Palazzo Maffei in Verona contacts police after visitors cause Van Gogh’s Chair to buckle while posing for photos
An Italian museum has contacted the police after two clumsy tourists almost wrecked a work of art while posing for photos.
Video footage released by Palazzo Maffei in Verona showed the hapless pair photographing each other pretending to sit on a crystal-covered chair made by the artist Nicola Bolla – described by the museum as an “extremely fragile” work.
Continue reading...Rijksmuseum exhibition includes contraceptive featuring erotic etching of a nun and three clergymen
A 200-year-old illustrated condom will go on display with Dutch golden age masters in Amsterdam this week, after the 19th-century “luxury souvenir” became the first-ever contraceptive sheath to be added to the Rijksmuseum’s art collection.
The condom, which was probably made of a sheep’s appendix circa 1830, is thought to have come from an upmarket brothel in France, most likely in Paris. It features an erotic etching depicting a partially undressed nun pointing at the erect genitals of three clergymen, as well as the phrase Voila, mon choix (“There, that’s my choice”).
Continue reading...Mauritshuis in The Hague says guarantees would be needed of artworks’ safety amid uncertainty caused by US funding cuts
A leading museum in the Netherlands has said it is reconsidering lending works from its collection to museums in the US amid the uncertainty wreaked by Donald Trump’s funding cuts and ideological impositions.
Martine Gosselink, the director of the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, whose collection includes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring and Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, said the turmoil had left her team wary of lending pieces to the US.
Continue reading...Only a few statues remain, with thousands of priceless artefacts from Nubian and Kushite kingdoms missing
Videos of Sudan’s national museum showing empty rooms, piles of rubble and broken artefacts posted on social media after the Sudanese army recaptured the area from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in recent days show the extent of looting of the country’s antiquities.
Fears of looting in the museum were first raised in June 2023 and a year later satellite images emerged of trucks loaded with artefacts leaving the building, according to museum officials. But last week, as the RSF were driven out of Khartoum after two years of war, the full extent of the theft became apparent.
Continue reading...Ancient Mesopotamian stone tablets show extraordinary detail and reach of government in cradle of world civilisations
The red tape of government bureaucracy spans more than 4,000 years, according to new finds from the cradle of the world’s civilisations, Mesopotamia.
Hundreds of administrative tablets – the earliest physical evidence of the first empire in recorded history – have been discovered by archaeologists from the British Museum and Iraq. These texts detail the minutiae of government and reveal a complex bureaucracy – the red tape of an ancient civilisation.
Continue reading...Remains brought to Britain as part of colonialism, such as Egyptian mummies, should be repatriated, a report says
The public display of human remains in the UK, including the ancient Egyptian mummies in the British Museum, is offensive and should be stopped, according to a group of MPs.
A report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations (APPG-AR) said it should become an offence to sell ancestral remains or publicly display them without consent.
Continue reading...Art lovers catch last glimpse of prestigious art collection before gallery shuts for five years for major revamp
Visitors from around the world have been flocking to the Pompidou Centre in Paris this weekend, seizing the last opportunity to enjoy Europe’s largest temple of modern and contemporary art before it closes its doors for a five-year overhaul.
In one of the most complex closures of its kind, the task of removing the museum’s 2,000-strong permanent collection will start on Monday. The Pompidou’s Chagalls, Giacomettis and myriad other treasures will be relocated to other sites in Paris and museums elsewhere in France and around the world.
Continue reading...Curator of Design Museum show says ‘human-centric’ approach to design needs overhaul amid climate crisis
Designers need to “fundamentally rethink our relationship with the natural world”, according to the curator of a new exhibition which argues the needs of nature and animals should be considered when creating homes, buildings and products.
Justin McGuirk, the curator of the upcoming More Than Human exhibition at the Design Museum in London, said our current “human-centric” approach to design needs to be radically overhauled as the world adapts to the climate crisis.
Continue reading...Postal Museum says research featured in new exhibition shows how global postal service was ‘tool of empire’
A British shipping company that became the largest in the world at the height of empire continued to use the labour of enslaved people after the abolition of slavery, research has found.
The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSPC), which received a royal charter from Queen Victoria in 1839, used enslaved workers on the tiny island of St Thomas, which was a Danish colony at the time and is now part of the US Virgin Islands.
Continue reading...Revered Helmet of Coțofenești among items from ancient Dacian civilisation stolen while on loan at Drents Museum
Hours before the sun rose over the Netherlands, the group crowded around the large external door, appearing to pry it open. Seconds later, the grainy security video appeared to show a powerful explosion, sending plumes of smoke and sparks into the air, and the thieves rush into the museum in the north-eastern city of Assen.
