huxley parlour lisa sanditz

American artist Lisa Sanditz presents a suite of nine new works in her solo exhibition “Big Boy” at Huxley-Parlour in London, on view through May 31, 2025. The show, her third with the gallery, explores power dynamics within families and across generations through formal devices such as exaggerated scale, vibrant color, and playful imagery. Key works like "Big Boy/Big Gulp" (2025) and "Big Cat" (2025) use a hierarchy of scale rooted in medieval and ancient art traditions to reflect emotional and psychological tensions, while also commenting on broader societal and political shifts in America amid climate change.

Now we open a Palestinian Pavilion at the Biennale. Interview with Tomaso Montanari

“Ora apriamo un Padiglione Palestina in Biennale”. Intervista a Tomaso Montanari

Tomaso Montanari, a member of the scientific committee for the exhibition "Gaza, il futuro ha un cuore antico. Materie e memorie del Mediterraneo" at Fondazione Merz in Turin, discusses the show's aim to highlight Gaza's 5,000-year history beyond the current war imagery. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Museo Egizio and the MAH – Musée d’art et d’histoire de Genève, juxtaposes ancient artifacts with contemporary artworks to assert the cultural and historical significance of Palestine. Montanari also addresses the upcoming Venice Biennale, criticizing the lack of a Palestinian pavilion and suggesting that the Turin exhibition itself serves as a de facto Palestinian pavilion, while calling for accountability for Israel's actions.

Go big or go home: how The Lost Giants revived the ancient art of goliath-making

The Lost Giants (TLG), an art collective based in Lostwithiel, Cornwall, is reviving the British tradition of making processional giants—large, community-built figures made from wood, cloth, and papier-mâché. Founded three years ago by theatre designer Ruth Webb and her sister-in-law Amy Webb, the group has created giants for events ranging from local lantern parades to a harvest procession at Hauser & Wirth’s Somerset gallery. This New Year’s Eve, environmentalist Lisa Schneidau joined a massive procession of these giants in Lostwithiel, describing it as an extraordinary experience. The collective recently issued a public callout for an environmental group to collaborate on making a new beastie.

walters art museum chief collections curatorial affairs officer

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore has appointed Katherine Larson as its chief collections and curatorial affairs officer, a newly created senior role. Larson will also serve as senior curator of Ancient Art, overseeing curatorial operations, collections, conservation, research, the exhibition calendar, and fundraising, beginning March 30.

belgian authorities return gilded sacrophagus to egypt

Egypt has recovered two ancient artifacts from Belgium after a decade-long effort, announced on December 2 by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. The objects—a painted and gilded Ptolemaic sarcophagus (305–30 B.C.E.) and a wooden beard from a Middle Kingdom statue—were seized by Belgian authorities in 2015 following an Interpol alert, as they were displayed in a Brussels antiques gallery without legal documentation. After a drawn-out diplomatic and legal process, the artifacts were returned in a ceremony at the Royal Museums of Art and History in July, attended by senior Egyptian culture ministers.

terracotta army damaged

A 30-year-old domestic tourist identified only by his surname Sun broke into the Terracotta Army Museum in Xi'an, China, on Friday, May 30. He scaled a fence and protective net surrounding an 18-foot pit, then pushed and pulled two of the ancient clay warriors, damaging them to varying degrees before being detained by security. Officials later stated that the man suffers from mental illness, and the incident is under investigation. The museum remains open to the public.

egyptian bracelet missing melted down

A 3,000-year-old gold bracelet belonging to King Amenemope was stolen from a conservation lab in Egypt, sold for 194,000 Egyptian pounds (about $4,000), and melted down by a gold smelter. The theft was carried out by a restoration specialist who took the artifact from a safe, and four suspects have since been arrested with proceeds recovered. The bracelet was being prepared for an upcoming exhibition titled “Treasures of the Pharaohs” at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome.

getty villa reopen june 27 palisades fire

The Getty Villa will reopen on June 27 after closing on January 7 due to the Palisades Fire, which burned 23,448 acres and destroyed many homes of artists and art professionals. Seventeen Getty staff members volunteered to stay on site to protect the museum, sealing galleries and extinguishing small fires, while LAFD water drops and firefighting efforts helped spare the institution. The reopening will feature the exhibition "The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Ancient Greece," showcasing over 230 works from the Late Bronze Age, including clay tablets in early Greek script and the Pylos Combat Agate sealstone dating to 1450 BCE.

