A.I. Identifies Holbein Drawing as Possible Portrait of Anne Boleyn

Researchers at the University of Bradford have used artificial intelligence to analyze preparatory drawings by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. The AI model, which previously identified a forgotten Raphael painting, suggests that a drawing long believed to depict Anne Boleyn actually shows her mother, Elizabeth Howard, while another drawing labeled "Unidentified Woman" likely portrays Anne Boleyn herself. The findings, published in Heritage Science, are based on biometric analysis of facial features, bone architecture, and proportional relationships, offering quantifiable evidence to resolve long-standing scholarly uncertainty about the sitters' identities.

Barbados's slavery museum and memorial faces major delays

Barbados's Heritage District at the Newton Enslaved Burial Ground, a major project including a memorial, national museum, archives, and cultural complex, is facing significant construction delays more than four years after its 2021 announcement. The site, one of the largest known burial grounds of enslaved Africans in the Western Hemisphere, is being developed under the Road (Reclaiming Our Atlantic Destiny) Programme led by Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley. While a temporary pavilion for the National Performing Arts Centre opened in August 2025, the overall completion—initially slated for 2024—has been pushed back due to expanded archival digitization, supply-chain disruptions, and a fire at the Barbados Archives Department in June 2024. The memorial, designed by Adjaye Associates, is conceived as a landscape intervention using teak sourced from Ghana.

Sonic investigations non-profit to be artist-in-residence at London's Gasworks

The non-profit organization Earshot, founded by artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan, has been awarded a three-year studio bursary at London's Gasworks. The bursary, backed by Spanish patron Mercedes Vilardell, provides an annual stipend and covers monthly rent for a studio space at the south London exhibition and residency space. Earshot uses sound in the defense of human and environmental rights, and the residency gives it a platform to operate independently after an incubation period with Forensic Architecture. Abu Hamdan and Earshot will also take over the Barbican Centre this autumn for an event titled Repercussions, featuring installations, performances, screenings, and live music.

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A new study published in *Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts* by French researcher Temenuzhka Dimova uses eye-tracking technology to examine how pointing fingers in Old Master paintings affect viewer attention. Conducted through the University of Vienna’s Laboratory for Cognitive Research in Art History (CReA), the study compared participants' eye movements when viewing original paintings—such as Theodor Rombouts's *The Card Players*—and digitally altered versions where the pointing gestures were removed. Results showed that viewers focused more on the faces of pointing figures and the narrative context, not just the target of the gesture, and that removing the finger fundamentally changed how the story was perceived.

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The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond has repatriated 41 terracotta relief fragments valued at approximately $400,000 to Turkey. The works, acquired by the museum in the 1970s from Summa Galleries and antiquities dealer Harlan J. Berk, were determined to have been illegally excavated from a 6th-century B.C.E. Phrygian temple. The repatriation followed an investigation by the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which presented evidence of illicit excavation and illegal export to the museum.

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On January 14, 1506, Florentine architect Giuliano da Sangallo and Michelangelo Buonarroti witnessed the excavation of the Laocoön Group, a monumental ancient marble statue unearthed in a Roman vineyard. The sculpture, depicting the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons battling serpents, was quickly acquired by Pope Julius II and installed in the Vatican, where it remains today at the Museo Pio-Clementino. However, art historian Lynn Catterson controversially proposed in 2005 that the statue is not an ancient artifact but a forgery created by Michelangelo himself, citing evidence such as a drawing of a torso resembling the statue's back, bank records of Michelangelo's marble purchases, and his history of producing forgeries like the lost Sleeping Cupid.

Most famous image of JMW Turner not a self-portrait, says expert

Dr James Hamilton, a leading Turner expert, has claimed that the most famous portrait of JMW Turner—long believed to be a self-portrait and featured on the UK £20 banknote—is actually by the painter John Opie. Hamilton argues that the work, dated around 1799, was mistakenly included in the Turner Bequest after the artist's death in 1851, when his studio was in disarray and the attribution was never properly verified. He points to stylistic evidence, including Opie's characteristic use of dramatic light and shadow, and calls on Tate Britain to reattribute the painting.

