Arts news

• The biggest challenges facing London’s new museum directors

  20-02-2017 22:00
  
  The incoming directors of Londons Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and the Tate join institutions in good shape, but still face significant challenges. Tristram Hunt, who assumed his role at the V&A yesterday (20 February), is a social historian and, until last month, a Labour Member of Parliament. He has never worked in a museumlet alone run one. Maria Balshaw, who takes over the Tate in June, has much more institutional experience. She became the director of Manchesters Whitworth Art
  
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• New York Investigators Return 36 Artifacts to Syria, Including Relief Looted from Palmyra

  24-09-2026 22:32 via artnews.com
  
  Thirty-six antiquities, collectively valued at more than $5 million, including a stone relief looted from the ancient site of Palmyra, have been retuned to Syria, New York investigators announced on Wednesday.Among the group are 14 “extraordinary” mosaics stolen from a Roman-era villa in Syria linked to antiquities dealer Georges Lotfi, a former source for the Manhattan district attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit who was, in a dramatic turn of events, charged in 2022 with
  
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• Newly Speculated Goya Painting to Feature in 2028 Museo del Prado Show

  24-09-2026 22:27 via artnews.com
  
  A painting that well-placed observers surmise was painted by Francisco de Goya will be on view in a forthcoming exhibition timed to commence 200 years after the celebrated Spanish artist’s death.After posing a question related to whether or not the work is truly by Goya, The Art Newspaper reported, “A full technical investigation of the work has yet to be completed but everyone involved, including Spain’s culture ministry and Madrid’s Museo del Prado, is operating under t
  
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• Art Collector and Publisher Benedikt Taschen Lists Mid-Century Modern Beverly Hills Home for $25 M.

  24-09-2026 21:27 via artnews.com
  
  ARTnews Top 200 collectors Benedikt and Lauren Taschen have spent the past eight years restoring the Adelman Residence, a 5,000-square-foot mid-century modern home designed by architects Thornton Abell and O’Neil Ford in 1956. The Taschens bought the home in 2018 (it was listed for $12,750,000), and, over the years, have refurbished the tennis court, original to the property from when it was part of Charlie Chaplin’s estate; the pool, the gardens, and the guest house; as well as all
  
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• MOCA LA Names Former Public Media Executive as New Director

  24-09-2026 21:07 via artnews.com
  
  For its next director, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles has gone with a figure whose expertise lies outside the art world.Jonathan Abbott, the former head of the public media organization GBH, was announced as the institution’s new director on Thursday, formally filling a post that was held in an interim capacity by curator Ann Goldstein. She had taken the leadership role after Johanna Burton left in 2025 to lead the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia.It is an unconventio
  
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• Greek PM Rejects British Museum Comparison of Parthenon Marbles and Bayeux Tapestry

  24-09-2026 21:04 via artnews.com
  
  In August, British Museum Director Nicholas Cullinan told the Financial Times that the Bayeux Tapestry loan from France was “a very compelling example of international partnership,” and a successful, “reciprocal exchange.” That deal, which took years to form, might even pave the way for a Parthenon Marbles loan, he suggested.But in a provocative opinion piece in today’s The Guardian, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis responded, seizing on Cullinan’s not
  
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• At Spring/Break’s First Edition in the Old CBS Newsroom, (Almost) Everything Is Political

  24-09-2026 20:31 via artnews.com
  
  This weekend, for likely the last time, cameras are rolling at 555 West 57th Street.The longtime headquarters of CBS News’s most hallowed properties—60 Minutes and Inside Edition—was recently hollowed out in a Paramount acquisition that saw personalities and producers shuffled to a center across the street. So, perhaps fittingly, Spring/Break, New York’s most irreverent art fair, has taken residence. Its inaugural edition at 555 West 57th Street, titled “Hide and Se
  
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• Private Members Club Maison Estelle Under Police Investigation, Canceling Frieze Week Events