4000 year old greek vase smashed

A museum visitor at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum on Crete tripped and fell, grabbing a 4,000-year-old Minoan vase to break her fall and completely shattering the artifact. The Greek Culture Ministry reported the visitor suffered minor leg injuries, but restorers are optimistic and believe the vase could be back on display as soon as today. The vase had previously been repaired in antiquity, suggesting it was also damaged thousands of years ago.

Lauren Sánchez Bezos unveils Met’s new exhibit amid gala backlash

Lauren Sánchez Bezos appeared alongside Anna Wintour at a press conference in New York to unveil the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new Costume Art exhibit, which opens May 10 ahead of the Met Gala. Sánchez Bezos and her husband Jeff Bezos are primary sponsors of this year's gala and exhibit, a role that has sparked backlash and a boycott campaign from the activist group Everyone Hates Elon. The exhibit explores themes of the dressed body through garments paired with ancient artifacts, featuring categories like "the naked body," "classic body," and "disabled body."

Jewelry artist Douriean Fletcher’s exhibition opens at Walters Art Museum this weekend

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is set to open "Douriean Fletcher: Jewelry of the Afrofuture," a major exhibition featuring over 100 works by the renowned jewelry artist. Fletcher, who gained international acclaim for her costume design work on Marvel’s "Black Panther" franchise, will see her contemporary Afrofuturistic pieces displayed alongside ancient artifacts from the museum's permanent collection, including items from Ancient Egypt and Ethiopia.

Arts of Africa

This article explores the deep history and cultural significance of Africa's artistic traditions, focusing on the continent as the cradle of human creativity. It traces the development of diverse cultures south of the Sahara over 160,000 years, highlighting how artists and workshops translated worldviews into enduring creations. The text also examines Africa's Atlantic Coast engagement from 1445 onward, detailing early European contact, trade agreements along the Gold Coast, and the forced exodus of captives during the transatlantic slave trade, which deprived the region of its productive youth.

Troy, ancient site in western Turkey, hosts expansive contemporary art exhibition

The Troy Museum in western Turkey has opened a contemporary art exhibition titled "Emanet" (meaning "trust," "legacy," or "safekeeping") by Turkish artist Vuslat. The show, running from May 25 to July 25, features sculptures, drawings, installations, and sound works placed alongside ancient artifacts in the museum's main halls and gardens, marking the first time contemporary art has been integrated into the museum's primary exhibition spaces near the legendary site of Troy.

Venus Lespugue

The Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens presents "Jeff Koons: Venus Lespugue," an exhibition pairing Jeff Koons' monumental stainless steel sculpture *Balloon Venus Lespugue (Orange)* (2013–2019) with ten certified copies of Paleolithic Venus figurines from major European museums. The Koons work, on public display for the first time, is loaned from the Homem Sonnabend Collection and directly references the 28,000-year-old Venus of Lespugue carved from mammoth tusk ivory.

A Venezia sta aprendo un nuovo Palazzo delle Arti e delle Culture grazie alla Fondazione Giancarlo Ligabue. L’intervista

A new Palazzo delle Arti e delle Culture – Collecto is opening in Venice at Palazzo Erizzo Ligabue, a 15th-century palace on the Grand Canal. The initiative, spearheaded by Inti Ligabue (45), son of the late paleontologist and entrepreneur Giancarlo Ligabue, will open to the public from May 7 to May 24, 2026, offering guided tours of a collection of over 400 pieces spanning from 4.5-billion-year-old fossils to contemporary works by artists such as Arcangelo Sassolino, Nico Vascellari, and Giorgio Andreotta Calò. The project builds on the Fondazione Giancarlo Ligabue, established in 2016 from the original Centro Studi founded in 1973, and will feature a residency by artist Marta Spagnoli.

