The article appears to be a headline or listing mentioning artists Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Matthew Barney, and Gerhard Merz, sourced from Artsy. No further details about events, sales, or exhibitions are provided in the text.
The Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI) has released a new digital catalogue raisonné for French painter Eva Gonzalès, correcting long-standing misattributions and omissions from the 1990 printed edition. The project reattributes works like *Apples in Basket* (previously assigned to Belgian painter Isidore Verheyden) and adds newly discovered pieces, including a portrait of Madame Georges Haquette and Gonzalès’s sketchbooks now held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. WPI executive director Elizabeth Gorayeb emphasizes that the digital format allows for iterative updates and brings overlooked figures in Gonzalès’s orbit to light.
Ugoma Chinelo Ebilah, an economist-turned-curator who founded Bloom Art Lagos in 2010 and the Mbari Kola Arts and Culture Foundation in 2019, is opening Mbari Kola, a private art society and members club in Lagos. Located in the affluent Ikoyi district, the 800 sq. m space will include a public gallery, shop, and garden, along with a private lounge, terrace, library, and multifunctional rooms for members. The venue will host exhibitions, residencies, film screenings, concerts, performances, and readings, focusing on pan-African art and culture. A soft launch for founding members is set for Africa Day (25 May), with further phases after summer and during Lagos Art Week in November. The club is part-funded by Ebilah and crowdfunded through around 50 founding patrons and members.
A fraudster named Andrew Crowley, 46, attempted to sell fake ancient statues to Sotheby's, claiming they were inherited from his grandfather. The items—three Cycladic figures and one Anatolian stargazer statuette—were valued at up to £680,000 if genuine. However, the scheme unraveled when forensic analysis revealed that the accompanying invoices, purportedly typed in 1976, were produced using printing methods invented in 2001. Sotheby's experts also spotted spelling errors. Crowley received a two-year suspended sentence after admitting to making a false representation to the auction house.
A private company donated a design competition to the Galleria Borghese in Rome, aiming to expand the museum's exhibition spaces and services. Before any winning project was selected, associations like Italia Nostra protested, claiming the initiative would desecrate Villa Borghese. The article's author visited the park to document its current state, finding decay: a wrecked Globe Theatre, neglected ponds, graffiti, trash, dilapidated buildings, and a degraded horse-riding track. The author argues that while the park is defended as "perfect and untouchable," it is actually suffering from real neglect that goes unaddressed by the same groups opposing development.
Between the night of May 23 and the early hours of May 24, 2026, Russia launched a massive attack on Kyiv and other areas of Ukraine using 600 drones and 90 missiles. The National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU) in Kyiv suffered severe structural damage, along with government buildings. The attack was reportedly a response to a Ukrainian bombing of a dormitory in Russian-occupied Starobilsk. The museum, founded in the late 19th century and housed in a neoclassical building opened in 1904, holds nearly 40,000 works spanning over a thousand years of Ukrainian art, including medieval icons, Baroque masterpieces, and avant-garde pieces.
A massive Russian attack on Kyiv over the weekend targeted historical buildings, museums, and memorial sites, causing widespread damage. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported 87 injuries and at least two deaths, with around 300 objects damaged, mostly residential buildings. Military administrator Tymur Tkachenko described it as the largest attack since the full-scale invasion began, noting that for the first time Russia deliberately struck historical architecture and memorials, including the Foreign Ministry building, the Chernobyl Museum, and the Art Museum. Russia used 600 drones and 90 missiles, including the new Oreshnik intermediate-range missile, in retaliation for a Ukrainian attack on a vocational school in occupied Starobilsk.