Museums & Heritage

'A vast underwater museum': Greece plans to open shipwrecks and other submerged heritage sites for visitors to explore

Experienced divers and casual bathers alike will gain access to ancient marine monuments, which remain where they were found on the seabed

Fuelling culture war, UK government forms new 'retain and explain' board for controversial monuments

"Independence cuts both ways," UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden warns museums and heritage bodies

Off with her head! Infrared technology shows how a 15th-century French king used a paintbrush to replace one wife with another

Francis I of Brittany had his first wife painted over in a medieval prayer book before giving it to his new spouse, research at Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum shows

Katerina Gregos will lead the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens as artistic director

The museum looks to a “new era” after a difficult history, including long delays in the opening its new home and the termination of two of its directors by the Culture Ministry

National Gallery of Art recruits the first woman and person of colour to serve as its chief curator

As the museum commits itself to diversity, E. Carmen Ramos, a curator of Latino art, will be “the principal architect of the visitor experience”

Chinati will use $1.25m Start Small grant to restore sites and train young women in preservation skills

Support comes from the Covid relief fund launched last year by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who has visited the Marfa arts centre

A fatal Mafia bombing shook Florence in 1993—now the Uffizi is fixing damage to its famous Vasari corridor with memorials of the attack

Work on the 760m-long Renaissance passageway, which has been closed for safety since 2016, will be completed in May next year

How a ceremonial shrunken head, held by a US university for decades, was finally returned to Ecuador

A newly published research paper explains the authentication and repatriation process for a tsantsa once housed in Mercer University’s natural history collection

Lootnews

Looted Libyan sculpture seized at Heathrow Airport heads back home with help from the British Museum

The funerary piece was illicitly excavated from the ancient city of Cyrene which is under threat from property developers

‘The Colosseum is the last thing I would spend money on’: experts angry over plans for €15m floor at Italy’s most famous site

Archaeologists object to covering the amphitheatre's unique underground space and point to more vital restoration projects in the country

'Intelligent design': Frank Gehry's surprisingly subtle $233m makeover of Philadelphia Museum of Art revealed

Architect's Core Project expansion creates 90,000 sq. ft of new galleries and reimagined public spaces at heart of 1928 landmark

Eli Broad, an unexpected—and often unreasonable—arts patron

The self-made billionaire helped shape the Los Angeles art scene, while clashing with most of its prominent museum leaders

UK culture war heats up as arts professionals question veto of trustee appointment at Royal Museums Greenwich

Museums Association says government refusal to renew academic Aminul Hoque’s term is “worrying”, and the chair of trustees has resigned over the decision

Met's next Costume Institute show is an exploration of the emotional hues of American fashion

The two-part exhibition invokes the upheaval of the past year and will be accompanied by an "intimate" gala this September and then a more expansive benefit next May

Eli Broad, who helped reshape the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, has died, aged 87

Billionaire art collector, businessman and philanthropist founded the museum that bears his name and helped shore up Disney Concert Hall, Lacma and MOCA

Global survey: where in the world are the Benin bronzes?

Around 160 institutions hold looted Benin artefacts, but how many are prepared to give them back? We asked museums in five countries for their position on restitution

V&A restores casts of warriors that adorned ancient Iranian palace for once-in-a-lifetime display

New exhibition on 5,000 years of Iranian civilisation will feature museum's rarely seen replicas of life-sized friezes from King Darius’s “very excellent” palace

Philanthropist Marie-Josée Kravis will replace the embattled Leon Black as MoMA’s board chairman

Appointment follows controversy over Black's ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein

Museums weigh in on the vaccine passport debate, as countries are under pressure to open up their economies

As Israel and Denmark introduce Covid-19 status certificates, institutions are concerned that government schemes may keep visitors away

Smithsonian will reopen eight museums and other venues in May after more than five-month closures

National of Gallery of Art also plans to open its West Building in Washington, DC

Nathalie Bondil, ousted head of Montreal museum, joins Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris

Her first task at the French institution will be to expand its international programming and partnerships

'Hurrah, it’s leprosy!' How a conservator and a historian are decoding the grisly tales in Canterbury Cathedral’s stained-glass windows

New research for British Museum exhibition means panels depicting St Thomas Becket's healing miracles will be correctly reassembled after centuries in the wrong order

Museum extension allows Indigenous Sámi people to welcome home more than 2,000 artefacts held in Finland

An exhibition at the National Museum of Finland will celebrate the objects' repatriation to the Sámi Museum and Nature Centre Siida in northern Lapland

Peabody Essex Museum enlists its former deputy director to assume the top post

Lynda Roscoe Hartigan will head back as director after serving just a year at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto

Why we are projecting First Nations art on the Sydney Opera House

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists are front and centre in the Art Gallery of New South Wales's expansion plans, writes museum director Michael Brand

‘Still much work to be done’: artists and US museums react to Derek Chauvin conviction in George Floyd murder trial

Former police officer faces up 40 years in prison, but systemic racism must now be addressed, says San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Senior curator and human resources director resign from MOCA in Los Angeles

Curator cites management resistance to diversity effort, and personnel manager describes a “hostile environment”

Australian billionaire’s proposed museum for $380m art collection angers rural community

Planning application for Melbourne businessman Lindsey Hogg’s Rosemaur Gallery has international support but faces local opposition