Art world news selected by Artbox on Sky Arte

Le novità del mondo dell’arte selezionate da Artbox su Sky Arte

The new episode of Artbox, a weekly program on Sky Arte airing April 28, surveys current exhibitions across Italy. It features Isaac Julien's show "Museum Dreams" at gres art 671 in Bergamo, running until October 4, where the British artist presents five multi-screen video installations from the late 1990s to today. The episode also covers the exhibition "Etruschi e Veneti. Acque, culti e santuari" at Palazzo Ducale in Venice, exploring water cults through ancient artifacts including recent finds from San Casciano dei Bagni; the show "Giovanni Antonio Bazzi detto il Sodoma. Alla conquista del Rinascimento" at Museo Accorsi-Ometto in Turin; and a profile of Spanish artist Almudena Romero, who uses photosynthesis to create images on leaves. Regular segments include a feature on Symbolism by Maria Vittoria Baravelli and an arts news roundup.

united state returned 7 ancient artifacts egypt mummified fish falcon head

The United States repatriated seven ancient artifacts to Egypt, including two mummified fish, a falcon head from the Ptolemaic period, a bronze amulet of Set, a basald scarab, a carved face, a painted wooden funerary figurine, and a stone head from a statue. The objects had been smuggled out of Egypt in separate cases between 2017 and 2018, and were returned through collaboration between U.S. and Egyptian government agencies. Two items were voluntarily handed over by an unnamed American citizen to the Egyptian embassy in Washington, D.C. The artifacts were formally transferred to Ambassador Wael el-Naggar at a ceremony reaffirming Egypt's commitment to recovering smuggled cultural property.

looted antiquities sold facebook marketplace palmyra syria

Thieves in Syria are looting ancient artifacts from archaeological sites like Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage city dating back to the 3rd century BCE, and selling them on Facebook Marketplace. The looting has surged since the overthrow of former president Bashar al-Assad in December, with traffickers listing funerary gold, statues, and mosaics alongside ordinary secondhand goods. The Antiquities Trafficking and Heritage Anthropology Research (ATHAR) Project reports that nearly one-third of its 1,500 Syrian cases occurred in December alone, and sales are happening faster than ever—mosaics that once took a year to sell now move in two weeks.

how nebra sky disc made study

Researchers from Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany, and the Saxony-Anhalt-State Museum of Prehistory, in collaboration with engineering firm DeltaSigma Analytics and coppersmith Herbert Bauer, have successfully replicated the manufacturing process of the Nebra Sky Disk, a 3,600-year-old bronze artifact depicting the cosmos. By analyzing a small sample of the disk using advanced techniques like energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and electron backscatter diffraction, the team determined the disk was cast and then forged at least 10 times through repeated heating and hammering. Bauer replicated this by annealing a similar metal mixture 55 times, revealing that the disk's microstructure matches a stage after 10 forging cycles, not the final 55, indicating the original preform was thinner and wider than assumed.

scientists recreate egyptian blue pigment

A team of researchers has successfully recreated Egyptian blue, the world's oldest synthetic pigment, which was used by ancient Egyptians from as early as 3100 B.C.E. The study, published in NPJ Heritage Science, was led by John S. McCloy of Washington State University and Edward P. Vicenzi of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Conservation Institute, in collaboration with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The researchers experimented with various minerals, heating them in ovens at around 1,000 degrees Celsius for up to 11 hours, and used modern microscopy and analysis techniques to compare their results with ancient artifacts from the Carnegie Museum's collection.

art rob teeters art advisor sagaponack home collecting

Art advisor Rob Teeters opens his 1950s Sagaponack home to CULTURED magazine, revealing how he curates his personal collection alongside his husband, ceramicist Bruce M. Sherman. The home features a mix of ancient artifacts, such as a third-century Roman marble head, and contemporary works by Wade Guyton, Sherrie Levine, and Matias Faldbakken, alongside Sherman's own polychrome ceramics. Teeters, who founded Front Desk Apparatus in 2006 and leads the Dallas nonprofit art space the Power Station, discusses the nuanced process of living with art and how arrangement, lighting, and even the texture of a room affect the experience.

Rocky Balboa statue takes up a new home inside Philly art museum

The iconic bronze statue of Rocky Balboa, the fictional boxer portrayed by Sylvester Stallone, is moving inside the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the first time starting Saturday, as part of the museum's new exhibition "Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments." The exhibition, which marks the 50th anniversary of the original film, features over 150 artworks and ancient artifacts, and explores how monuments are created and reinterpreted by artists and communities. The statue had stood outside the museum for more than 20 years and was originally a prop from the 1982 film "Rocky III."

James Welling’s “Cento” exhibit brings ancient art and color to Fairfield University

James Welling's exhibition "Cento" has opened at Fairfield University, showcasing the artist's exploration of ancient art and color through a series of photographic works. The exhibit draws on classical sculpture and architectural fragments, reimagining them with vibrant, abstract color treatments that blend historical references with contemporary photographic techniques.

