Museums & Heritage

The Netherlands to return 113 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria

It is the latest example of a country announcing that it will repatriate a group of these objects, which were looted by the British as part of a punitive expedition in 1897

Why newly appointed museum directors fail, and how to avoid it: Kaywin Feldman’s new book on leadership

The director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, offers sage advice on how non-profits can best manage personnel changes at the top

UK government aims to keep cash-strapped cultural venues ‘up and running’ with £270m funding package

Culture secretary Lisa Nandy announced today that funding will be shared between arts venues, museums, libraries and heritage buildings across England that are in “urgent need of financial support”

Museum of Contemporary Art Australia reverses ban on admission fees

Government funding for the Sydney institution, which is already closed one day a week and is now charging A$20 entry, remains the same as in 2008

Shifting sands of diplomacy between Europe and Middle East see institutions struggling

Cultural collaborations have become more centred outside European countries, leaving bodies such as Paris’s Institut du Monde Arabe adrift

Archaeologists unearth final undiscovered pharaoh’s tomb of King Tutankhamun’s dynasty

The unearthing of King Thutmose II's tomb has been described as “one of the most important archaeological discoveries in recent years”

Chinese ceramics take centre stage at new museum in Portugal

The Albuquerque Foundation will show works from Brazilian collector’s holdings in a historic quinta

Laser mapping reveals massive ancient Zapotec city in Mexican forest

Long thought to be a fortress, Guiengola has been revealed as a sprawling city thanks to airborne lidar analysis

Serge Lasvignes, former president of Centre Pompidou, has died aged 70

The Centre Pompidou extended its international reach during Lasvignes's tenure

Banksynews

Migration season: Banksy’s animal art heads to new London Museum

A Piranha sentry box will be displayed at the new institution, previously known as the Museum of London

‘Let’s finally get on with it’: V&A director voices support for UK tourist tax

Tristram Hunt’s proposal would see funds ring fenced for cash-strapped cultural infrastructure

Suspended prison sentences sought in Versailles lead poisoning trial

Restorers were contaminated by lead dust when they scrubbed down the sculptures and decoration of the royal opera in the Château de Versailles

Private museum addressing gender inequality in Norway’s art scene opens

Sixty percent of the acquisitions at PoMo in Trondheim will be by women artists

Madrid's Reina Sofia museum acquires hundreds of works to diversify its collection

Spain’s national museum of contemporary art has purchased 470 works, most by women, and many by artists from ethnic minorities

Cleveland Museum of Art will return looted Greco-Roman bronze to Turkey

Scientific analysis confirmed that the ancient, headless sculpture had been looted from a shrine in Bubon

Indigenous communities assist with reinterpretation of Arizona petroglyphs

At the Deer Valley Petroglyph Preserve, a new project seeks to update the antiquated archaeological records of thousands of ancient motifs

Cemetery for enslaved people rediscovered at Andrew Jackson’s Tennessee plantation

Long-obscured and forgotten, the burial plots of more than two dozen people enslaved by the seventh president of the US are located and honoured

As Sudan’s civil war rages on, its heritage is under siege

At least six museums and multiple historic sites have suffered looting or damage as a result of the conflict

Roman basilica discovered beneath London office block

The 2,000-year-old ruins were found close to Bank tube station and London Bridge

Mentions of ‘transgender’ and ‘queer’ removed from US government website dedicated to Stonewall National Monument

Other pages on the National Park Service site related to diversity, equity and inclusion also appear affected

Textile Museum of Canada closing until autumn amid ‘unexpected shortfall in our finances’

The museum’s board chair also cited the need for “urgent repairs” to its building in downtown Toronto

Brooklyn Museum to lay off more than 40 staffers amid rising deficit

The institution is also implementing a hiring freeze and senior leadership will take salary cuts

Jeffrey Gibson’s Venice Biennale show heads to the Broad in Los Angeles

The queer, Indigenous artist hopes the work will reach more Native Americans

Conservation work on Tintoretto’s ‘Crucifixion’ reveals traces of elaborate draughting grids

The discovery adds to evidence that preparatory drawings were common practice for Venetian artists as well as for their Florentine peers

New heritage body will use AI tools to help protect key sites from war and environmental crises

HeritageWatch.AI aims to provide real-time data, based on analysis of satellite imagery, to plan and deploy effective disaster management

Trump fires US National Archivist and purges board of the Kennedy Center

The president is infusing his political agenda into officially nonpartisan national institutions across Washington, DC

Caravaggio masterpiece painted in Naples rather than Sicily, researchers suggest

New research has overturned conventional wisdom about the provenance of artist’s famed painting Adoration of the Shepherds

Two mystery figures discovered beneath Picasso Blue Period painting

Conservators at London's Courtauld Institute used x-ray and infrared images to reveal the previously unseen works

Covering up displays about women and people of colour was ‘a mistake’, Maryland's National Cryptologic Museum says

A photograph of exhibits at the museum covered with brown paper, seemingly in response to President Trump’s anti-DEI order, caused an uproar on social media