The Musée d’Orsay in Paris has opened a new room in its permanent display featuring 13 artworks recovered from Germany and Austria after World War II, whose provenance remains unknown. The museum is inviting visitors to help identify the original owners of these pieces, which were looted or displaced during the war and later restituted to France.
Palazzo Attems-Petzenstein in Gorizia hosts the exhibition "Back to Peace? La guerra vista dai grandi fotografi Magnum," which presents the Second World War and its aftermath through two hundred photographs, video installations, and soundscapes by legendary Magnum photographers. The show features iconic works by Robert Capa, Eve Arnold, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, Eric Hartmann, René Burri, Thomas Hoepker, George Rodger, Wayne Miller, and Werner Bischof, covering the Normandy landings, the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, the atomic devastation of Hiroshima, and the return of French prisoners. Curated by Andrea Holzherr and Marco Minuz, the exhibition is divided into two sections: one focusing on wartime imagery and the other on the immediate consequences of the conflict, including the suffering of civilians and the fragile hope of reconstruction.
James Stourton, former chairman of Sotheby's UK, has written a book titled "Rogues and Scholars" that chronicles the rise of London's art market after World War II. The article highlights key moments such as Sotheby's 1958 sale of the Goldschmidt collection of Impressionist art, which transformed auctions into glamorous evening events, and the introduction of the buyer's premium in 1975, which Stourton calls "the Big Bang of the art world." It also profiles influential dealers and galleries like Marlborough Gallery, Robert Fraser, Christopher Gibbs, and Robin Symes who shaped global tastes from London.
A new book titled *Jewish Country Houses*, edited by Juliet Carey and Abigail Green, explores the history of approximately 1,000 country estates built or remodeled by wealthy Jewish families across Great Britain and Continental Europe from the French Revolution until World War II. These houses, such as Waddesdon Manor and Château de Champs-sur-Marne, served as symbols of social arrival and assimilation, blending eclectic architectural styles with art collections from European auction houses. The volume, published by Profile and Brandeis University Press in association with the National Trust, features contributions from an international team of historians and curators, with photographs by Hélène Binet, and includes case studies of a dozen houses now open to the public.
A 137-carat diamond known as the Florentine Diamond, once owned by the Medici and Habsburg families and long believed lost, has been revealed to have been hidden in a bank vault in Canada for decades. The Habsburg family secreted the gem during World War II and kept its location secret for 100 years, as requested by Empress Zita after her husband Charles I's death in 1922. Three Habsburg descendants recently invited The New York Times to view the diamond and expressed interest in exhibiting it in a Canadian museum, though they have no plans to sell it.
A 2nd-century Roman gravestone inscribed for a sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus was discovered in March 2025 by Daniella Santoro and Aaron Lorenz while doing yard work at their New Orleans home. University of New Orleans archaeologist D. Ryan Gray, working with colleagues at the University of Innsbruck and Tulane University, traced the stone to a missing object from a museum in Civitavecchia, Italy. Researchers believe it was brought to the U.S. as a souvenir by a member of the 34th division of the Fifth Army after the liberation of Rome in 1944. The FBI’s Art Crime Team is now involved in repatriating the headstone to Italy.
A pair of hikers in the Czech Republic discovered a 20th-century gold hoard worth over $340,000 in the foothills of the Krkonoše mountains. The find, consisting of 600 gold coins from multiple countries and a second box of gold items, was turned over to the Museum of Eastern Bohemia in Hradec Králové, where archaeologists are investigating its origins.
The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco has opened "Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries," the first solo museum exhibition in the Bay Area for the Berlin-based Japanese artist. The centerpiece is "Diary," an 88-foot-long network of blood-red yarn that incorporates pages from diaries of Japanese soldiers and German citizens from World War II, creating an immersive web of memory. The exhibition also includes a crimson dress unraveling into cords, set designs for a theatrical psycho-drama, performance videos, and paper works reflecting on the artist's experience as a cancer survivor.
The Anchorage Museum is hosting "Everyday Anchorage: Duke Russell & Ward Wells," an exhibition pairing two artists from different generations who capture ordinary life in Anchorage, Alaska. Ward Wells, a commercial photographer, documented the city after World War II, while Duke Russell uses paint to record post-pipeline scenes. The show runs through August 2027.