After three years, investigations and now a $4.4m lawsuit, Australia’s most controversial art exhibition finally opens

The National Gallery of Australia has finally opened 'Ngura Puḻka – Epic Country,' a landmark exhibition of 30 large-scale paintings by Indigenous artists from the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. The show’s debut comes after a three-year delay caused by explosive allegations in the media suggesting that white studio assistants had improperly intervened in the creation of the artworks. These claims sparked multiple independent investigations, a $4.4 million defamation lawsuit, and a previous last-minute cancellation of the exhibition in 2023.

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Jeff Koons and Stella McCartney have launched a limited-edition capsule collection for Spring 2026. The collection features ready-to-wear items like hoodies, t-shirts, tote bags, and keychains, adorned with prints of Koons's artworks such as "Untitled (Girl with Dolphin and Monkey)" (2006) and sculptures from his "Made in Heaven" series, paired with McCartney's playful slogans like "Slippery When Wet" and "Doggy Style." The release also includes a reimagined pendant based on Koons's iconic "Rabbit" (1986) sculpture.

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Hilda Trujillo Soto, the former longtime director of the Museo Frida Kahlo (Casa Azul), has alleged that numerous artworks by Frida Kahlo are missing from the museum's collection and may have been sold at auction in the U.S. to private collectors. In a blog post, she accused the Casa Azul board of ignoring evidence of missing art uncovered during her 18-year tenure, and claimed that the sale or transfer of works from the Diego Rivera inventory would violate both the artist's bequest to the people of Mexico and Mexican law. Several missing works, including the painting *Peoples' Congress for Peace* (1952), which sold for $2.66 million at Sotheby's in 2020, appear to have passed through Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art in New York.

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Doyle Auctions will sell over 300 lots from the estate of television star Mary Tyler Moore, including memorabilia, contemporary art, and home furnishings. The auction runs in Beverly Hills from May 16 to 20 and in New York on June 4. Highlights include limestone sculptures by Mimmo Paladino, portraits by Peter Max and Al Hirschfeld, photographs by Annie Leibovitz, and jewelry by Paloma Picasso. Moore, who died in 2017, was a pioneering actress and philanthropist.

What to Know About Banksy and the Street Artist’s Identity

Reuters has conducted an investigation that claims to have identified the famously anonymous street artist Banksy. The report's key evidence is a police report from Banksy's arrest in New York City approximately twenty years ago.

Watch the Record-Breaking Auction of This Gustav Klimt Portrait, Which Just Became the Second Most Expensive Painting Ever Sold

Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer" sold at Sotheby's for $236.4 million on November 20, 2025, becoming the most expensive modern artwork ever auctioned and the second most expensive painting overall. The life-size oil painting, created between 1914 and 1916, depicts the 20-year-old daughter of prominent Jewish art collectors. After a 20-minute bidding war starting at $130 million, an anonymous telephone bidder won the work, which had been owned by cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder until his death in June 2025.

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Private dealer Nikolaus Leskovar, through Leskovar Fine Art, has amassed a significant collection of works by Pop art pioneer Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997), including pieces such as *I Love Liberty* (1982), *Modern Print* (1971), and *Still Life with Red Jar* (1994). The article highlights Leskovar's admiration for Lichtenstein's ability to blend comic strip aesthetics with high art, and notes that the gallery offers both iconic and lesser-known compositions for collectors. Market data from the Artnet Price Database shows that Lichtenstein print sales rose 16% in 2024 to $11.6 million, with average sale prices increasing 17% to $44,000, partly driven by strong demand for his 1994 nude series—exemplified by *Roommates* selling for $1.2 million at Sotheby's in November 2024.

‘Reality Decay’ Is at the Root of All the Bad News

The article connects a 2009 artwork by Paul Chan, 'Sade for Sade’s Sake,' to the recent release of the Jeffrey Epstein emails. The artwork, a shadow puppet projection based on the Marquis de Sade's violent text, was referenced in a 2010 email from an art adviser to Epstein, suggesting artists who could realize his desires for his private island. This link places a contemporary artwork directly into the evidence of a high-profile criminal conspiracy.

