Ari Hodara bought his ticket at the weekend after finding out about the raffle by chance while dining out
A Parisian art enthusiast could not believe his luck when he found out on Tuesday he had won a Pablo Picasso painting worth more than €1m with a €100 raffle ticket.
“How do I check that it’s not a hoax?” said Ari Hodara, 58, after organisers called him following the draw at Christie’s auction house in the French capital.
Continue reading...Interior minister is ‘highly determined’ to block US rapper from performing in the southern city in June due to his past antisemitic remarks, sources say
Kanye West has announced he will postpone an upcoming concert in France, just after reports emerged that France’s interior minister is seeking to block the US rapper from performing due to his antisemitic remarks.
“After much thought and consideration, it is my sole decision to postpone my show in Marseille, France until further notice,” the rapper, legally known as Ye, wrote on X.
Continue reading...Galleries, theatres, museums and libraries to benefit from largest cash injection into the arts for a decade
More than 100 cultural venues, museums, and libraries will share £130m extra funding as part of the largest cash injection into the arts for a decade, ministers have announced.
The investment forms part of the Arts Everywhere Fund, a £1.5bn package to support cultural infrastructure projects over the course of this parliament, which was announced by the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, earlier this year. The fund aims to save more than 1,000 arts venues, museums, libraries and heritage buildings across England.
Continue reading...Late-night gallery tours and new venues signal a city staking its claim as a regional arts capital
On a recent weekday evening, the doors of more than a dozen galleries and museums across Abidjan stayed open till midnight, several hours later than usual, as art enthusiasts went around town on a bus tour. It was the Night of the Galleries, designed for people to drop in after work and enjoy Abidjan art week to the fullest.
The after-hours special showcase was first tested in January 2024 on the sidelines of the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament hosted and won by Côte d’Ivoire. The tradition continued this year during the art week’s third edition, which ran from last Tuesday to Sunday.
Continue reading...Number of tickets to win Tête de Femme will be capped at 120,000 and proceeds will go to Alzheimer’s research
A raffle in France is offering the chance to win a portrait by Pablo Picasso for the price of a €100 (£87) ticket, with proceeds going to Alzheimer’s research.
Picasso painted the gouache-on-paper Tête de Femme (Head of a Woman) in 1941. The raffle organisers’ online sales platform says the number of tickets will be capped at 120,000, meaning the draw could net €12m if they are all sold.
Continue reading...Officials grant Grade II* protection to ‘rare building that raises more questions than it answers’
It is an elite list with some of the most significant and beautiful buildings and structures in England, including Battersea power station, Middlesbrough’s Transporter Bridge and the London Coliseum.
Now the Grade II* landmarks are being joined by a mysterious, limestone rubble “barn” on a grassy knoll in the Lake District, which was most recently used as a shelter for sheep and cows.
Continue reading...Musician says he wanted to attend the protest despite the consequences a potential arrest could have on his music career
Massive Attack frontman Robert Del Naja has been arrested on suspicion of showing support for a proscribed organisation after attending a mass protest against the ban on Palestine Action in central London on Saturday.
Del Naja, also known as 3D, was among hundreds of fellow demonstrators in Trafalgar Square on Saturday afternoon, holding a sign that read “I Oppose Genocide, I Support Palestine Action”.
Continue reading...Two-time Grammy nominee was one of Bollywood’s most versatile and celebrated voices
The Indian singer Asha Bhosle, whose voice defined Bollywood cinema and whose career spanned almost eight decades, has died in Mumbai at the age of 92.
Bhosle, who recorded more than 12,000 songs, became her country’s pre-eminent exponent of playback singing – recording tracks that were then lip-synced on film by actors. She also boldly embraced cabaret and western-influenced melodies to forge a distinctive musical identity.
Continue reading...Wildlife film pioneer has died aged 74 ‘immersed in nature and surrounded by friends’, his representatives have said
An award-winning wildlife cameraman renowned for his work with David Attenborough has died aged 74 while trekking in Nepal.
Doug Allan, described as a “true pioneer” of wildlife film-making, won several Bafta and Emmy awards and was principal camera operator on a number of BBC series including Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and The Blue Planet.
Continue reading...White House says only person committing war crimes is actor ‘for his awful movies and terrible acting ability’
The long-running war of words between George Clooney and the White House has ignited again after the Oscar-winning actor criticised Donald Trump’s threat to Iran that “a whole civilization will die tonight”.
On Wednesday, in a speech to 3,000 high school students in Cuneo, Italy, Clooney said the US president had committed a war crime with his threat.