Minutes later they were gone. But the mystery of what exactly took place during their few minutes in the Drents Museum – and what came afterwards – has left officials in the Netherlands scrambling for answers, and prompted a row that has stretched to the other side of Europe.
Continue reading...Crowds give life to the Paris museum and the painting is a silent, compelling mystery at the heart of the hubbub
What a wonderful headache for a museum to have. The Louvre in Paris gets so many visitors it is taking drastic measures to cope, which include moving its most famous treasure to a dedicated space where fans can visit without entering the main museum at all. It will no longer suck the oxygen from other art.
Nearly 9 million visitors a year stream through the Louvre and it’s believed 80% of them are looking for Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, better known as La Gioconde, better still as the Mona Lisa.
Continue reading...Nasreen and Hasan Askari open Karachi museum with her 1,000-piece centuries-old collection from trade crossroads
As a young medical student in 1970s Pakistan, Nasreen Askari had an encounter that would shape her for ever.
After asking the mother of a sick boy routine questions about his family history, the woman looked outraged. Marching Askari outside, she took off her colourful shawl and laid it on her lap. “Most of the answers to your pointless questions are here,” she said, pointing to intricate embroidery that symbolised everything, from the woman’s community, to her marriage status and her number of children.
Continue reading...In leaked memo to culture minister, Laurence des Cars sounds alarm over state of Paris art gallery
Visiting the Louvre has become a “physical ordeal” as the throngs of tourists, leaks and substandard catering take a toll on the world’s most-visited museum, its director has said in a leaked memo.
The document, written by Laurence des Cars for the French culture minister, Rachida Dati, but leaked to the media on Thursday, sounded the alarm over the state of the Paris museum.
Continue reading...Joint project between Guardian and city’s Science and Industry Museum will open in early 2027
The role transatlantic enslavement played in shaping Manchester is at the heart of a new exhibition developed in partnership by the Guardian and the city’s Science and Industry Museum.
The exhibition is the first time the museum, which tells the story of Manchester’s transformation into the world’s first industrial city, has put the links between enslaved African people, cotton and the city at the centre of a display.
Continue reading...More walkouts planned in 2025 at V&A, Natural History and Science museums as workers demand living wage
Three of the UK’s biggest museums face the threat of strike action in 2025 by security guards over pay and conditions.
Guards at the Science Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum are in dispute with the external contractor, Wilson James. They want a basic pay rate of £16 an hour to cope with the cost of living crisis.
Continue reading...Newly released documents show Irish officials sought return of cannon sold by ‘gang of British treasure hunters’
Rare cannon allegedly smuggled out of Irish waters by a gang of British treasure hunters and acquired for a knockdown price by a Tower of London official were at the centre of a decades-long dispute between British and Irish officials, according to newly released records.
Irish officials made extensive efforts to convince UK authorities to return the bronze cannon after claiming they were “illegally smuggled” from a Waterford shipwreck and sold to the Tower of London.
Jan Davidsz de Heem’s four paintings of sumptuous food and luxury objects were produced as series
A quartet of influential still lifes from the Dutch artist Jan Davidsz de Heem will go on display together for the first time since the 17th century at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
The four paintings were produced as part of a series by De Heem, who is considered to be a master of pronkstilleven – a style of ornate still life painting – during the Dutch golden age, depicting displays of sumptuous food and luxurious objects.
Continue reading...Kremlin critics fear move is part of Russia’s efforts to whitewash Soviet past and shut independent cultural institutions
Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum announced its surprise closure on Thursday, a move critics attribute to the Kremlin’s efforts to whitewash Russia’s Soviet past.
The closure was officially put down to alleged violations of fire safety regulations but comes amid an intense campaign by Russian officials against independent civil society and those who question the state’s interpretation of history.
Continue reading...Collection of 1,700 pieces dating from third to 20th century is highest-value gift of objects in UK museum history
The British Museum has been given a private collection of Chinese ceramics worth about £1bn, the highest-value object donation in UK museum history.
The 1,700 pieces dating from the third to the 20th century have been given permanently by the trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation. They had been on loan to the London museum since 2009.
Continue reading...Date for official opening still not announced for $1bn-plus mega-project more than a decade in the making
Egypt’s vast and much-delayed antiquities museum will partly open its main galleries on Wednesday, including 12 halls that exhibit aspects of ancient Egypt.
The Grand Egyptian Museum, a mega-project near the famed Giza pyramids that has cost considerably more than $1bn (£765m) so far, will open its halls to 4,000 visitors as a trial run until the official opening date, which is yet to be announced, according to Al-Tayeb Abbas, assistant to the minister of antiquities.
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