Museums & Heritage

‘More serious than the pandemic’: UK museums will struggle to keep doors open without government intervention, top director warns

Director-general of National Galleries of Scotland warns the country's most historic art institutions will face partial closure without support, as energy bills are forecast to double next year

Michelangelo's masterpiece David gets new lighting as part of renovation at Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence

A two-year museum overhaul has cleaned a skylight above the famous sculpture and also reinstalled its gallery of 19th-century plaster casts

The global mental health crisis: Wellcome Trust launches international science and art project to help people cope

Mindscape initiative is a programme of residencies and exhibitions in museums across the world that explore psychological wellbeing post-pandemic

The Photographers' Gallery in London appoints Shoair Mavlian as new director

A former intern will replace Brett Rogers as the new figurehead of the photography space, but will face immediate pressures concerning income, footfall and sponsorship

Wildfire on Easter Island causes 'irreparable' damage to ancient moai head statues

The Unesco World Heritage Site is closed while conservators assess the damage to the almost 1,000 ancient statues, while the island's mayor claims the fire was started deliberately

Chris Dercon quits French cultural body Rmn-GP for leadership role at Fondation Cartier pour l’art Contemporain

Belgian curator, who once headed Tate Modern, recently backed decision to kick Fiac out of Grand Palais in Paris

London's Wellcome Collection returns remains of death camp victim to Denmark

Research carried out in 2019 helped identify the remains as Preben Holger Larsen, a 26-year-old artist and member of the Danish resistance

Rijksmuseum strongly denies claims it is sinking due to wood-rotting fungi

Dutch national museum opposes the report claiming its foundations have been infected, stating the building “has not sunk a millimetre”

'It repurposes a building that was first made to cause terror': arts centre in former Ku Klux Klan auditorium names inaugural leader

Renovation work at the future Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing in Fort Worth, Texas, is expected to begin early next year

A museum dedicated to homelessness will open in London next year

Founded in 2015 by a cultural professional who was once homeless, the Museum of Homelessness will now have a permanent space in Finsbury Park

Mumbainews

Mumbai to get major new venue for art and performance—funded by one of India's richest families

The Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre will include exhibition halls and a 2,000-seat theatre

Legislation to create national LGBTQ museum in Washington, DC introduced to US Congress

Representative Mark Pocan of Wisconsin introduced legislation to establish the National Museum of American LGBTQ+ History and Culture within the Smithsonian Institution

A dark winter looms for UK museums as energy costs and fewer visitors continue to hit revenue

The UK's 15 nationally funded museums have seen visitor numbers drop by over a third compared to June 2019, thanks in large part to the pandemic. They are now facing price rises, with government support still unclear

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss rules out deal with Greece over Parthenon Marbles

Move rebuffs George Osborne, the chair of the British Museum, who proposed a new collaborative arrangement

Orange County Museum of Art carries its history forward with inaugural exhibitions in new building

From a show honouring the women who founded the institution to a call-back to a mid-1970s Light and Space exhibition, the OCMA is moving forward and looking back

Paris court dismisses bribery charges brought against Marlborough Gallery, French curator and artist’s family

The charges, brought ten years ago by a rival gallerist, revolved around allegations that a curator at France’s national museum of Asian art had received favours in exchange for organising a Chu Teh-Chun exhibition

State Hermitage Museum curator quits over Russia's war in Ukraine

Dimitri Ozerkov, the head of the contemporary art department, made the announcement on Instagram after months of silence

London's Victoria and Albert museum announces it will 'no longer carry the Sackler name'

Institution cuts ties with the family behind the highly addictive drug Oxycontin

My plea to London’s National Gallery to scrap its £35m Sainsbury Wing new entrance plans

Architecture critic Hugh Pearman argues that the gallery is making irreversible changes to a Grade I listed building—while removing most of its early Renaissance collection from display until 2025

Acquisitions round-up: National Museum of Women in the Arts receives bequest of more than 60 works

Our pick of the latest gifts and purchases to enter institutional collections worldwide

With new $94m building, the Orange County Museum of Art gets its own version of the Met museum steps

Fourteen years in the making, the new 53,000 sq. ft building designed by Thom Mayne of architecture firm Morphosis features a wide outdoor staircase intended to serve as a gathering place

Following controversial sales, US museums association revises its deaccessioning policy

The new rule includes a definition of the term “direct care”, whose ambiguity had led to divergent interpretations by museums selling works from their collections

In aftermath of Hurricane Ian's destruction, West Florida art institutions begin to pick up the pieces

While some museums and art spaces escaped largely unscathed—thanks to a mix of thorough preparation and meteorological luck—others in the most devastated areas remain unreachable

Welsh museum rebuilds and restores historic Cardiff pub threatened with demolition

The 19th-century Vulcan Hotel was closed in 2012—but next year it will pull pints once again at St Fagans National Museum of History

Leigh Jones

Brooklyn Museum completes ten-year renovation of Asian and Islamic art galleries

The approximately $9m project included modernising 20,000 sq. ft of galleries and bringing key objects out of storage for public display for the first time

A Danny Boyle dance show inspired by The Matrix and an inflatable Kusama room: Manchester's new art space set to open next year

Factory International is over budget and four years late, but will create 1,500 new jobs and inject a projected £1.1bn into the city's economy over the next decade, city council say

Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli will curate the 2024 Whitney Biennial

After a 2022 Biennial curated entirely in-house, the Whitney has selected one staff member, Iles, and an independent curator, Onli, to organise the exhibition’s 81st edition

Brooklyn Museum workers rally at open house to call attention to stalled contract negotiations

Unionised workers lined the main entryway to the museum as visitors arrived for after-hours programming

Controversial $1.8bn redevelopment of Delhi’s parliament complex enters second phase

A number of the Indian capital's major cultural institutions, including the National Museum, will be rehoused

Florida museums close as Hurricane Ian bears down on state’s west coast

Museums between Tampa Bay and Naples face the greatest risk, with a storm surge expected to exceed 10ft in some parts of the region when the hurricane makes landfall