Continue reading...Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement announce four shows at Wellington venue Meow Nui from next week – their first gigs since 2018
New Zealand’s self-described “fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo-a cappella-rap-funk-comedy-folk duo” Flight of the Conchords sold out their first shows in eight years in minutes this week, sparking a frenzy among fans.
Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement formed the musical comedy act in 1998, soaring to worldwide fame off the back of their HBO comedy series of the same name with tunes including Business Time and Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros.
Continue reading...Madrid and Basque government leaders call each other ‘provincial’ in dispute over the artwork
A row has broken out between the Madrid and Basque regional governments in Spain over the latter’s request for Guernica, probably Picasso’s most celebrated work, to be housed temporarily in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to mark the 90th anniversary of the bombing of the Basque town.
The work has hung in the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid since 1992 and repeated requests for it to be moved to the Basque Country have been refused.
Continue reading...BFI and National Portrait Gallery to mark centenary of the film star’s birth with ‘the summer of Marilyn’
Though often reduced to a sex symbol frozen in time, or a tragic figure at the centre of several scandals, Marilyn Monroe was something far more subversive, according to two exhibitions that will herald what has been nicknamed “the summer of Marilyn”.
To mark the centenary of her birth, Monroe is being celebrated by leading British cultural institutions as a performer of sharp comic intelligence, a canny architect of her own image, and a woman who reshaped the possibilities for female stardom on screen.
Continue reading...Sponsor pulls out after Keir Starmer calls decision to book rapper who wrote song titled Heil Hitler ‘deeply concerning’
Pepsi has said it is withdrawing its sponsorship of a UK music festival that is due to be headlined by Kanye West after Keir Starmer joined criticism of the event.
The musician is understood to have not yet made an application to come to Britain and could be blocked under powers allowing the authorities to do so if his presence is deemed not conducive to the public good.
Continue reading...Cultural figures sign open letter asking government for clarity on how long landmark collection will remain abroad
One of the world’s most important collections of 20th-century Mexican art, including works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is set to be exported to Spain under an agreement with Banco Santander, sparking outrage among Mexico’s cultural community.
Nearly 400 cultural professionals have signed an open letter calling on the Mexican government to offer greater clarity on what the deal means for the masterpieces, particularly the works by Kahlo, which the Mexican state has declared an “artistic monument”.
Continue reading...Priceless artefact snatched in Netherlands museum heist has been recovered, ending international search
A priceless gold 2,500-year-old helmet from Romania, stolen last year in the Netherlands, has been recovered, according to a Dutch art detective.
“It’s amazing. It’s the best news we could have got,” Arthur Brand said on Thursday, confirming that the Helmet of Coțofenești had been found.
Continue reading...Publisher alleges AI research company’s chatbot violated its copyright over Coconut the Little Dragon series
Penguin Random House has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging its chatbot ChatGPT violated copyright by mimicking and reproducing the content of a popular series of German children’s books.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday with a Munich court against OpenAI’s Ireland-based European subsidiary, states Penguin Random House’s legal team had prompted ChatGPT to write a story in the vein of Penguin author and illustrator Ingo Siegner’s Coconut the Little Dragon series.
Continue reading...New York-based Gao Zhen was detained in 2024 during a family visit to China and then tried for ‘defaming national heroes’
The Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen, known for making satirical sculptures of China’s former leader Mao Zedong, has been tried over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs”, his wife and a rights group have said.
Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit to China from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, his wife, Zhao Yaliang, and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese human rights defenders group, said.
Continue reading...Clowns in Bolivia are upset by mandate that stops schools hosting events from which they earn a living
Dozens of clowns have marched through the streets of Bolivia’s capital to protest against a government decree that limits extracurricular activities in schools, threatening their livelihoods.
Wearing full face paint and their signature red noses, the clowns gathered on Monday in front of the ministry of education in La Paz to oppose a decree published in February. The new mandate says schools must comply with 200 days of lessons each year – in effect banning them from hosting the special events where the entertainers are frequently employed.
Continue reading...Exclusive: UK owner’s version of Old Man with a Gold Chain reunited in Chicago with undisputed work by Dutch master
A portrait in a UK collection that has long been dismissed as a workshop copy of an almost identical painting by Rembrandt was in fact also painted by the 17th-century Dutch master, according to a leading scholar.
Each of the paintings, titled Old Man with a Gold Chain and dated to the early 1630s, is a near-lifesize depiction of an older man wearing a gold chain and a plumed hat.
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