Museums & Heritage

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

Who was buried in Ornans? Restoration of Gustave Courbet’s intriguing masterwork may offer clues

The Musée d’Orsay hopes the restoration of ‘A Burial at Ornans’—once a Salon scandal, now a pride of the Paris museum—will unlock some of its secrets and reveal the painting to be even bigger and bolder than it appears now

France returns ancient artefacts to Ethiopia in diplomatic ‘handover’

The French culture minister insists the move is “a handover, not a restitution, in that these objects have never been part of French public collections”

Museum’s therapeutic art programme helps military veterans find their voices

Art for Vets initiative at Currier Museum of Art in the US encourages personal expression under the care of a full-time art therapist

Inside Aliph, the organisation racing to save the world’s heritage

An in-depth look at the inner workings of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas

Ancient Maya city of Ucanal was contaminated with mercury, study reveals

Newly published research shows just how pervasive mercury—an essential element in the red cinnabar pigment favoured by the Maya—is at the site in Guatemala

A bridge between worlds: Central Asia’s first private Modern and contemporary art museum to open in Kazakhstan

Almaty Museum of Arts will house more than 700 works by Kazakh and Central Asian artists, while also presenting an substantial collection of international art

Prizesnews

‘Intimate, personal, nuanced, complex’: Victoria and Albert Museum reveals winner of Jameel Prize 2024

The latest edition of the £25,000 prize, awarded every three years to an artist inspired by Islamic traditions, is themed around moving image and digital media

US authorities return four artefacts from Ban Chiang archaeological site to Thailand

The items, which include a vessel and bracelet, had been gifted to a US soldier more than 50 years ago

Museu de Arte de São Paulo to finally open $43m expansion project in March 2025

A new building adjacent to the Brazilian museum’s original home will more than double its total space

Seven years on from Emmanuel Macron’s pledge to return Africa’s heritage, frustration grows about the lack of progress

An Ivorian drum will be returned—though only under a special “deposit agreement”—while a crucial colonial bill has stalled

Fit for a king: Egyptian museum in Turin unveils new galleries for monumental ancient sculptures

The dramatic revamp of the Italian institution’s Gallery of the Kings is part of a broader renovation that is due to complete in 2025

Welsh government hopes to boost tourism and heritage with proposed ‘tourist tax’

Wales may follow cities such as Venice in introducing the controversial levy

Ancient Egyptian priestess’s remains found in father’s tomb

Remains from Middle Kingdom era, along with coffins and funerary objects, were found at the bottom of a hidden shaft south of Cairo

Censorshipcomment

The limits of transnational women’s solidarity in Mexico City’s art scene

Recent episodes of censorship at two of the city’s leading art museums have laid bare the rifts between artists, institutions and their publics

How abandoned oil wells are threatening US heritage sites

There are over three million orphaned wells across America, most of which were installed before environmental and cultural protection laws were enacted

Climate activists who dumped red powder on US Constitution at National Archives sentenced to prison

Donald Zepeda and Jackson Green were also involved in the paint attack on Degas’s ballerina and writing “Honor Them” on a wall last year at the National Gallery of Art

Caravaggio portrait, unseen for decades, goes on view in Rome

The portrait of Maffeo Barberini was first attributed to Caravaggio 60 years ago, but had not been publicly displayed until now

Controversial Science Museum sponsor charged in US over alleged bribery scheme

Gautam Adani—who lends his name to the museum's Adani Green Energy Gallery—was indicted in New York on charges including securities fraud

Rotterdam’s new museum of migration, Fenix, to open in May

Droom en Daad foundation funds new collection and renovation of dockside warehouse centred on spectacular new double-helix Tornado

Indigenous mound in St Louis is transferred to the Osage Nation

Along with the land transfer, the city of St Louis acknowledged the Osage Nation’s tribal sovereignty and their ancestral rights to the site

Vancouver Art Gallery expands Asian art programme with $1.1m gift

The museum’s renamed Centre for Global Asias seeks to “recognise the many Asias that exist, within the geography of Asia itself and in the global diaspora”

UK's National Lottery at 30: who are the culture sector's winners and losers?

National Lottery players raise more than £30m every week and fund over 700,000 projects across the UK—but when it comes to funding the arts, some say the scheme is in need of an overhaul