ALTHOUGH UNIVERSITY COLLECTIONS make up only three per cent of museums in the country, they have a prominence that belies their size: according to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport they represent thirty percent of collections designated as ‘of national or international importance’. As a way of drawing attention to the range of university art collections, we have compiled a Supplement surveying acquisitions made by museums and galleries other than those in London, Oxford, Cambridge and Glasgow (see pp.677–88).

NO VISITOR TO Canaletto & the Art of Venice at The Queen’s Gallery, London (to 12th November), will be disappointed. The Queen’s Gallery could have been designed to display this generous selection from the collection of Joseph Smith, Consul at Venice, which was acquired in 1762 for the young George III by his ‘advisors’ – it seems rather ungenerous that the King’s mentor, the 3rd Earl of Bute, is denied specific credit in the catalogue: as he subsequently wrote, he ‘was permitted to act as for [him]self ’.