  24-09-2026 18:11 via artnews.com
  
  Maison Estelle, a private members club in London, temporarily shuttered today following a Metropolitan Police investigation outside the premises. The club was set to host parties and dinners to mark Frieze Week, all of which have been canceled.Lisson Gallery, which was set to host an event at Maison Estelle, confirmed in an email to ARTnews that its team is now looking for a new venue. This is the second consecutive year that the gallery was forced to pivot venues under unusual circumstances: In
  
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• AI-Generated Mural Sparks Backlash in Banksy’s Hometown of Bristol

  24-09-2026 18:10 via artnews.com
  
  A new AI-designed vinyl mural, mounted in Banksy’s hometown of Bristol, is facing heavy criticism for its mistakes, including a depiction of the wrong Banksy work.The mural in question is pasted along the side of the Jolly Colliers Pub building in Bedminster, Bristol. It depicts not only an incorrect iteration of Cabot Tower and a dwarfed SS Great Britain, but it also contains a flawed interpretation of Banksy’s Mild Mild West (1999), with a one-legged figure pointing instead of the
  
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• Sotheby’s is Selling One of the World’s Most Coveted Whisky Bottles

  24-09-2026 17:24 via artnews.com
  
  “This story is also part of a new series on the convergence of art and luxury. See all of our reporting on the topic here.”On October 9, Sotheby’s will take one of the world’s most famous bottles of whisky back to its origins for the house’s first-ever sale at The Macallan Estate in Speyside, Scotland. The bottle — “The Macallan Fine & Rare 60 Years Old 1926” — has a high estimate of £2.2 million ($3 million), and is the auction&rsq
  
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• Why It Took This Artist 5 Years to Ship American Soldiers’ Trash Back from Afghanistan

  24-09-2026 16:12 via artnews.com
  
  America’s longest war ended abruptly. After 20 years of fighting, in August of 2021, US troops withdrew from Afghanistan in a manner described as “disastrous” even by a congressional investigation. The Taliban’s return to power was swift, though preventing it had ostensibly been the entire point of the decades-long occupation, the bombs, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost. Soon, millions faced famine as foreign aid was cut off, sanctions locked in, and Afghan assets
  
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• Greek Prime Minister Compares Cutting the Bayeux Tapestry to the Parthenon Marbles Division, Six Bronze Sculptures Stolen from Museum Garden Near Munich, and More: Morning Links for September 24, 2026

  24-09-2026 15:38 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.Good Morning!
  In a provocative essay, the Greek prime minister argues that just as it would be unacceptable to cut up the Bayeux Tapestry, so too should the Parthenon marbles be reunited in Athens.Thieves stole six bronze sculptures by Peter Gehring valued at over €100,000 ($114,000) from the garden of a museum near Munich.Israel is using its ancient heritage to justify the seizure of Pal
  
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• A Look Around London Design Festival and London Fashion Week Where Art and Design Collide

  24-09-2026 13:30 via artnews.com
  
  The city of London is back in action, its famous gray clouds have returned to the city’s skyline for fall coinciding with the London Design Festival and London Fashion Week this month and Frieze Week in October. In a unique crossover, the artists and designers all strived for softness and calm to counteract the hustle and bustle of London.To kickstart the London Design Festival, French artist Vincent Dubourg opened his exhibition “Blue Weather” at Carpenters Workshop Gallery in
  
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• Nineties style – 24 ways

  24-09-2026 12:00 via ft.com
  Shop the best of fashion’s favourite decade 
  
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• A Leonor Fini Retrospective Provokes Surrealism’s Fascination with Youthful Femininity

  24-09-2026 11:00 via artnews.com
  
  Leonor Fini said she loved the “sensation of changing dimension, species, space.” Her life and work were infused with metamorphic energy. The draw of liminality, ambiguity, and flux was fuel for her creative fire: The tension between eternity and mortality that animates all of us on some level was at the surface for her. Often associated with the Surrealists, Fini made art that grappled with many of the group’s questions about dreams, the unconscious, and the erotic, but she fi
  
