Good news stories from the past seven days
The future of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ The Portrait of Omai has been secured thanks to a unique deal between London’s National Portrait Gallery and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Depicting a Polynesian who sailed to Britain with Captain Cook, the c.1776 work is one of the earliest great portraits of a person of colour, but was under threat of disappearing into a private collection after an export bar expired. Under the deal, each museum will pay half of the portrait’s £50m price tag and it will be shown alternately in LA and London. It could be on display in London as soon as June, when the Portrait Gallery reopens after a three-year makeover.
