Museums & Heritage

Buddhist composer Philip Glass in dialogue with a storied Tibetan art collection

The Smithsonian commissioned the composer to create a performance responding to an exhibition of objects from the illustrious Tibetan Buddhist art collection of Alice Kandell

Museums and heritage in 2021: pandemic woes and African treasures

We look back on a year of museums commandeered as Covid-19 vaccine centres, masterpieces sold as NFTs and much talk over the Benin bronzes

'Heart of Matisse': new study centre dedicated to Modern master opens at Baltimore Museum of Art

US museum builds a permanent research space for its "crown jewel"—more than 1,200 works by Henri Matisse

National Museum of Afghanistan reopens—but staff are unpaid and Taliban are guarding the treasures

Recent images show militia taking photographs of artefacts on their mobile phones

Swiss parliament urged to take action on Nazi-looted art amid Kunsthaus Zurich controversy

Zurich museum's displays of the collection of arms dealer Emil Georg Bührle have prompted criticism and a national debate

The Netherlands looks set to buy Rembrandt’s €165m 'Standard Bearer'

Owned by the Rothschild family, the vibrant painting is on the open market after France was unable to raise the funds to buy the national treasure

Van Gogh gets a facelift: conservation of self-portrait to be revealed in London

The Kröller-Müller Museum painting will be unveiled in the Courtauld Gallery’s exhibition

a blog by Martin Bailey

Metropolitan Museum drops Sackler name from its galleries

The announcement comes as museums worldwide sever ties with members of the Sackler family over their role in the opioid crisis

Archive of James Van Der Zee, once-ignored chronicler of Harlem, acquired by the Met

Lifelong documenter of Harlem is the first Black photographer to have entire archive acquired by the New York museum

Brooklyn Museum appoints KP Trueblood as its new president and chief operating officer

Trueblood, who will replace David Berliner early next year, has a background in government and public service

Pompeii turns to tech to protect ancient site against climate change damage

Monitoring system that includes drones and sensors will track the impact of extreme weather

David Adjaye plans slavery museum in Barbados as new republic severs ties with Britain

Complex that will include a research institute for the Barbados Archives—a 400-year-old documentation of the British transatlantic slave trade

Banksynews

Banksy will sell jailbreak stencil for £10m to turn Reading prison into art centre

The now-defunct jail once held playwright Oscar Wilde on charges of gross indecency between 1895 and 1897

National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC plans to return looted Benin cockerel to Nigeria

The museum is “eager to work with the relevant parties in Nigeria” to restitute the sculpture

Shock as Janusz Janowski appointed new director of Poland’s leading Zacheta National Gallery of Art by right-wing culture minister

Most recent hire without an open competition is viewed by critics as latest step in government's agenda of placing conservative appointees in control of cultural institutions

'Frightening' price tag and soap opera drama: Moscow’s GES-2 House of Culture opens opposite Kremlin

Power plant arts centre backed by Russian billionaire makes its long-awaited debut with a “dream exhibition” for Ragnar Kjartansson and a carnival in four acts

Federal agency approves disputed redesign of Hirshhorn Museum’s Modernist sculpture garden

National Capital Planning Commission welcomes revisions to Hiroshi Sugimoto’s proposal for an expanded reflecting pool and stacked stone walls

Jorge Pardo: ‘I don’t draw by hand anymore’

The Cuban American artist on the advanced technology he uses to create his drawings and objects

Remains of 'last fugitive' killed by Mount Vesuvius eruption unearthed at Herculaneum

Discovery announced as part of new excavations that will open up the ancient beachfront to visitors

Rubells’ Washington, DC museum is taking shape

Among the amenities in the works is an observation space where visitors can watch resident artists at work

Catholic church's proposed redesign of Notre Dame interior provokes outrage

Plans to revamp the fire-ravaged cathedral with contemporary art and multilingual projections of Bible quotes have been compared to Disneyland

Germany launches online portal for museum objects acquired in the colonial era

So far 25 institutions have contributed 8,000 entries; the plan is to expand it and translate it into several languages

‘More is more’: San Francisco’s new contemporary art centre reveals latest hires and inaugural programmes

The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco makes four key hires ahead of a series of pop-up events and exhibitions starting in January

Podcastspodcast

Fraud: the case of Inigo Philbrick

Plus, Warhol’s Catholicism and Moscow’s new museums

Hosted by Ben Luke. with guest speaker Georgina Adam. Produced by Julia Michalska, Aimee Dawson and David Clack. With Henrietta Bentall
Sponsored byChristie's

Egypt's ancient road of 1,000 sphinxes, buried under sand for centuries, unveiled in spectacular ceremony

The path, which was rediscovered in 1949, connects the temples of Luxor and Karnak in the east of the country

Futuristic dreams rub shoulders with everyday innovations in new Smithsonian show

‘Futures’ inaugurates the renovated Arts and Industries Building with an array of technological wonders ranging from the prosaic to the otherworldly

Magnificent Roman mosaic discovered in a farmer's field is 'UK's most exciting find of its kind in a century'

The first ever mosaic illustrating scenes from Homer’s Iliad, it would have decorated an imposing dining and entertainment space within a major villa complex