Taiwan to loan art to China amid warming ties

It is a face known throughout the world, but the public will see a different side of the Queen today as a portrait banished for 61 years goes on display.

One of the most memorable experiences in my travelling life was to be shown around the Prado Museum in Madrid by a curator of Spanish paintings from the National Gallery.

A feast of drawings in New York

Steven Kopit, a loyal MR commentator, asks: Tyler - Let’s have more on the economics of museums. That’s actually an interesting topic. Only a very small portion of the collections of the Louvre other major museums is on display at any given time. I think it would make a great deal of sense to provide additional venues for shows–including in China. In the end, holdings of art (like income, per SS) only matter is someone actually consumes them, ie, gets to see them.

Egypt's antiquities council said on Wednesday that New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has agreed to send back treasures taken from the tomb of the famed pharaoh Tutankhamun.The museum agreed to recognise Egypt's right to 19 relics in its possession since early last century, the council said in a statement.The artefacts, which include a bronze figurine of a dog with a golden collar and a sphinx, part of a bracelet made of semi-precious lapis lazuli, will be returned next year and go on display in 2012, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said.

Egypt's antiquities council said on Wednesday that New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has agreed to send back treasures taken from the tomb of the famed pharaoh Tutankhamun.The museum agreed to recognise Egypt's right to 19 relics in its possession since early last century, the council said in a statement.The artefacts, which include a bronze figurine of a dog with a golden collar and a sphinx, part of a bracelet made of semi-precious lapis lazuli, will be returned next year and go on display in 2012, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said.

Taiwan's national museum on Monday said it would not lend its half of a famous ancient painting to China for an exhibition because it feared it would not be returned.The announcement came a day after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said he hoped one day to visit Taiwan, amid warming relations between Beijing and the self-ruled island, which split after a civil war in 1949.

When the Vancouver Maritime Museum opened its holdings of erotic carved whale teeth to public eyes this month, it not only assailed the sensibilities of its more prudish visitors, but exposed a collection that a former museum director had prayed would never again see the light of day. Not because they are naughty — but because they are fake.