Curator & Collector

A couple of stolen collections to report today. First, never trust your house-helper: one stands accused of stealing a coin collection worth, apparently, $12,000 in Connecticut. The house-helper has been caught, but her accomplice, who currently has the collection, has not. Meanwhile, an Ohio man had his coin collection, apparently valued at $16,900, go missing [...]

A couple of donations to museums to report today. First, the Bank of America has just donated one million dollars to Fort Lauderdale’s Museum of Discovery and Science, while Anthony d’Offay, a British collector and dealer, has “donated” 75 paintings to British museums. He will sell them for his cost, about $55 million; the paintings [...]

A major survey of museum attendance around the world by The Art Newspaper has just hit the news, and the Louvre is #1, with over eight million visitors last year. In England, the British Museum places after the Tate Modern, an interesting finding. Here are the figures for the top ten-ranking museums, taken from the [...]

[UPDATE, and apologies for the length of this particular post] All our humble efforts to help bring democracy to Washington, DC are for naught, it seems. The US Mint just announced that the slogan, in both its historical and ironic forms has been rejected. The Mint’s statement reads: “Changing how the District of Columbia (the [...]

Tennyson Vase image used with the permission of the Carnegie Museum of Art We have just received a press release from the Carnegie Museum to the effect that it has recently acquired the Tennyson Vase. This press release is not yet on the website. In response to a query by Curator & Collector, the Carnegie [...]

From today’s Guardian: “The British Museum and the British army have held talks about a new initiative aimed at restoring, as far as it ever can be, Iraq’s shattered cultural heritage.” Nobody has yet talked with the Iraqi authorities about the plan. The short-term goal of the initiative is to facilitate the arrival of experts [...]

“Deliberately primitive” winning coin design from Eurodesigncontest.eu Lots of links to go around today, starting in the EU, where a deliberately primitive coin design was selected for the new commemorative 2 Euro coin. The EU executive said the coin’s “deliberately primitive” design illustrates how the euro is the latest step in the long history of [...]

Recently, I came across this New York Times article on stolen Thai antiquities in US museums. The article treats two important, but related issues: skullduggery, and evolving laws governing cultural artefacts. In terms of particulars, the article’s starting point is the prehistoric Ban Chiang artefacts that adorn, according to the Asian Art Museum’s chief curator [...]

[Note: more up-to-date information may be found on the "About the Images" page on the sidebar.] The new image at the top of the sidebar, which you can see below, was made for me by my friend, Kevin Kim. Kevin is the author of a couple of books, including a humour tome that is not [...]

News-Antique.com has a story about the upcoming American Numismatic Association’s “National Money Convention” in Phoenix in early March. The US Treasury will feature a “Billion Dollar” display, including $100,000 legal tender banknotes and a $500 million Treasury Note. Five hundred dealers will be at the show, and will offer informal appraisals to members of the [...]