Museums & Heritage

Nazi-looted Kirchner watercolour goes to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The work was restituted to the descendants of collectors Ludwig and Rosy Fischer earlier this year

Science museum files lawsuit to have neighbouring Pérez Art Museum Miami’s billboard removed

According to the Frost Museum of Science next door, the Pamm’s large digital billboard—subject of a previous dispute with the city that was settled last month—violates state laws

Baltimore Museum of Art receives $10m gift to support education initiatives

The gift, the largest in the museum’s history, will allow it to welcome more local students and families, while partnering with local university education programmes

Canadian art museum reveals architect and vision for campus overhaul

The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, world’s most important collection of works by the Group of Seven, has picked Hariri Pontarini Architects to expand and modernise its facilities

James Turrell to bring most ambitious ‘Skyspace’ installation yet to Denmark museum

After 10 years in development, the 40m-wide work will go on display next June at the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum

Stolen Louvre jewels worth €88m, prosecutor says

The museum has reopened today following the heist, although the gallery which housed the objects remains closed

Heavy in more ways than one: Confederate statues hit the road for Los Angeles exhibition

The massive, historic works at the core of “Monuments” were never meant to travel, and moving them has been an enormously complex job

Museum of Contemporary Art Denver names new director

Anthony Kiendl, who most recently helmed the Vancouver Art Gallery, will start in Denver on 1 December

View from the top: Pompeii’s rich and powerful added grand towers to their homes, study suggests

A team has used 3D reconstructions of lost buildings to gain insight on the richness of life above ground in the ancient city

British Museum ball disrupted by climate protestor demanding end to BP sponsorship

The protestor took to the stage in the midst of a speech by the museum's chair of trustees, George Osborne

Louvre heist sparks cross-party ire amid reports of ‘persistent delays’ to security updates

Politicians and unions have criticised the government after the world’s most visited museum was robbed in broad daylight on Sunday

San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora marks 20 years with a show about Blackness and the cosmos

For the occasion, the institution has also remodelled its lobby and put together a separate exhibition looking back at its history

At a Los Angeles exhibition, contemporary artists face off with decommissioned Confederate statues

The show at the Brick and the Museum of Contemporary Art addresses the US’s fraught racial history—featuring decommissioned Confederate monuments alongside works by Kara Walker, Leonardo Drew, Torkwase Dyson and others

The greatest Cypriot show in Florida: Ringling Museum opens its first permanent ancient-art gallery

The project has been almost 100 years in the making, when one of the Ringling brothers bought thousands of works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and took them home to Sarasota

Archaeologists from Costa Rica and Mexico restore ancient stone spheres at Unesco World Heritage site

Fragile limestone carvings from the Diquís culture undergo conservation at the Finca 6 Museum Site in southern Costa Rica

Extravagant Munich museum dedicated to Symbolist Franz von Stuck to reopen after €13.5m renovation

The Museum Villa Stuck’s opulent interiors have had new life breathed into them—and the influential artist’s collection has been rehung

Authorities in New York return antiquities valued at $3m to Greece

Some of the artefacts were seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of ongoing investigations into the activities of smugglers Robin Symes and Eugene Alexander

From controversy to clarity: how a Philadelphia medical museum is rethinking the display of human remains

In 2023 the Mütter Museum was at the centre of a scandal around the repatriation of Indigenous remains. Now, as the dust begins to settle, a new leadership team is looking to the future

Public artfeature

City of San Francisco and developer appear to have planned Vaillancourt Fountain demolition before proposal was made public

Public documents also reveal property developer leading demolition effort was at least partly responsible for fountain and plaza maintenance for nearly 50 years

Indigenous artists transform works at Metropolitan Museum in unsanctioned augmented reality project

The digital interventions by 17 Native artists, launched on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, put pointed twists on works in the museum’s American Wing

From silk murals to jade inlays: Forbidden City’s Qianlong Garden reopens after 25-year conservation project

Four structures within the 18th-century complex have been restored as part of a partnership with the World Monuments Fund

Louvre acquires first-ever video work

The work, ‘Les 4 temps’, by the Algeria-born artist Mohamed Bourouissa, will go on display later this month

Smithsonian museums in Washington and New York close as US government shutdown drags on

The 21 museums, 14 research and education complexes, and one zoo overseen by the Smithsonian closed on Sunday

With Ruth Asawa, MoMA is set to open its biggest show ever by a woman artist

But the museum is not promoting the show that way—and might not even have registered its record-breaking size

Comment | Museums can't get enough of anniversary exhibitions—but surely there's better ways to serve the public

This year museums are falling over themselves to celebrate Robert Rauschenberg’s 100th birthday. But, asks Julia Halperin, who is it really all for?

Amid government intervention, Slovak artists and curators call for EU law to protect freedoms

The Slovak National Gallery, thrown into turmoil by dismissals and resignations, has become a focal point for protests by artists and NGOs

Discovery of 11,000-year-old carved face in Turkey offers new insight into early human expression

A pillar featuring detailed facial features was unearthed in Karahan Tepe near the Syrian border

Flemish government announces plans to dissolve Antwerp's Museum of Contemporary Art

The move has been met with protests and petitions in support of the museum

Limestone relief disappears from Egypt’s Saqqara necropolis

The work, taken from the tomb of a vizier called Khentika, features a motif that is extremely rare in Ancient Egyptian art

Two charged following theft of Bronze Age jewellery from Welsh museum

The objects were taken from a display case at St Fagans National Museum of History in Cardiff