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ArtUK.org, the website that features more than 200,000 works of art from the national collection, is to launch a sculpture collection with the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association. Art UK grew out of the Public Catalogue Foundation founded in 2002 and its website won the 2016 Apollo magazine Digital Innovation of the Year award. The judges praised the way it “makes the nation’s art available in a way that has no international rival in terms of its ambition, generosity of spirit, or coherence”. The new project has a Heritage Lottery Fund grant and is seeking matching funding. Arts News The latest heritage news and views. Compiled by Simon TaitArt UK plans sculpture archive That Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital in the Reading Room of the British Museum is now part of folklore, but Lenin was also a devotee as an exhibition at the British Library opening in April will reveal. A 1902 letter written by Lenin (under the assumed name of Jacob Richter in order to evade Tsarist police) applying to become a reader is to be a star exhibit in the major Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths display that opens in April. The letter is written in perfect English to the museum’s Director from an address in Pentonville. “It is a remarkable institution, especially that exceptional reference section,” Lenin recalled in 1907. “Ask them any question, and in the very shortest space of time they’ll tell you where to look to fi nd the material that interests you”.The exhibition will tell the incredible story of the Russian Revolution through posters, letters, photographs, banners, weapons, items of uniform, recordings and fi lm.Above: Letter from ‘Jacob Richter’, Lenin’s assumed name, to the British Museum in 1902Lenin’s library ticket on showLynn Chadwick’s famous sculpture, The Watchers, which was vandalised ten years ago when one of the three fi gures was cut off and stolen, is back home. The Grade II-listed piece was attacked on site in the gardens of Downshire House, University of Roehampton, with the two remaining fi gures put in store. Now the third has been recast. The trio was unveiled at the opening of new halls of residence, attended by the Mayor of Wandsworth, MP Justine Greening and Chadwick’s family. “The Watchers is one of only three pieces like this in the world and this reinstallation project has been commended by Historic England,” said Gilly King, the university’s history and heritage adviser. “We’ve taken a lot of care in improving security to protect The Watchers and have rescued the sculpture from the Heritage at Risk register.”Below: The Watchers are backChadwick trio back on watchWatts portrait inspires gift of Lindsay workThe Watts Gallery and Artist’s Village near Guildford in Surrey has acquired GF Watts’s Portrait of Violet Lindsay (c1879), who was later Marchioness of Granby and Duchess of Rutland. It is acknowledged as one of his most important portraits and was achieved in a private treaty sale with the help of the Art Fund and the ACE/V&A Purchase Grant Fund.Violet Lindsay was an accomplished portrait artist herself and inspired by this purchase, her grandson, the historian John Julius Norwich, has given the gallery more than 40 of her drawings.Meanwhile, the Director of the Watts Gallery, Perdita Hunt, has announced she will stand down in the summer after 12 years in which the gallery has been restored and the Watts’s nearby home acquired, restored and opened to the public. Above: GF Watts, Portrait of Violet Lindsay, c187912 NADFAS REVIEW / SPRING 2017 www.nadfas.org.ukARTS NEWS