The Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland are about to see their collections bolstered. London art dealer Anthony D'Offay announced that he would be giving a collection of 725 works of modern art to the galleries at their original ticket price. Estimated at a value of £125 million, D'Offay is asking for the £28 million he originally paid for the pieces. His reason? He's doing it for the kids. The collection will be......

Staff at the National Portrait Gallery may seem especially cheery today in response to the news that the Aston Villa boss, Randy Lerner, has made a gift of £5 million towards the development of the collection of faces as well as vital display, education and outreach work. This is definitely a good thing. At a time when public funding for the arts is increasingly competitive and not something to be relied on, private philanthropy......

Of the many pleasures that watching the finals of the Cardiff Singer of The World Competition last week provided (and let us just say, for the record, that Londonist is in favour of sopranos who appear to having epileptic seizures), one of the guiltiest was, whenever the announcer identified one singer or another as a participant in the Vilar Young Artist Program at Covent Garden, scouring the announcer's face for any trace of a......

Not much in the way of new tours this week so we'll focus on the fine art of not getting ripped off when trying to get tickets for sold out shows. Touts are not our favourite breed of human being (if they can indeed be considered to be human) and the last minute online rip-off agencies are to fair trade what anthrax is to a healthy complexion. Ebay is a Russian Roulette game and......