NJCU Visual Arts Gallery presents "Formidable Women, Dangerous Times"

New Jersey City University Visual Arts Gallery is presenting a solo exhibition by Johanna Foster titled "Formidable Women, Dangerous Times," running from May 14 to 28, 2026. The show features a series of figurative oil paintings that depict fierce women from Foster's communities, both real and imagined, exploring themes of resistance, courage, and perseverance in difficult times. Foster, a professor of sociology at Monmouth University, began her MFA at NJCU in 2022 and has exhibited widely across New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and California, including a digital exhibition at Newark Liberty International Airport and the Montclair Art Museum.

New Exhibition Explores the 60 Artists At the Forefront of Contemporary Fiber Art

The Golden Thread 2, a new exhibition organized by Karin Bravin and John Lee of BravinLee Programs, showcases the work of 60 contemporary fiber artists at an 18th-century mercantile building in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport neighborhood. Running until May 16, 2025, the show features a wide range of techniques including weaving, crochet, knitting, embroidery, tufting, and quilting, with pieces by artists such as Julia Bland, Lucia Engstrom, Mark Fleuridor, Sammy Bennet, Ali Dipp, Ana Maria Hernando, and Ellie Murphy. This second iteration is larger and longer than the first, which coincided with Frieze New York in 2024.

‘We refuse_d’: rehearsing refusal as method, memory, and possibility.

Marking the fifteenth anniversary of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, the traveling exhibition ‘we refuse_d’ has opened at M HKA in Antwerp. Curated by Nadia Radwan and Vasif Kortun, the project draws on the intellectual lineage of Hannah Arendt’s reflections on displacement and the historical precedent of the Salon des Refusés. The exhibition features a constellation of works by artists including Khalil Rabah, Barış Doğrusöz, and Nour Shantout, exploring refusal not as a simple negation, but as a complex strategy for survival, dignity, and the preservation of memory.

UK’s Palestinian Ambassador Calls on Government to Have British Museum Reinstate the Word ‘Palestinian’

The Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, has called on the British government to intervene in a dispute with the British Museum over the removal of the word “Palestinian” from wall texts in its Middle East galleries. Zomlot raised the complaint with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office after reports that the museum had stripped the term from maps and didactics, following lobbying by UK Lawyers for Israel. The museum denies removing the word entirely, stating it still appears elsewhere, but photographic evidence suggests otherwise. Zomlot declined a tour with director Nicholas Cullinan, calling the issue “existential.”

Large Roman Villa Uncovered in the U.K. During Wind Farm Survey

Archaeologists conducting surveys for an offshore wind farm project in Norfolk, England, have discovered a significant Roman villa dating back to the 1st through 3rd centuries C.E. The expansive estate, which measures over 100 feet in length, featured a bathhouse, a covered porch, and ancillary buildings for crop processing. Excavations also yielded high-status artifacts including an ornate bronze door handle, a lion-headed furniture foot, and imported pottery, alongside evidence of a Roman road and two lost medieval villages.

Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Reveals 3,300-Year-Old White-Out Fluid

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Researchers at the Fitzwilliam Museum have discovered evidence of 3,300-year-old "white-out" used to correct an artistic error on an ancient Egyptian papyrus. While preparing for an upcoming exhibition, curators identified a modification on a copy of the Book of the Dead belonging to the royal scribe Ramose, where a mixture of calcite and huntite was applied to slim down the figure of a jackal deity.

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Archaeologist Mike Pitts has challenged the prevailing narrative surrounding the removal of Hoa Hakananaiʻa, the iconic Easter Island moai held by the British Museum. Drawing on a newly discovered 1869 eyewitness account from the Army and Navy Gazette and a rare historical photograph, Pitts argues that the statue's excavation was a collaborative effort involving hundreds of Indigenous Rapa Nui people rather than a simple act of imperial theft. The evidence suggests the British crew traded tobacco for assistance and were guided to the statue's location by the islanders.

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Thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris on October 19, 2024, stealing an estimated $102 million in jewels but dropping and severely damaging the crown of Empress Eugénie during their escape. The diamond- and emerald-encrusted crown, commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III in 1855, was deformed, had one hoop broken off, lost four palmettes and one gold eagle, and is missing 10 of its 1,354 diamonds. Judicial police seized it as evidence before transferring it to the Louvre’s decorative arts department, where directors Olivier Gabet and Anne Dion documented the damage. The museum has opened a public bidding process for an accredited conservator, with an advisory committee chaired by Louvre director Laurence des Cars overseeing the restoration.

