Museums & Heritage

Mexican military retreats from plans to build enormous museum in a popular park

Following widespread opposition, including from Mexico City’s mayor, the plans to build a sprawling military museum in Bosque de Chapultepec are on hold while authorities seek an alternative site

House museum of Spanish ‘master of light’ Joaquín Sorolla reopens in Madrid

The Sorolla Museum launches building's new extension while the original historic building undergoes restoration

Dutch museum returns ancient vase to Sicily after research uncovers ‘problematic’ provenance

Rogier Kalkers from Amsterdam’s Allard Pierson museum says he hopes the restitution will be a “stepping stone towards further collaboration” with Sicilian authorities

Culture wars ramp up in Latin America as governments lurch to the right

Right-wing governments across the region are cutting cultural budgets and recasting the arts around conservative values

Austrian presidential hopeful pledges to return Moctezuma’s headdress to Mexico

With the 2028 election just over the horizon, the economist Gunther Fehlinger-Jahn has put the long-contested Aztec treasure back in the spotlight

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art makes room—and lots of it—for murals by Banksy, Baca and others

From rare interventions by Banksy to monumental images by JR and Diego Rivera, and preparatory sketches by Judy Baca, the museum frames muralism as public storytelling

Louvre Abu Dhabi appoints Souraya Noujaim as new director

Noujaim previously served as the United Arab Emirates-based museum’s scientific, curatorial and collections management director

Brooklyn Museum’s $48m energy-efficiency retrofit is latest in New York City’s effort to cut emissions

The Department of Citywide Administrative Services has undertaken similar projects at cultural institutions across the five boroughs, including the Museum of the Moving Image and the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bilbao Fine Arts Museum gains new €45m Norman Foster-designed wing

Renovation expands exhibition spaces and provides new facilities as well as creating better links with its neighbour, the Guggenheim Bilbao

From an indoor forest to a toilet made with seaweed: Design Museum Gent reopens after €20m eco-focused expansion

Museum renovation showcases creative and sustainable design ideas to help transform contemporary life

Museum of the City of New York opens new centre for social activism

The Puffin Foundation Center for New York Activism’s inaugural exhibitions focus on activism in the Big Apple and the living cultures of the Lenape

Phoenix Art Museum receives $5m gift for new Sri Lankan and South Asian art galleries

The local philanthropist Sukumar Nagendran hopes his gift will deepen cultural understanding of the region and elevate its art

How an EU-funded research programme has been future-proofing art conservation

GoGreen has brought together experts from 13 institutions to explore sustainable methods—testing some out on a 1906 Tiffany dish

Behind Turkey’s race to save Gallipoli’s vanishing shipwrecks

A recently launched project called Deep Heritage aims to slow the disintegration of dozens of warships sunk off Turkey's coast during the devastating First World War campaign

Nine Swiss museums to investigate provenance of thousands of objects from Cameroon

The research project has been awarded £91,000 in federal funding for 2027–28

Matronage over patronage: the Prado and Rijksmuseum team up to research women rulers’ impact on art

The collaborative project will explore the women of Habsburg Empire and include an exhibition at the Amsterdam museum in 2029

Heritagefeature

Strongest El Niño in decades threatens Peru’s adobe heritage

Authorities are scrambling to protect more than 10,000 coastal archaeological sites as experts accuse them of insufficient planning despite warnings

Doubts over financial sustainability of Brussels’s new Kanal museum cloud upcoming opening

The managing director Yves Goldstein will step down immediately after the opening in November due to “a difference of opinion” over the institution‘s future

Inadequate public funding may be the biggest threat facing world heritage, study finds

According to a new study by World Monuments Fund, a lack of government resources continues to be seen as more damaging to cultural sites than climate change

São Paulo’s Museu de Arte Moderna reopens after two-year renovation

Two years after shutting its doors, MAM São Paulo returns to the same pavilion with an exhibition built to push Brazilian art past representation

‘He said the secret to a happy life is attention to the details’: William Morris Gallery reopens after major rehang and restoration

The London institution has rearranged its permanent collection to look more closely at the nuances of Morris’s life and politics, while galleries have been transformed

Toledo Museum of Art acquires landmark 19th-century photographic series

The museum’s director says F. Holland Day's "The Seven Words" (1898), depicting the artist as Jesus on the cross, is “the most important photograph that people don’t know about”

Ukrainian Museum in New York marks 50th anniversary by showing collection to its neighbours

A new project by the artist Molly Gochman features large-scale reproductions of artefacts from the museum’s collection on its glass façade

Workers at the Whitney Museum vote to strike

Unionised staff at the New York City museum have voted to go on strike on 5 October if there is no progress in contract negotiations with museum leadership

Historic Chilean church to be restored after arson attacks

Santiago’s 19th-century Church of San Francisco de Borja, known for its stained-glass windows, will resume its community role as a national shrine to Our Lady of Fátima after it was set aflame during nationwide protests in 2020

Ukraine’s historic Academy of Sciences severely damaged by Russian drone

At least two were killed in the direct strike on the country’s top scientific institution, which is the latest cultural site to be targeted by Russian forces

‘He has committed no offence other than wanting to defend heritage sites’: arrest of Iraqi archaeologists sparks backlash

Many fear the real reason for Ali Tabar’s and Amir Al-Jumaili’s arrests are their campaigns against a controversial investment law

Vancouver Art Gallery makes its interim leaders permanent co-chief executives

Eva Respini and Sirish Rao will share chief executive duties, with the former also serving as chief curator while the later takes on the role of executive director

Culture secretary confirms free admission for all at England’s national museums will remain

The announcement by Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, came after recent discussions of introducing admission fees for overseas visitors

Restorers expose trove of 16th-century nude murals in Rome that were covered by disapproving nuns

Hidden for 300 years, the paintings inside Italy's Villa Silvestri Rivaldi are by some of the leading artists of the day