“About 30 artworks belonging to Lilli Petroli owner Mauro Lilli were stolen in the unusual heist, including bas-reliefs attributed to Pablo Picasso, a bronze ballerina sculpture by Giacomo Manzù, paintings by Bruno d’Arcevia of the Italian Manner movement, and pieces by sculptor Mario Moretto.” - ARTnews
"The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) says it has spent £50,000 trying to remove paint from the wall of the Grade II-listed building in Carey Street.” Er … a solution presents itself. - BBC
“To some people, these are just puppets. … To me, there’s so much to them. It’s sculpture, casting, painting, sewing, mechanics, history, research, performance design — all at once. They are like kinetic art objects.” - The New York Times
“Today (Malo Chapuy) paints religious scenes, altarpieces, and early Renaissance-style portraits that look like museum artifacts save for the proliferation of wind turbines, water towers, astronauts, and spaceships.” - Art in America
London’s National Gallery is facing backlash from conservative groups in the U.K. after convening a 50-citizen assembly to help shape its future planning. - Artnet
One of those institutions, the National Gallery of Art, has studied vibrations ahead of the race as it prepares for possible effects on its art — but it’s declining to say what it found. - Washington Post
“The (€50 million) revamp includes dozens of projects in the Gallery of Statues and Paintings, the nearby Palazzo Pitti, and the Boboli Gardens, some of which have already begun, while others are scheduled to start in the coming months, allowing the museum to remain open.” - ARTnews
In practical terms, that means a knowledge graph representing thousands of artworks, with billions of nodes detailing the complex relationships its algorithms have identified between them. - Didginomica
The list of collectors whose art has arrived at auction over the past two years reads like the society pages of decades past. Some died; others have merely reached an age when keeping several hundred million dollars’ worth of paintings around no longer seems quite as important as it once did. - ARTnews
“Pooling resources now reflects a broader shift away from the competitive collection building of the 19th and 20th centuries. Increasing financial pressure plays an undeniable role, but so does a growing appetite for deeper institutional ties and shared expertise.” - Artnet
The museum paused its exhibitions and other activities last year due to financial troubles. The board and management have not announced any permanent closure; their statements indicate that they hope to keep operating without a permanent home. - The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC)
The Fiesole Altarpiece, painted in the 1420s, suffered its first damage during an updating in 1501; it was subsequently broken up, had some of its parts looted or sold off, and was gnawed by wood-boring insects. The work has now been restored to roughly its 1501 condition with an ingenious spring-fitted wood frame. - Artnet
“Until 2001, many of the capital’s most important cultural institutions required visitors to pay for entry. … It’s impossible to overstate just how revolutionary this (change) was. In the decade after free admission was introduced, visits to formerly paid-for museums in London increased by around 151%.” - LBC (UK)
To choose the 25 most important works of sculpture made since 1945, we asked a panel of experts to gather at the New York Times building in March. - The New York Times
She complained of a “lack of context” in the exhibition about the forced displacement of Palestinians during the creation of Israel, such as the omission of information about the Palestinian rejection of a state that was offered in the United Nations’ 1947 partition plan and about Jews displaced in Arab lands. - The Art Newspaper
