Swiss officials have restituted a 3,400-year-old fragmentary sculpture of Pharaoh Ramesses II (c. 1303 BC-1213 BC) to the Egyptian government. Stolen over three decades ago, the stone fragment was returned at a ceremony in the Egyptian embassy in Bern.
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Recent Sotheby’s Old Master sale in London failed to sell 35% of lots, reflecting an increasingly lacklustre market for historical art. Despite this, the 49-lot offering achieved a respectable £39.4 million (with fees) – the highest total for an Old Master sale in London since the pandemic.
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The National Portrait Gallery in London has reopened to the public after an astonishing £41 million renovation. Closed since 2020, the building has been extensively redesigned by Jamie Fobert Architects and heritage specialists Purcell. “It’s the great building Londoners never knew they had,” explained Jamie Fobert. “Our job was to open it up, tie its different eras together, and give it a new public face.”
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The remains of the city of Pompeii, which were first uncovered in the sixteenth century, have provided a wealth of archaeological insights since excavations first began in 1748. Frozen in time under volcanic ash, it has been considered to be a preserved snapshot of Roman life dating back to AD 79, when Mount Vesuvius erupted.
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The British Museum has been accused of copyright infringement by a Vancouver-based poet and translator, Yilin Wang. Wang has claimed that they did not receive any credit of reimbursement when their translations of poetry by Qiu Jin (1875-1907) were used in the museum’s exhibition ‘China’s Hidden Century’, which opened on 18 May 2023 and is due to close on 8 October.
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The Rijksmuseum waived their entrance fees as Rembrandt’s The Standard Bearer (1636) was put on display for the first time, after it was toured around the country following its purchase in 2021.
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The Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) team have discovered an “extremely rare” Roman mausoleum, alongside some of the largest and most intact ancient mosaics ever found in Britain. It was unearthed below a South London construction site, just moments away from Borough Market and The Shard.
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As has been confirmed to the New York Times by the artist’s daughter, Aurelia Engel, Françoise Gilot has died in Manhattan at the age of 101. Gilot, who was active as an artist for eight decades, continued to paint well into her 90s.
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After months of speculation over the fate of the Whitney Museum’s former site – the Marcel Breuer building – which they vacated in 2015 to relocate to New York’s then up-and-coming Meatpacking District, it has been announced that Sotheby’s have purchased the building and intend to make it their headquarters in 2025.
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A rare starfish-shaped brooch designed by Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) has sold for nearly $1 million with fees (£780,000) at Christie’s New York. Embellished with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and a huge cultured pearl, the brooch is now one of the most valuable pieces of jewellery by the Spanish artist to sell at auction.
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