Museums & Heritage

US Commission of Fine Arts signs off on Trump’s White House ballroom

The commission’s members also opted to forego a later vote on the final stage of the design despite public comments on the project being “overwhelmingly in opposition—over 99%”

More than 600 works by Afro-Brazilian artists returned to Brazil

The repatriation, from a private collection in Detroit, is the largest of its kind in Brazil’s history

Arizona museum hosts world hoop dance championship

The annual event, now in its 36th edition, connects younger generations to the energetic and deeply symbolic Indigenous performance art

Barbican arts head Devyani Saltzman leaves role after 18 months

Saltzman’s departure caps a turbulent time for the London institution

White House presses Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery for new Trump portrait and display

Administration officials discussed adding multiple images of Trump to the “America’s Presidents” exhibition, and a second official portrait of the sitting president, even though the first has never gone on view

Arrests made over alleged €10m Louvre ticket scam

The alleged scheme was revealed by Paris prosecutors on the same day as reports emerged of a leak damaging a work in the museum’s Italian paintings gallery

Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá dismisses longtime artistic director

The Italian curator and critic Eugenio Viola, who has led the museum since 2019, says he was let go after raising concerns about working conditions at the institution

London’s National Gallery to cut staff as it faces £8.2m deficit

The institution is offering a “voluntary exit scheme” for all employees and will be reducing its activities

Plan for Centre Pompidou in New Jersey is ‘dead’, local official says

The new mayor of Jersey City, James Solomon, said a long-planned outpost of the French museum is no longer happening

‘Good people are being compelled to censor themselves’: exhibition of Black artists reinterpreting the US flag opens without key Dread Scott work

The artist was approached about including his seminal work in an exhibition at the University of Maryland’s Driskell Center, but ultimately it was not featured; he and the curators disagree on the reasons why

Syria’s Hasakah Museum—occupied by military for more than a decade—to finally open

The archaeological museum in northeast Syria—which was out of sight of many local residents until late 2024—is opening 24 years after construction on it began

Ornate 1,400-year-old Zapotec tomb discovered in Mexico

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum has called it ”the most important archaeological finding of the last decade”

Chicago’s Intuit Art Museum gifted 61 works by self-taught artists

The gifted works come from the estate of longtime supporter Jan Petry and the collection of Los Angeles-based scholar Gordon W. Bailey

Queens Museum picks Debra Wimpfheimer as next executive director

Wimpfheimer has worked at the institution since 2002, most recently as deputy director to Sally Tallant, who is London-bound

London's Brutalist Southbank Centre awarded protected heritage status

The post-war arts complex has been Grade II listed but one critic has responded by calling it a “concrete monstrosity”

London’s Mosaic Rooms, dedicated to art from the Arab region, reopens after expansion

The space in Kensington has relaunched with a continued focus on both international strategies of resistance and its local community

World Monuments Fund provides $7m to support 21 new conservation projects around the globe

The organisation has also launched a special programme for the semiquincentennial of the US's founding

‘These are dirty funds’: Indigenous Brazilian leader slams Science Museum for oil sponsorship ahead of climate show

Ninawa Huni Kui has spoken out ahead of a show focused on the threatened Brazilian ecosystem of the Pantanal

US National Gallery of Art acquires important Artemisia Gentileschi painting

The Baroque master’s “Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy”, which sold at auction for €865,500 in 2014, will go on display in Washington, DC, later this month

Exhibitions to see during Mexico City Art Week

From audio-tape portraits to the mother-daughter relationship, we share some must-see shows

Guatemala’s Museo de Arte Colonial shut down by authorities

The court-ordered raid has resulted in the relocation of nearly 300 works of art, part of the nation’s premier colonial collection

Alabama advocacy group expands its historical sites

After building a museum, memorial and sculpture park, the Equal Justice Initiative opens a new site celebrating Civil Rights Era resistance in Montgomery

Rome introduces Trevi Fountain tourist fee

Visitors to Rome will now pay to access the famous fountain and five other historic monuments

‘An institution where you delve into works’: details of AlUla Contemporary Art Museum announced

The vision and name for the new institution, opening in the AlUla culture and heritage site in northwest Saudi Arabia, were revealed on 1 February

Pioneering sculptor Geles Cabrera’s Mexico City retrospective marks centennial

The exhibition at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes traces the 99-year-old Mexican artist’s unique and dynamic approach to the human figure and highlights her work as a cultural organiser

Documentary tracks Indigenous efforts to recover ancestors’ remains from museums and universities

The new film, “Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild]”, follows one campaign in Michigan and foreshadows many more

One battle after another: Trump’s war on federal architecture

The US president has set his sights on transforming the city of Washington, DC, to fit his grandiose aesthetic

Dutch national photo collection opens in new Rotterdam home

Nederlands Fotomuseum has appointed a new director ahead of reopening in a former coffee warehouse on 7 February