Some estimate that the city’s subterranean history could stretch back 1 million years, with early human settlement from the Lantian Man and walled settlements already visible during the Yangshao period 7,000 years ago. - Artnet
Trump’s March executive order directing the Interior Department to eliminate information that reflects a “corrosive ideology” that disparages historic Americans. National Park Service officials are broadly interpreting that directive to apply to information on racism, sexism, slavery, gay rights or persecution of Indigenous people. - Washington Post
“Fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide in the capital’s air are accelerating the decay of the sandstone fort, built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Researchers … found black crusts up to half a millimetre thick on some walls.” - The Independent (UK)
“For the past decade, visitors to the Louvre could rent a Nintendo 3DS console for personalized tours, audio commentary and additional information about more than 700 artworks at the famed Paris museum. Now, the Louvre is getting rid of the handheld gadgets” — because Nintendo has stopped making them. - Smithsonian Magazine
“The Trump administration has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, according to four people familiar with the matter, including a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man showing scars on his back.” - The Washington Post
They are "an estimated $400 million trove amassed by Leonard Lauder, chairman emeritus of the Estée Lauder, and an estimated $80 million collection from the Chicago billionaires behind the Pritzker Architecture Prize." - The Wall Street Journal
Photos and video show the museum’s courtyard littered with rubble; while doors and windows were blown out, the building is standing. The museum reopened two years ago after a decade-long closure due to the Yemeni civil war. Israel has been in conflict with the country’s Houthi rebels since the Gaza war began. - ARTnews
Herzog & de Meuron has designed a deliberately “irrational” exhibition space, set largely below the Parkway and sheathed in reflecting steel, so that the building vanishes into air (as architects like to say), mirroring the gardens around it rather than asserting its own profile. - The New Yorker
A nonprofit, the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, received a tip that the art was on the auction block in Ohio, and went into action. - The New York Times
The Trust “said it wanted to increase the average eight-second viewing time for an artwork, as a way of reducing stress and developing emotional resilience.” Great in theory, possibly a huge challenge in practice in front of any popular painting or sculpture. - BBC
A decision to tear up an agreement between the National Gallery and Tate, which has prevented the National Gallery from collecting works created after 1900, could create “bad blood” and a situation in which the two galleries are “at each other’s throats”, according to senior sources. - The Guardian
Largely funded by the US embassy in Baghdad, the restoration of the temple and the north retaining wall are part of the Future of Babylon Project, initiated 15 years ago, which aims to document, waterproof and stabilise structures throughout the 2,500-acre site. - The Art Newspaper
“By studying copper isotopes taken from samples of the statue, scientists were able to identify that the metal originated from the Yangtze River in eastern-central China. … Researchers argue that the figure closely mirrors tomb guardians from the Tang dynasty” and that Marco Polo’s father may have brought it to Venice. - NBC News
