Museums

Billionaire Leonard Blavatnik donates £10m to the Courtauld Institute of Art

Suite of galleries in refurbished Courtauld Gallery will be named after the Ukraine-born industrialist

Museumscomment

Gabrielie Finaldi: 'What is the National Gallery if you can’t visit and you can’t see the pictures?'

Museums have a responsibility to the people to protect and share the collection, says the London museum's director Gabriele Finaldi

Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art appoints former nonprofit executive as its new director

Alyssa Nitchun hopes to advance New York museum’s role as a queer sanctuary and “provocateur”

Greecenews

Huge historic tobacco factory in Athens to be renovated into cultural space by 2021

Arts organisation Neon are working on the project with the Greek government to mark 200 years since the country’s liberation from the Ottoman Empire

'Humboldt Forum must have a clear policy that only objects of proper provenance can be used'

The question of restitution as well as a new order of north-south relations should be top of the agenda, says George Abungu an international adviser to the project

What exactly is the Humboldt Forum?

From the building, to the name and the cost, we bring you the Berlin art complex in a nutshell

Kunsthaus Zurich counts down to ‘quantum leap’ for Swiss art scene after Chipperfield expansion

City hopes the $230m new building will raise its profile as an art destination to match Basel

French museums dismayed as reopening pushed to 7 January

Three-week delay caused by rising cases of coronavirus in the country

Leeds museum makes history by hosting Covid-19 vaccination hub

High-risk patients get Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at Thackray Museum of Medicine

Historic Royal Palaces gets £40m lifeline loan and Southbank Centre gets £11m in latest round of UK Covid-19 funding

Rem Koolhaas’ Factory arts hub in Manchester—scheduled for completion in 2022—gets £21m grant

Smithsonian and Berlin museums join forces to investigate Asian art provenance

The programme includes webinars examining dealers and collectors

Victoria and Albert museum to close for two days a week due to coronavirus financial crunch

Visitor numbers will take years to recover with a drastic impact on income, the London institution reports

Rex Whistler’s Tate Britain restaurant mural is ‘offensive’, ethics committee says, threatening closure

Tate now faces the dilemma of what to do with a room decorated by a major early 20th-century artist

Prizesnews

New art prize allows London's National Gallery to tour Dutch masterpiece around UK

Tech entrepreneur Frédéric Jousset wants to shake up long-standing museum models through the ambitious award

Racist or responsive? Italy to exhume Mussolini's colonial museum collection in 'critical' new display

Alarmed post-colonial researchers have raised concerns over plans to open Museo Italo Africano "Ilaria Alpi" in late 2021

Tate will cut 120 jobs to 'survive crisis'

The institution has launched a voluntary redundancy scheme but could ‘move to compulsory redundancy in 2021’

Masp announces abridged 2021 programming as museums seek solutions to budget shortfalls

After drastic financial losses due to Covid-19, the Brazilian museum says it will hold a smaller number of shows for longer periods of time and boost its digital offerings

Boy thrown off Tate Modern balcony 'begins to walk' again

The child's family says he is now also able to speak in full words, but retains significant impairment to his memory

Hungarian museum director faces backlash after comparing George Soros to Hitler

In an op-ed published this weekend, Szilard Demeter called the billionaire financier 'the liberal Führer'

Record culture budget approved by German parliament

The budget for 2021 allocates funding to preserve Berlin museum buildings, renovate the Bayreuth Festival theatre, boost provenance research and grant free admission to the Jewish Museum Berlin

Africaanalysis

'Restitution is important but it is not essential': the African museums building a homegrown cultural revival

Though African institutions want looted artefacts to return home, they are more preoccupied with promoting living artists and treasures

Podcastspodcast

Is the future of museums in Africa?

We speak to museum experts András Szántó and Sonia Lawson. Plus, Dan Hicks on the legacy of colonial looting and National Gallery curator Christopher Riopelle on the Polish painter Jan Matejko

Hosted by Ben Luke. Produced by Julia Michalska, David Clack and Aimee Dawson

Why us? European museums cry foul over second lockdown

Shops remain open in many countries even as museums are plunged once more into Covid-19 deep-freeze

Museumscomment

A new kind of museum is emerging—here's what the future holds

International museum leaders are confronting manifold challenges in the wake of Covid-19 and innovating in six principal ways, writes András Szántó

Museums 2020: the year of crashing revenues and anti-racism disputes

Turbulent year draws to a close with sector wracked by pandemic lockdowns and Black Lives Matter challenges

A date with Mona Lisa? A painting by Soulages? Louvre's fundraising auction offers all to the highest bidder

Online sale seeks to support a new space for art education and outreach that will open in the autumn of 2021

Boola Bardip: Perth’s revamped Western Australian Museum opens with new name and focus on Aboriginal heritage

The museum worked with around 60 Aboriginal language groups across the vast state to bring their perspectives into every gallery

Museumsanalysis

Where next for museums? Four key takeaways from Louvre Abu Dhabi symposium on the post-pandemic future

Event marking anniversaries of the Emirati museum and New York University Abu Dhabi looked at museum collections, buildings and people, and the impact of coronavirus