Museums & Heritage

SFMoMA fires contemporary art curator Eungie Joo amid misconduct allegations

Joo had joined the museum in 2017 as its first contemporary art curator and most recently organised an ambitious project by Kara Walker

New perspectives: Annabelle Selldorf brings a fresh angle to the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing

A tour of the remodelled building, five months before its reopening, shows the New York architect has created a spectacular main entrance closely integrated with the rest of the London institution and with the public space of Trafalgar Square

How Amsterdam’s Drift Museum is working to create more energy than it uses

Sustainability features at heritage-listed former railway factory will include heating system that stores summer warmth for use in the winter months

New report chronicles challenges in making visible the sites of historic US protests

The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s latest "Landslide" report marks a shift from the annual initiative’s usual focus on threatened landscapes

Workers at the Noguchi Museum push to form a union

After months of protests in solidarity with Palestine and against a new dress code banning workers from wearing keffiyehs, the Queens institution's staff are organising for "better conditions"

The most exciting art museum openings and expansions of 2025

The construction of Saadiyat Cultural District is due to be completed, while the Studio Museum in Harlem will unveil its new 82,000 sq. ft building

London-based Studio Weave wins competition to revamp British Museum entrance

New welcome pavilions and a landscaped forecourt are scheduled for completion early 2026

Could Israel’s shuttered embassy in Dublin become a gallery for Palestinian art?

Fresh off a pop-up show in Ireland, the director of the Connecticut-based Palestine Museum US hopes the former Israeli Embassy could become a permanent European outpost

Controversial Ontario Place redevelopment and mega-spa could cost taxpayers billions

A long-awaited report from Ontario’s auditor general finds that the redevelopment plan for Toronto's modernist landscape is “not fair, transparent or accountable”

Robert Smithson’s famed Land art piece Spiral Jetty added to US National Register of Historic Places

The 1,500ft-long, coiling earthwork in Utah’s Great Salt Lake is arguably the best known example of Land art

Strike at Seattle Art Museum ends as visitor services staff ratify first contract

The new contract raises the base hourly wage and reinstates a pre-pandemic retirement programme

Houston's Rothko Chapel reopens after hurricane damage is repaired

The Texas pilgrimage site for devotees of Abstract Expressionism returns just in time for the holidays

1,375-year-old pyramid structure found in Hidalgo, Mexico

Highway road work has uncovered an ancient civilisation’s ceremonial centrepiece

Polychrome 17th-century statue that was stolen from a church in 2007 is returned to Mexico

The artefact had been recovered from a US gallery in 2017, but since then its status was a mystery

Louise Bourgeois’s mammoth spider will return to Tate Modern for the gallery's 25th anniversary

A new “capsule collection” trail will also feature works by Mark Rothko and Dorothea Tanning

Women-only art installation reopens at Mona, allowing some men to enter—and learn about housework

Kirsha Kaechele' Ladies Lounge will be reinstalled at the Hobart museum for a month after the supreme court overturned a ruling that the work was discriminatory

President Biden establishes national monument acknowledging history of forced assimilation at Native American boarding schools

The monument, at the site of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, will ensure nobody forgets one of the “most horrific chapters in American history”, Biden said

Metropolitan Museum reveals design for new $550m wing for Modern and contemporary art

Designs for the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing, conceived by the architect Frida Escobedo, show a stepped exterior of latticed limestone

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‘There won’t be any artefacts if we don’t turn this crisis around’: the retired priest, 82, facing prison for Magna Carta protest

Revd Sue Parfitt is “quite relaxed” about the prospect of prison for attacking the foundational document as part of climate action but she is upset that her licence to officiate as a priest has been revoked

UK strikes culture partnership deal with Saudi Arabia

The new bilateral agreement is intended to help Saudi Arabia “fulfil its ambition to become a global visitor destination”

MoMA PS1 receives $1m gift from trailblazing collector’s foundation

The gift to the New York contemporary art centre from the organisation named after David Teiger will help to fund an upcoming exhibition programme

Seattle Art Museum visitor services workers are on strike

The action comes after 27 months of contract negotiations reached an impasse; the museum is working with a third-party security firm to keep the galleries open

Saudi Arabia to give €50m towards Centre Pompidou refurbishment

France will also help develop a raft of new museums in the kingdom, including a photography institution

Vatican gives Apollo a hand—literally—ahead of Jubilee Year

Restoration of the marble is expected to be a draw for the year-long event, which will allow public access to works in the Pope’s private collection as well as exhibitions across the Holy See and Rome

Museums without vitrines: the Scottish research team transforming the way we view art

An extended reality platform being developed by a Scottish university allows users to “teleport” around virtual museums

National Portrait Gallery partners with immersive institution to tell the human stories behind its collection

New experience produced by Frameless Creative with London museum to launch national and international tour at MediaCity, Salford, in May 2025

Vancouver Art Gallery scraps plan for new, $444m Herzog and de Meuron-designed building

The institution ended its partnership with the Swiss firm, begun nearly a decade ago, as it reassesses its plans

Influencers: is it time for museums to go all in?

As an advertising agency pays Instagram influencers to promote museums, is it really worth shelling out thousands of dollars for added publicity and to reach new audiences?

Museums turn to consultants to help them go green

Climate experts are helping museums, to create systemic change