Museums & Heritage

National Gallery of Canada launches an Indigenous ways and decolonisation department

The new department, which pursue greater inclusivity and representation of Indigenous perspectives and art, will be led by Michelle LaVallee and Steven Loft

'Laboratory of the future': Rome's Maxxi museum unveils plans for new R&D centre, green spaces and solar energy

Sustainable masterplan will cover Zaha Hadid building in solar panels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

NFTnews

Eternal return: Italian museums to sell digital copies of masterpieces by Leonardo, Caravaggio and Modigliani

Replicas of works from four institutions, including the Uffizi, will be sold as NFTs by Unit London gallery

German museums foundation returns ancestral human remains in Berlin collection to Hawaii

A group of skulls is being handed over to a Native Hawaiian group during a mission this month to receive dozens of items from German and Austrian museums

'We are under the water, but we can dream': Inside Madagascar's first contemporary art centre

Ambitious new gallery Hakanto Contemporary sets out to boost art scene of island nation—but with many of its residents experiencing the effects of devastating floods, is culture really top of their list?

Baltimore Museum of Art director Christopher Bedford will leave to lead SFMoMA

Bedford, like his SFMoMA predecessor Neal Benezra, very publicly ran afoul of industry conventions around deaccessioning and selling works from museum collections

The ‘most important piece of prehistoric art’ found in Britain in a century will go on view at the British Museum

The 5,000-year-old chalk sculpture was discovered on a country estate near the village of Burton Agnes in East Yorkshire

Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley will collapse in the next ten years if looting and neglect continue, former Unesco representative warns

An increase in illegal development and excavations is damaging the structural integrity of the World Heritage Site that has stood for more than 1,000 years

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to expand its Islamic art galleries

The museum’s Islamic art collection spans more than 1,400 pieces as well as important long-term loans

How Nari Ward’s hearse installation went from the Whitney Biennial to a permanent home (with a detour via partial destruction)

Ward re-created the funerary work in 2020, decades after a standout debut at the Whitney Biennial; it has now been acquired by the Baltimore Museum of Art

Tate's U-turn on Sacklers

The museum will remove the opioid sellers’ name from multiple locations

First director picked to lead Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino

Jorge Zamanillo, currently the executive director and chief executive of HistoryMiami Museum, will lead the new Washington, DC museum through planning and construction

Have archaeologists discovered Captain Cook's ship Endeavour? Experts in the US and Australia fight it out

The director of Sydney’s Australian National Maritime Museum announced that he is "convinced" it is the long-lost vessel, while the director of Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project says the findings are not conclusive

After years of wrangling, Australia commits $228m to build a landmark centre for Indigenous culture

Ngurra precinct in Canberra will provide a home for returned ancestral remains in the heart of the capital

Restitutionanalysis

Why Macron's radical promise to return African treasures has stalled

Four years after a landmark pledge to hand back colonial loot, French government has opposed a new restitution bill backed by the Senate

Museum devoted to George Grosz to open in a former Berlin petrol station

The privately funded museum is to be led by Ralph Jentsch, the managing director of the Grosz estate

Museumsanalysis

State of the unions: why US museum workers are mobilising against their employers

With the arts sector increasingly vulnerable in the wake of the pandemic, a new breed of digitally optimised worker is emerging

Aliph global protection fund raises $90m for next round of heritage projects

Donors include Saudi Arabia, which gave $30m, and private bodies

Accused of 'cancel culture', Dresden museums defend renaming works

The Dresden State Art Collections (SKD) has altered 143 work titles since 2020, a decision that has been met with resistance by Germany's right-wing political parties

Berlin's 'hidden museum' that championed forgotten women artists closes down after almost 40 years

Das Verborgene Museum is passing on its archive and research mission to the Berlinische Galerie

NFTreview

The Seattle NFT Museum wants to mint a new art world

The museum’s founders organised an inaugural exhibition that is acutely aware of its place in history

The next Whitney Biennial’s 63 participating artists and collectives revealed

The exhibition’s 80th iteration, originally scheduled for 2021, will open on 6 April with its own official symbol

A Mexican millionaire is building a museum to house his art collection, and using public funds to do it

Mauricio Fernández Garza first proposed the structure, which is a replica of his mansion in San Pedro Garza García, near Monterrey, when he was mayor of the well-heeled town

Lootnews

German museums may have thousands of looted relics from China’s Imperial Palace, research group believes

Collaborative research by major German institutions may expose huge amounts of Chinese objects taken during Boxer Rebellion

Ye Charlotte Ming

Louvre teams up with Sotheby’s to investigate provenance of works bought during the Second World War

The auction house will help the Parisian institution research the history of items purchased between 1933 and 1945, which "may lead to restitutions"

UK’s first LGBTQ museum to open in London this spring

Queer Britain charity pledges new institution will be free of charge

Manicure at the Mauritshuis? Dutch museums turn into beauty parlours in protest over Covid restrictions

Initiative questions why gyms, hair salons and brothels have reopened but culture venues remain closed in the Netherlands

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts settles dispute with its former director

Nathalie Bondil, who was fired in 2020, was seeking $1.5m in moral and punitive damages from the museum’s board