Law, crime and regulation

A unique sculpture by Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) has been blocked from export following its sale at Christie’s in London earlier this year.

The UK government has placed a temporary export bar on two Roman mosaics dating from the fourth century AD. Together they are valued at £560,000.

Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum has acquired a Fra Angelico (fl.1417-55) Crucifixion scene which was blocked from export following its sale at Christie’s last year.

A temporary export bar has been placed on a needlework sampler by an 11-year-old 19th century schoolgirl depicting the Menai Bridge in Anglesey.

More than £20,000 worth of items were stolen from National Trust property Montacute House in Somerset last month.

The UK government’s Budget included a raft of measures that are likely to affect the art and antiques market.

A Frankie Dettori bronze made to mark the jockey’s retirement from racing has been stolen from Haynes Fine Art in Pimlico Road, London.

A religious icon has been stolen from the chapel of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

An ancient Assyrian artefact stolen from an archaeological site in Iraq in the early 1990s has been returned to the country after being stored for an extended period by the Metropolitan Police in London.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has returned an ancient bronze funerary couch to Turkey after concluding that it had been illicitly excavated in the early 1980s.

A portrait by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) and his workshop which has been in an American museum since the 1960s will be offered at Christie’s New York in January following an agreement between the institution and the heirs of a Jewish collector.

A remarkable archive of newly discovered scientific papers by the mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing and his collaborator Donald Bayley has been temporarily blocked from export.

A temporary export bar has been placed on a British coin sold at auction that features the never-seen-before name Esunertos.