Minutes of meetings of the Council, including the following selected entries: the decision that the volume in the Library entitled
Fasciculus Medicinae by
Johannes de Ketham should be auctioned at
Sotheby’s, and the proceeds used to form a new Library fund, 4 - 18 January 1966 and note of the subsequent sale of the work for £3,000, 21 June 1966; the resolution to abandon the projected
Rembrandt winter exhibition after doubts had arisen about its likely quality following examination of photographs of the works offered for loan, 31 May 1966; consideration of the resignation of
Gilbert Spencer, in the course of a long standing dispute with the committee of the Edwin Austin Abbey Memorial Trust Fund for Mural Painting, 21 June 1966 and note that Spencer had withdrawn his resignation, 25 October 1966 and passim; approval for the making of a documentary about all aspects of the Royal Academy’s work by the television department of the Royal College of Arts, to mark the Royal Academy’s bicentenary, 5 July 1966; the presentation by the President,
Sir Charles Wheeler, of a programme of various proposals, mainly involving the use of the building, designed to keep the Royal Academy “open throughout the year, to increase income, and to revitalise Burlington House”, including the introduction of a “Friends” organisation, 2 August 1966; and agreement to contribute £1,000 from the Sydney Lee Fund to a national appeal for the restoration of works of art damaged by floods in Italy, 15 November 1966.