Museums & Heritage

Coronavirus in Spain: Madrid museums including Prado shut but Guggenheim Bilbao remains open

There are currently more than 2,770 coronavirus cases reported in Spain with 64 deaths

New arts space finds its muse in the atmospheric Oklahoma sky

Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center is reopening with an inaugural exhibition on illumination

Cleveland Museum of Art receives art gifts valued at more than $100m

Works donated by a collecting couple include paintings by Bonnard, Vuilliard, Matisse, Braque, Caillebotte and many others

Museum top brass are losing the oil money plot

Decision by London's British Museum and Science Museum to continue accepting sponsorship from fossil fuel companies risks alienating the public they serve

Fossil-fuel giant Shell ends its support of London's Southbank Centre

Decision comes amidst pressure from activist groups for UK museums to end their oil sponsorship deals

Coronavirus in Italy: Ai Weiwei criticised for 'insensitive' pasta meme and Raphael blockbuster closes

An emergency decree means that all museums in the country are on lock down until 3 April

From Modernist nudes to present-day politics: British Museum to reveal its contemporary Middle Eastern art collection

Free exhibition at the London museum in October will show around 150 works that have been collected since the early 1990s

New York workers mount rescue operation for Chinese-American artefacts after fire

Salvaging effort focuses on the remaining 80 percent of the archives of the Museum of Chinese in America

Anonymous €20m donation kickstarts Musée d’Orsay transformation

Radical revelopment of former train station building will make way for more Impressionist works and visitors

Several US museums restrict staff travel to high-risk countries in response to coronavirus

Institutions like the National Gallery of Art and the Guggenheim remain open but alert to potential for closing as confirmed cases of Covid-19 rise

Not bigger, but better: behind the scenes of the £35.5m revamp at London's National Portrait Gallery

Director Nicholas Cullinan and architect Jamie Fobert reveal how the gallery’s controversial three-year closure will transform its 600-year collection of portraits

Critics demand explanation after quiet departures of Museo Jumex’s curator and director

Faults including a lack of transparency and a capricious programme have been cited following a change in management at the private museum

Chinaanalysis

How Chinese museums are coping with coronavirus: an in-depth report

As museums remain on lockdown in China, we reveal the full extent of the crisis for both state and private institutions and their innovative short-term solutions

Officials turn down plans to transform Sydney's Cockatoo Island into an art-filled tourist attraction

Private consortium offered $80m to turn former industrial area into Australia’s answer to Naoshima art island in Japan

Coronavirus: Louvre closes while Italian museums reopen following government green light

Italian officials say cultural institutions can open to the public so long as they ensure “visitors respect a distance of at least a metre between each other”

Both sides now: Tate Britain to show rare two-faced painting by Aubrey Beardsley

British illustrator’s only known paintings—on front and back of the same canvas—will be displayed for the first time in new exhibition

In the Met’s British galleries, a tale of artisans spurred by entrepreneurial forces

Installation weaves a 400-year narrative with global and sometimes dark threads

Semperbau museum in Dresden, home to Vermeer's hidden cupid painting, reopens after €49m renovation

The 19th-century palace is returning to the idea of showing sculpture alongside its Old Masters

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers caught up in Tokyo coronavirus quarantine

Japanese government instructs national art museums to close for two weeks — shutting the door on London’s National Gallery travelling show, on the eve of opening

EMST—National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens finally opens its doors

The institution welcomes the first visitors to its renovated home in the former Fix brewery this week, after years of delays

Ahmanson Foundation cuts off gifts of art to Lacma

Foundation president cites concern over a dramatic museum redesign that could force works into storage

Hollywood dreams really do come true: the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures beckons

The museum will open on 14 December in Los Angeles with 50,000 sq. ft of exhibition space and two theaters

Terra Foundation for American Art recruits new leader from Colby College Museum

Sharon Corwin aims to help forge partnerships with arts organisations and interrogate histories of American art

Barcelona rejects plans for outpost of Russia’s State Hermitage Museum

Hermitage officials dismayed after city council refuses planning permission for new venue, citing multiple concerns

Green energy company powers Madagascar's first contemporary art non-profit

Hakanto Contemporary, sponsored by the eco-friendly Filatex group, is directed by the artist Joël Andrianomearisoa

Polandnews

Right-wing director begins overhaul of Warsaw contemporary art centre

Controversial curator Piotr Bernatowicz has cancelled several 2020 exhibitions and cut funding from progressive art journal at Ujazdowski Castle CCA

Crystal Bridges launches satellite for living artists

Arkansas private museum’s cross-disciplinary new venue shines a spotlight on contemporary American art, from performance to cooking

Mass museum shutdown in northern Italy—including Peggy Guggenheim Collection and Fondazione Prada—as coronavirus spreads

Public and private institutions in Venice, Milan and Turin will stay closed for at least a week as more than 200 cases of Covid-2019 are confirmed

Chinacomment

Where is the West? Art world should be supporting China during coronavirus crisis

Our beleaguered art colleagues need our help and we must not turn our backs on Chinese art institutions, says Philip Dodd, head of Made in China