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• After a $105 M. Memorabilia Blockbuster, Christie’s Launches a Pop Culture Division

  23-09-2026 23:23 via artnews.com
  
  After years of testing the waters, Christie’s has decided that pop culture is ready for the big leagues. The auction house confirmed Wednesday that it is launching a dedicated pop culture division, a new global operation that will hold multiple auctions each year spanning film and television, music and musical instruments, sports memorabilia, science and technology, natural history, fashion, and popular design. Josh Benesh, a former Heritage Auctions executive who joined Christie’s a
  
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• Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich Returns Painting to Great-Grandson of Jewish Collector Who Fled Germany in 1938

  23-09-2026 22:15 via artnews.com
  
  Paul Laporte, a great-grandson of the well-to-do Sofie Heilbronner, who fled Munich for the United States in 1938, spent the past eight years working to reclaim a painting that belonged to his great-grandmother and had been lost as a result of Nazi persecution. The artwork, Music (Arcadian Scene), 1892, by German painter Albert Lang was returned to Heilbronner’s heirs in a ceremony on September 22 at the German Embassy in Washington, DC. Before Tuesday, it had been held by the Bavarian Sta
  
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• Sotheby’s to Sell a $37 M. Cache of Works Once Owned by Armand Hammer, National Gallery of Art Names New Head of Art of Americas Department, and More: Industry Moves for September 23, 2026

  23-09-2026 20:30 via artnews.com
  
  Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.Big Number: $37 M. That’s the high estimate for a cache of a dozen works once owned by late oil tycoon Armand Hammer. Sotheby’s will offer them as part of its modern art evening sale in November, held as part of the New York marquee auctions. The top lot of the Hammer sale is expected to be Edgar Degas’s ca. 1899 p
  
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• How Collectors Jon and Kim Shirley Stepped In to Restore the Senate Building’s Famed Calder

  23-09-2026 20:15 via artnews.com
  
  In March 2016, former president and chief executive of Microsoft Jon Shirley and his wife, Kim, flew from Seattle, where they are based, to Washington, D.C., for a meeting of the National Gallery of Art’s Collectors Committee. While in town, they visited Alexander Calder’s monumental sculpture Mountains and Clouds (1976/1986), in the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building. Longtime collectors of Calder’s work—three years ago they donated 48 works, valued at $200 millio
  
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• El Museo del Barrio Apologizes for Renting Space to Event that Aired 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

  23-09-2026 20:14 via artnews.com
  
  New York’s El Museo del Barrio said this week that it regretted renting space to a group that organized an event at which 9/11 conspiracy theories were freely aired.Titled “Turning the Tide: 9/11 25 Years Later” and staged between September 10 and 13, the four-day event was held at the museum earlier this month to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center. It was organized by the International Center for 9/11 Justice, whose stated goal is to create &ldq
  
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• Art in America Celebrates Fall “Icons” Issue with Talk Featuring William T. Williams and Nari Ward

  23-09-2026 20:04 via artnews.com
  
  To mark the publication of Art in America’s fall “Icons” issue, the editors convened a panel discussion pairing William T. Williams, the subject of a profile in the magazine, with fellow artist Nari Ward, who studied with him at Brooklyn College. The conversation was moderated by ARTnews senior editor Maximilíano Durón, who wrote the piece about Williams, and is viewable in full below.Before the talk, A.i.A. editor-in-chief Sarah Douglas and publisher Erica Lubow
  
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• Amateur Archaeologist With a Metal Detector Finds 934 Roman Silver Coins in a Field in Western Germany

  23-09-2026 18:59 via artnews.com
  
  A trove of 934 Roman silver denarii was discovered by an amateur archaeologist with a metal detector in a field in Wesseling, Germany. The coins date to the time of the Roman emperor Hadrian.When his metal detector wouldn’t stop beeping last year, Oliver Riedl called authorities and a group of experts began digging immediately to discover the biggest collection of coins from this time period in the country, per the local archaeology office.The 6.8 pounds of silver was likely buried deliber
  
