Museums & Heritage

Maison Ruinart creates a bubbly pavilion for art

The world's oldest champagne house has upgraded visitor facilities at its production site in Reims, adding a new building to display part of its art collection

Hammer Museum names new leader to succeed longtime director Ann Philbin

Zoë Ryan, currently the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, will take the helm at the Hammer in the new year

Pucker up: Mae West Lips Sofa goes on display at Surrealist hub in West Sussex

Monthly public tours will reveal one of the UK’s most prestigious collections of Surrealist art, featuring works by Salvador Dalí, René Magritte and Leonora Carrington

US government provides more funds and imposes new restrictions to safeguard Ukrainian art

An additional $1m in funding for preservation and conservation efforts follows new import restrictions to help curb Russia’s looting and trafficking of Ukraine’s heritage

Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera rebrands as launch of new modern art space nears

Milan’s most prestigious art museum and several other institutions in the same complex are now known as “Grande Brera”

Smithsonian Institution launches $2.5bn fundraising campaign

The campaign, timed to coincide with the semiquincentennial of the United States in 2026, is the most ambitious fundraising undertaking for a cultural organisation on record

Palestinians begin preservation of Gaza’s heritage with help from $1m fund

Support includes the evacuation of artefacts, surveys of damage to buildings and training to bolster safeguarding of historical sites

The Met will study and catalogue 14 ancient sculptures recently repatriated to Yemen

With the country still in the throes of a civil war, the ancient sculptures were returned by a family in New Zealand but will be temporarily kept in New York

President Volodymyr Zelensky visits New York’s Ukrainian Museum, calls for ‘the decolonisation of Ukrainian art’

The Ukrainian president and first lady, who are in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, inaugurated the museum’s major Alexandra Exter exhibition

‘Art is the opposite of war’: amid a new wave of bombardment, Beirut's culture professionals remain defiant

Israeli airstrikes have led to gallery and museum closures, but artists and gallerists are determined to continue their work

London’s revamped Warburg Institute courts a broader audience

Home to a unique collection smuggled out of Nazi Germany, the institute will show temporary exhibitions alongside Edmund de Waal’s library of exile

Las Vegas’s Neon Museum set for $45m relocation and expansion

The beloved but cramped attraction will move to sites in the Arts District, near the future site of the Las Vegas Museum of Art

Academy of Arts and Letters launches contemporary gallery at Manhattan headquarters

The space will open with an exhibition devoted to the late Conceptual artist Christine Kozlov

Vikings invade the Nordic museum landscape with three themed institutions in the pipeline

Museums dedicated to Viking culture and artefacts are taking shape in two cities in Denmark and the Norwegian capital, Oslo

Axel Rüger leaves London’s Royal Academy for New York's Frick Collection

The RA chief, who saw the institution through the Covid-19 pandemic, will replace Ian Wardropper next spring

Lacma pushes back opening of new building until 2026

Museum leaders are hoping to organise public programming in the empty building next year

National Museum of Denmark returns sacred Indigenous cloak to Brazil

The sacred artefact’s ultimate destination remains a subject of debate

Fondation Cartier reveals plans for new Paris space designed by Jean Nouvel

The French architect will modernise the historic site, which is due to open next year near the Louvre

How a Portuguese sanctuary for pilgrims became a modern-day haven for the arts

Porto’s 600-year-old Leça do Balio monastery has found a new lease of life as cultural centre

‘An enormous milestone for museums’: platform designed to host 100 million object records launches in UK

Those behind the Museum Data Service hope it will eventually host the details of objects held by 1,750 “accredited” museums and other collections

Inside New York's museum-building boom

A wave of construction projects is updating and expanding the city’s art and cultural institutions, indicating a trend toward modernisation and growth

Public artcomment

Bizarre optics at Cai Guo-Qiang’s fiery kick-off event for Getty’s PST Art initiative

Fireworks by the Chinese artist ran counter to the point of many PST Art projects

How to make Florence’s 'Museum of Tourism', the Uffizi, enjoyable again, according to its new director

Simone Verde cannot reduce visitor numbers, so he means to spread them out over new delights

A new online museum is sharing the histories of repatriated objects

The digital Museum of Looted Antiquities aspires to be an encyclopaedic repository on returned cultural artefacts—and to expose smuggling networks

‘Will it cause reputational damage?’: British Museum director discusses controversial BP donation

In a recent interview with The Sunday Times, Nicholas Cullinan also mulls over the Parthenon Marbles and recent thefts scandal

Dulwich Picture Gallery makes first acquisition in 12 years—purchasing bronze installation for £176,500

The artists Rob and Nick Carter sold Bronze Oak Grove to the London institution for just the price of the materials they used to make it

Noguchi Museum fires three employees for failing to comply with ban on overtly political dress

The firings come after museum leaders disciplined several employees who refused to remove their keffiyehs, traditional scarves often worn as a sign of support for Palestinians

Bellevue Arts Museum closes

The Washington state institution’s optimistic director hopes a larger museum will step in as a partner

MoMA’s longtime director Glenn Lowry will step down in 2025

Lowry’s 30-year tenure at the museum included many milestones, from the merger that created MoMA PS1 to multiple renovations and expansions