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The House Oversight Committee has released a crude drawing that President Donald Trump reportedly gave to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003. The sketch, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, features a marker outline of a naked woman with Trump's apparent signature placed where her pubic hair would be. Trump has denied creating the drawing, claiming he has never drawn, and has filed a $10 billion libel lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and its owner Rupert Murdoch. The New York Times compared Trump's signature on the drawing with his correspondence from 1987 to 2001 and found they "closely matched."

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New research by Tudor historian Owen Emmerson suggests that the most famous portrait of Anne Boleyn, displayed at London’s National Portrait Gallery, actually depicts her daughter Queen Elizabeth I. Emmerson argues the late-16th-century painting was deliberately made to resemble Elizabeth I, reinforcing a legitimate Tudor succession. The theory is supported by comparisons with another portrait of Elizabeth at Compton Verney and by Lawrence Hendra of Philip Mould gallery. An upcoming exhibition at Hever Castle, "Capturing a Queen: The Image of Anne Boleyn," will present this and other evidence, alongside newly identified contemporaneous images of Boleyn, including a miniature from the British Museum and a drawing by Hans Holbein the Younger.

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The Louvre Museum in Paris was forced to close on Monday after approximately 400 employees went on strike to protest deteriorating working conditions. The strike, organized by unions CGT, CFDT, and Sud, blocked the museum's iconic pyramid entrance. Workers cited a brazen $102 million theft of French crown jewels in October 2025 as evidence of deep operational dysfunction, and they accused management of failing to address longstanding security and staffing issues. The closure follows a turbulent year that included a leaked memo from director Laurence des Cars warning of water leaks and overcrowding, a wildcat strike in June, and the closure of the Sully wing due to structural weaknesses.

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Conservators restoring paintings in the Great Hall of Blenheim Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the UK, discovered graffiti names written on the ceiling dating back to 1843. The names, found over 60 feet up, include workers such as a plasterer from 1843 and individuals from 1968, along with dates like 1931 and 1939. The discovery was made during a $16 million roof restoration project that began in 2024 and is set to finish next year.

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The Cambodian government has formally requested the records and archival materials of Emma C. Bunker, a late art historian and former Denver Art Museum board member, from her family. This follows the museum's repatriation of 11 Asian artifacts to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, many of which were donated by Bunker, who had ties to Douglas Latchford, an antiquities dealer accused of smuggling looted Southeast Asian artifacts. Bunker died in 2021 without charges, but a 2022 Denver Post investigation alleged she helped Latchford use the museum as a "way station for looted art" and forged provenance records. The museum cut ties with Bunker in 2023, removing her name from its Southeast Asian gallery.

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Researchers in the Netherlands, led by neuroscientist Blanca Spee and neurologist Bas Bloem at Radboudumc Medical Center, have been studying the link between creativity and improved health outcomes for Parkinson's disease patients. A study of 800 patients found that 41% reported changes in creativity, with those on dopamine agonists especially likely to experience increases. A subsequent 10-week creative 'playground' involving painting, music, and writing led to reduced anxiety, increased well-being, and slight cognitive improvements. On November 17, the Michael J. Fox Foundation awarded Bloem its Pritzker Prize, including a $200,000 grant, to fund a new 18-month study in partnership with Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. That study will compare three groups: one exploring the museum's art collection, one making art, and a control group with no art exposure.

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Researchers have identified a marble statue head unearthed in 2003 in Chersonesos Taurica, an ancient Roman colony in Crimea, as depicting a Roman matron named Laodice. The discovery, published in the journal Nature, was made by scientists at Poland's Adam Mickiewicz University, who matched the head to an inscribed pedestal found in the archives of the Archaeological Museum in Odessa, Ukraine. Laodice was the wife of city councilman Titus Flavius Parthenokles and was honored with the statue around 140 CE, when the city was granted eleutheria (self-governing status). The statue, carved from Parian marble and originally over six feet tall, is one of only five marble sculpture fragments found at the site in 200 years.