Lucas Museum Unveils `Star Wars’ Exhibition Details

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles has announced details for its inaugural exhibition "Star Wars in Motion," set to open on September 22. The show will feature props, costumes, and vehicle designs from the first six Star Wars films, including Luke's Landspeeder and General Grievous' Wheel Bike, as part of a broader lineup of about 20 inaugural exhibitions spanning visual storytelling from ancient art to modern film. The 300,000-square-foot museum, founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, will display over 1,200 artworks across 100,000 square feet of gallery space, with additional galleries dedicated to comic art, manga, children's literature, and works by artists such as Thomas Hart Benton, Beatrix Potter, Jack Kirby, Alison Bechdel, Frank Frazetta, Norman Rockwell, Diego Rivera, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks.

The Met’s much-anticipated spring 2026 exhibit puts fashion on a fine art level

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute will open its spring 2026 exhibition, "Costume Art," on May 10, 2026, running through January 10, 2027. The show features nearly 400 objects from the Met's collection, pairing couture garments with paintings, sculptures, and decorative works across centuries. Organized by "body types" such as "Classical Body" and "Mortal Body," the exhibition will be housed in the new 12,000-square-foot Condé Nast Galleries. The Met Gala, co-chaired by Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour, will kick off the exhibition with a dress code of "Fashion is Art."

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Ultimate 2026 Guide for Travelers

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is drawing record crowds in spring 2026 with its latest exhibitions, including newly restored ancient artifacts. The article, written by travel editor Elena Müller, positions The Met as a top cultural destination for American travelers, highlighting its location on Manhattan's Upper East Side, its Beaux-Arts architecture, and its proximity to Central Park. It also covers the museum's founding in 1870, its expansion into a neoclassical landmark on Museum Mile, and its role as a cornerstone of New York's cultural landscape.

Piecing together ancient Andean stories at Krannert Art Museum

Krannert Art Museum has reopened its reimagined exhibition 'Fragmented Histories: Andean Art before 1600' after a year-long closure, following nearly a decade of collaborative research. Co-curators Allyson Purpura and Kasia Szremski worked with pre-contact Andean art historians and Peruvian archaeologists to restore context to looted artifacts from the Fred Olsen Collection, donated in 1967. The exhibition is organized into four themes—Unfinished Stories, The Mobile Life of Objects, Powerful Images, and Object Biographies—and includes digital displays that acknowledge the violent histories of looting and aim to share knowledge with descendant communities in Peru.

In a new exhibition, Turkey displays the success of its heavyweight heritage drive

Turkey has opened a new exhibition titled "The Golden Age of Archaeology" at a national library in Ankara, showcasing 570 ancient artifacts—most unearthed in the past two years and displayed for the first time. Highlights include 11,500-year-old Neolithic vessels, a Bronze Age tablet revealing a previously unknown language (Kalasma), and a repatriated bronze statue of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, which was smuggled out of Turkey in the 1960s and recently returned from the Cleveland Museum of Art after a legal battle. The exhibition is part of the government's Heritage for the Future project, which spends around $150 million annually on excavations, visitor centers, and museums, with active digs rising to about 800.

Ancient art on wheels: how Mumbai's leading museum is sending miniature exhibitions by bus into the Indian countryside

Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), formerly the Prince of Wales Museum, has retrofitted three public buses as mobile mini-museums to bring curated exhibitions into the Indian countryside. The buses travel across Maharashtra and beyond, carrying miniature displays that foreground objects and material culture, encouraging viewers to build narratives from artifacts rather than starting with pre-written histories. The initiative grew out of a 2024 exhibition, "Ancient Sculpture of India, Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome," co-curated with the J. Paul Getty Museum, Berlin State Museums, and the British Museum.

Erster Teil des Pergamonmuseum öffnet im Juni 2027

The first section of Berlin's Pergamon Museum will reopen to the public on June 4, 2027, after years of renovation. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) announced the date, ending months of uncertainty. The museum has been completely closed since autumn 2023 for comprehensive refurbishment, and the reopening will finally make the famous Pergamon Altar accessible again. However, the south wing, housing the Ishtar Gate and Babylonian Processional Way, will remain closed until 2037, with full museum access expected that year.