Police in Brazil have arrested a gang of con artists on suspicion of scamming a member’s mother out of more than 709 million reais (£140 million) in art, cash, and jewellery. A phony clairvoyant was allegedly even employed to convince the alleged victim that her art collection was cursed.
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New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced last week that she had signed new legislation introduced by Senator Anna Kaplan and Assemblywoman Nily Rozic to ensure younger generations have a greater awareness of the events of the Holocaust. One element of this legislation specifies that museums in New York must “prominently” display a placard on some other type of signage indicating when a work of art was stolen by the Nazis.
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London’s Horniman Museum and Gardens will transfer the ownership of 72 objects to the Nigerian government, including its collection of Benin bronzes. The Horniman, which won museum of the year in July, is the first government-funded institution to return artefacts looted by British forces from Benin City.
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Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of an 800-year-old palace that may be the lost residence of Hulagu Khan (ca. 1217-1265), the grandson of Genghis Khan (1162-1227). The once magnificent palace in the Çaldıran district of eastern Turkey’s Van province could be the first known architectural remains dating to the Ilkhanate ruling.
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Near the city of Lleida in Catalonia, Spain, archaeologists from the Autonomous University of Barcelona have uncovered an engraved plaque which reveals that artisans living in the region 14,000 years ago were more technically advanced than previously considered, even employing visual tricks in their imagery.
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Marine archaeologists have recovered a trove of missing gold, silver and gems from a 350-year-old shipwreck hidden beneath the Bahamas’ waters.
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A single slice of pickle splatted on the ceiling of a gallery in New Zealand is causing…a bit of a pickle! Australian artist Matthew Griffin is asking buyers to splurge NZ$10,000 (£5,173) for the provocative piece that questions the true meaning of art.
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A curator from Cincinnati Art Museum has fortuitously discovered a previously undetected image of a Buddha hidden within a sixteenth-century mirror. When a bright light is shone on the unassuming bronze disc, an ethereal buddha surrounded by wispy clouds is magically projected onto nearby surfaces.
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Christie’s auction house took another step last week to secure its position at the forefront of the intersection between art and technology. They launched an in-house investment fund, ‘Christie’s Ventures’, which aims to offer financial support and guidance to startups in the developing field of technology and fintech.
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The preparations for an upcoming exhibition organised by the National Galleries of Scotland and scheduled to open on 30th July has prompted a new discovery. A Taste for Impressionism: Modern French Art from Millet to Matisse promises to tell “the remarkable story of how Scotland became home to one of the world’s greatest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art”, but before it has even opened it has attracted media attention, as new research on Vincent Van Gogh’s Head of a Peasant Woman (1884) in the museum’s permanent collection, has led to the discovery of a new self-portrait by the artist.
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