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8 controversies that rocked the art world in 2025 2728947

Artnet News rounds up eight major controversies that shook the art world in 2025, including a brazen theft of crown jewels from the Louvre Museum in Paris, which exposed severe security gaps and led to a staff strike. Another key scandal involves a lawsuit filed by heirs of the Stern family against the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, alleging that a Van Gogh painting was looted by the Nazis and later concealed through a series of transactions in New York.

met repatriates painting korea buddhist temple korean war 1234761860

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has returned an 18th-century Korean painting, *The Tenth King of Hell* (1798), to Sinheungsa Temple in Sokcho, South Korea. The work, part of a ten-panel series called *Siwangdo* depicting kings of the afterlife, was illicitly taken from the temple in 1954 during the U.S. military presence after the Korean War. The Met purchased the painting in 2007 from a collector via an LLC linked to Bonhams’s Chinese art head. The repatriation was coordinated with the Sokcho Committee for the Return of Cultural Heritage and the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. Six other panels were previously returned by LACMA in 2020; three remain abroad.

us museums under report wwii era provenance morning links 1234753811

A new report by the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) finds that most U.S. museums are not transparent enough about the provenance of artworks with World War II-era gaps, making it harder for families to track down Nazi-looted art. The American Alliance of Museums shut down an online portal that had listed nearly 30,000 such works, and the WJRO discovered that only 10,668 of those can now be located online through individual institutions. Separately, the Central State Museum in Almaty, Kazakhstan, abruptly canceled a planned exhibition of Taiwanese artists amid allegations of Chinese censorship, and Marina Abramović will be the subject of a historic solo exhibition at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Venice in May 2026.

In a new exhibition, the British Museum traces the shared roots of three ancient Indian religions

The British Museum has opened a new exhibition, "Ancient India: Living Traditions," curated by Sushma Jansari, which presents devotional art from three of India's major religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The show highlights shared roots and commonalities among these faiths, tracing their origins back to ancient nature spirits like the Yakshas, and features objects ranging from a second-century BC carving of Gaja-Lakṣmī to an 18th-century painting from Rajasthan. The exhibition also addresses colonial history and provenance, with detailed labels explaining how key objects were removed from their original sites, including the Amarāvati Stupa.