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• The Only Shocking Thing About Jordan Wolfson’s Gagosian Show Is How Boring It Is

  23-09-2026 17:41 via artnews.com
  
  Jordan Wolfson’s first New York gallery show in a decade arrived at Gagosian last Friday, exactly a week after the 25th anniversary of 9/11, bringing with it three new sculptures related to that fateful day. One features an architectural model of the World Trade Center, shown in solemn black and white; another has a picture of the Twin Towers at dusk, pixelated as though pulled from the depths of the internet; and yet another features the Freedom Tower, the building’s metallic surfac
  
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• Art Institute of Chicago Returns a Metzinger to Family of Jewish Collector Following Further Provenance Research

  23-09-2026 17:02 via artnews.com
  
  The Art Institute of Chicago will return Jean Metzinger’s painting Woman with a Fan (1913) to the family of Jewish art collector Emanuel Lewenstein, the museum has announced. The museum bought the painting from New York’s Sidney Janis Gallery in 1959, but despite research into its provenance, gaps remained, including its location before and during World War II. Working with the Mondex Corporation, which specializes in the recovery of art and other assets looted during World War II, t
  
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• LA’s Getty Museum Acquires Recently Rediscovered Velázquez Painting, a First for a West Coast Museum

  23-09-2026 17:00 via artnews.com
  
  The Getty Museum in Los Angeles has acquired Portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares, a painting that was recently attributed to Diego Velázquez. The acquisition means a Velázquez painting will for the first time be represented in the collection of a West Coast museum.Earlier this year, Detroit Institute of Arts director Salvador Salort-Pons, a scholar on Velázquez who is curating an exhibition on portraits of the Count-Duke of Olivares, published his findings in the Museo Pr
  
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• Lucia Laguna, Brazilian Artist Who Got Late But Fruitful Start on Painting Career, Has Died

  23-09-2026 16:40 via artnews.com
  
  Lucia Laguna, a Brazilian painter inspired by her lush surroundings in the hills above Rio de Janeiro, where she lived, died there at the age of 85, according to her gallery, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel. The São Paulo gallery said it was closing for the day yesterday to honor the memories of Laguna and Rodrigo Cass, another artist on the roster, who recently died in a beach accident.“Throughout her career, Lucia developed a body of work defined by her engagement with landscap
  
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• Mauritshuis Returns Nazi-Looted Painting to Heirs of Jewish Dealer

  23-09-2026 15:37 via artnews.com
  
  The Mauritshuis in The Hauge, the home of famed Dutch Old Master works by Rembrandt and Vermeer, is returning Jan van Goyen’s painting Fishermen by the Lakeshore (1651) after new research has revealed that the piece was looted by Nazis.The painting belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a Jewish art dealer who was fleeing the Netherlands for England on a ship in 1940 during World War II. His dealership in The Hague was taken over by Nazis and 1,113 pieces of artwork were transported to Germany a
  
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• Brazilian Artist Lucia Laguna Dies, Artworks by Bolivian Artist Alejandro Mario Yllanes Resurrected from the Dumpster, Uzbekistan’s Centre for Contemporary Arts Tashkent Opens, and More: Morning Links for September 23, 2026

  23-09-2026 14:47 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.Good Morning!
  Brazilian painter Lucia Laguna has died this week in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 85.The legacy of Bolivian artist Alejandro Mario Yllanes (1913–ca. 1960), a protégé of Diego Rivera, is rising from the abyss—or more literally, the dumpster.US Senator Martin Heinrich, with a group of senators, has sent a letter demanding that the Trump administration halt
  
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• Dartmoor’s Princetown Press makes prints fit for a king

  23-09-2026 12:01 via ft.com
  Inside the Crown-approved letterpress studio
  
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• The Future of American Non-profit Theatre: A Discussion

  23-09-2026 06:07 via artsjournal.com
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