The San Diego Museum of Art (SDMA) is marking its 100th anniversary with a special exhibition titled 'SDMA: 100 Years.' The show, curated by Lucas Perez, traces the institution's chronological evolution from its origins after the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, through its founding in 1926 as the Fine Arts Gallery, to its present-day identity. It features rediscovered archival materials, including early children's art and photographs documenting periods like its conversion into a naval hospital during World War II.
The Cleveland History Center has opened a new exhibition honoring local Tuskegee Airmen, featuring hand-drawn portraits by students from the Cleveland School of the Arts. The exhibition, part of the Cleveland Heroes Project, is displayed at the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum and runs through April 30. It highlights airmen with Northeast Ohio roots, including 2nd Lt. Gilbert Cargill, Capt. Erwin Bernard Lawrence Jr., and Cpl. Howard Arthur Tibbs.
Frederick Hammersley, an American artist who served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II, met Pablo Picasso in occupied Paris while making signs for the war effort. The article announces an exhibition of Hammersley's paintings at The Fred, highlighting this historical connection between the two artists.
Georg Baselitz, the influential German painter known for his inverted figures and raw, expressive style, has died at age 88. A pioneer of postwar German art, Baselitz gained international fame in the 1960s by turning his canvases upside down, forcing viewers to focus on form and paint rather than narrative. His work often grappled with the trauma of Nazi Germany and the divided nation's identity, making him a central figure in the Neo-Expressionist movement.
Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota has debuted her first Bay Area solo exhibition, "Two Home Countries," at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. The show features Shiota’s signature immersive installations of red thread, most notably the 88-foot-long work "Diary," which suspends handwritten journal pages from World War II soldiers and postwar civilians within a dense crimson web. The exhibition also includes sculptures, video, and performance-based works that explore themes of memory, displacement, and the psychological state of living between cultures.
Gustav Klimt's portrait *Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer* (1914–1916) sold at Sotheby's New York on November 18 for $236.4 million, becoming the second most valuable artwork ever sold at auction and the most valuable modern work. The painting was the highlight of the Leonard Lauder collection sale, which totaled over $600 million. After a 20-minute bidding war, the portrait hammered at $205 million before fees, surpassing its $150 million estimate. The work, stolen by the Nazis during World War II, was acquired by Lauder in the 1980s.
The Philadelphia Art Museum (PhAM) opens "Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100," a traveling exhibition celebrating the centennial of surrealism. The show features works by Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Leonora Carrington, and Man Ray, including Dalí's lobster telephone and pieces inspired by Greek mythology. It is the final and only American stop on the tour, previously shown in Brussels, Paris, Hamburg, and Madrid, and runs through February 16, 2026.
The National WWII Museum in New Orleans has opened a special exhibit titled 'Degenerate! Hitler’s War on Modern Art,' on loan from the Jewish Museum Milwaukee and running through May 10, 2026. The exhibit features over 65 works by artists deemed 'degenerate' by the Nazi regime, including Wassily Kandinsky, Max Beckmann, Pablo Picasso, and Marc Chagall, alongside documents and artifacts that explore how modernist art was suppressed and weaponized as propaganda. The museum has expanded the original exhibit to include a focus on suppressed music, featuring instruments from the era, such as a tenor saxophone played by Eddie Powers and a clarinet played by George Lewis, on loan from the New Orleans Jazz Museum.
NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale has announced 'Shared Dreams,' a major exhibition opening September 21, 2025, that celebrates a transformative gift of 88 works of 20th-century Latin American art from collectors Stanley and Pearl Goodman. The exhibition features pieces by Leonora Carrington, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Wifredo Lam, Fernando Botero, Remedios Varo, Joaquín Torres-García, Roberto Matta, and Alice Rahon, among others, and runs through September 13, 2026.
The Journal Gazette reports on a history and art exhibition in Fort Wayne that honors the wartime work of native son Bill Blass and the Ghost Army. Bill Blass, who would later become a renowned fashion designer, served in the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, a top-secret U.S. Army unit known as the Ghost Army, during World War II. The exhibition highlights the unit's deceptive tactics—using inflatable tanks, sound effects, and fake radio transmissions—to mislead German forces, and features artifacts, photographs, and artworks related to their missions.
The Ökohaus (Eco-House) project in Berlin stands as a radical experiment in participatory architecture, born from the 1987 Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) urban renewal program. Designed by Frei Otto, the complex features three residential buildings characterized by a 'double informality' where dense foliage and a patchwork of diverse cladding materials—ranging from timber and metallic shingles to exposed concrete—create a ruin-like yet meticulously resolved aesthetic. The project challenged traditional housing models by allowing residents, or 'Ökohäusler,' to engage in a collective and individualized construction process.
