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper

A change to the law in Scotland could have an impact on objects left at museums, where the owner has disappeared or has become untraceable. The draft bill before the Scottish Parliament would first seek to introduce a 20 year positive prescription period, whereby a possessor of corporeal movable property (i.e. an object like a painting) would […]

Old Flo is here to stay… in Tower Hamlets, that is

Posted on: July 9, 2015 by Alexander Herman

Judgment was handed down yesterday in an important case involving a Henry Moore sculpture (Draped Seated Woman) lovingly known as ‘Old Flo’. The sculpture, bought from the artist by London County Council in 1962 to be publicly displayed in the city’s East End, has been at the centre of a dispute between two London boroughs: […]

The Hugh Lane Collection: a hundred years on

Posted on: May 31, 2015 by Alexander Herman

The disputed collection that had once belonged to the great Irish dealer and collector Sir Hugh Lane has once again made the headlines. Lane died one hundred years ago this month on the Lusitania when the ship was sunk by German U-boats on its journey from New York to Liverpool. He had put together a fantastic art […]

A Spanish Tug-of-War

Posted on: May 8, 2015 by Alexander Herman

An interesting recent article in the New York Times recounts the struggle between two Spanish Museums over the right to display four paintings, including two masterpieces of European art (Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross). The works have been held at the Prado Museum in Madrid since being sent […]