Los Angeles-based artist Greg Ito has presented a striking installation titled "A Cautionary Tale" with Superposition Gallery at Frieze Los Angeles. The booth features stacks of neon orange suitcases and mirrored trunks alongside paintings of symbolic imagery like burning candles and ships in a bottle. The work draws directly from Ito’s family history, specifically the forced relocation of his grandparents to Japanese American internment camps during World War II, where they were restricted to bringing only what they could carry in a suitcase.
Filmmaker Nadia Conners interviews Russian theater director Alexander Molochnikov about his life and work following his exile from Russia. Molochnikov left Russia after receiving death threats from the Wagner Group for supporting Ukraine. He discusses his career at the Moscow Art Theater and Bolshoi Theater, his award-winning ballet that won the Golden Mask award during the war, and his current production of *Seagull: True Story*, which parallels his own immigration to the U.S. The play, staged at LaMaMa in New York and now running at the Marylebone Theater in London, explores censorship and repression faced by a director fleeing Russia.
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to extend the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act, which was set to expire at the end of the year. The Senate had already approved the extension, and the legislation now awaits the President's signature to become law.
A Dutch government-appointed committee has proposed transferring guardianship of thousands of unclaimed Nazi-looted artworks from a state agency to a Jewish foundation, preferably housed at the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam. The plan includes funding for exhibitions and explanatory labels to publicly display the so-called "orphaned" art from the Netherlands Art Property Collection.
A restoration of the Madonna and Child statue atop Notre-Dame de la Garde in Marseille has revealed seven bullet holes from Nazi gunfire during World War II. The 37-foot-tall copper and iron statue, known as the Bonne Mère, was shot after the city's liberation in 1944, when German artillery units fired on the church, piercing the bell tower, breaking stained-glass windows, and destroying the ceiling mosaic. The bullet holes were discovered near the end of a five-year restoration that included re-gilding and the installation of a new crown via helicopter.
A court in Argentina has placed Patricia Kadgien and her husband Juan Carlos Cortegoso under house arrest as police search for a Nazi-looted painting by Giuseppe Ghislandi. The work, which once belonged to Jewish dealer Jacques Goudstikker, was spotted in a real estate listing for their house in Mar del Plata by the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad. The listing has been deleted, and police failed to find the painting during a raid, but prosecutors are also investigating two other works held by another of Kadgien's daughters.
An ancient mosaic looted during World War II by a Nazi officer has been repatriated to Italy and is now on public display in Pompeii. The mosaic, which depicts an erotic bedroom scene, likely originated near Mount Vesuvius and was taken by a Wehrmacht captain who donated it to a German citizen. It was returned with the help of the Italian consulate in Stuttgart on September 16, 2023, and is now housed at the Pompeii Archaeological Park.
The Philomath Museum's Moreland Gallery will open a new exhibition titled "Refuge: Where Life Endures" on May 2, running through July 25. The show features works from the Corvallis Art Guild, a community art group founded 80 years ago after World War II, and explores themes of shelter, safety, and survival. A public reception will be held on May 8.
Two exhibitions in Sarasota trace the origins of the Sarasota Artist Colony, which flourished between 1945 and 1965. One is at Ringling College of Art and Design, titled “Origins: Sarasota Artist Colony, 1945-1965,” co-curated by Tim Jaeger and Bill Hartman. The other is at the downtown offices of Michael Saunders & Co. The Ringling College show features 36 works by colony artists, including Jon Corbino, Ben Stahl, Syd Solomon, and Craig Rubadoux, and places them in the context of post-World War II America, when the GI Bill and cheap rents attracted hundreds of artists to the small beach community.
A monumental sculpture titled "Reflection" by French-born artist Prune Nourry has been installed at Ocean Terrace Park in Miami Beach, honoring the women of the U.S. Coast Guard Women’s Reserve (Spars) who served during World War II. The 21.3-foot sculpture features a half-face resting in water, completed by its reflection, with a mangrove tree sprouting from the side of the head. It was unveiled on October 30 and is Nourry’s first public art project in the U.S. The work uses the likeness of Yeoman Third Class Nellie Locust, a Cherokee woman who served in the Spars, with permission from her family. The sculpture was created in collaboration with landscape architect Raymond Jungles.