Category Archives: Museums

Remains of 18 Indigenous people held by UK museums return to Australia

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Return is part of painstaking effort to recover thousands of ancestors stolen from traditional lands who now lie in more than 20 countries

The remains of 18 Indigenous people have been returned to Australia by two British museums, part of the laborious and painstaking effort to recover thousands of ancestors stolen from their traditional lands which now lie in more than 20 countries around the world.

At midnight Australia time on Wednesday, the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum returned 17 ancestors to the custodianship of the federal government, which will hold them while further research is undertaken “to determine the traditional custodians”. Another was given to the custodianship of the south-east First Nations people of South Australia, who were represented by Robyn Campbell.

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Manchester Museum to reopen with ‘ordinary folk’ co-curating new gallery

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Director says it’s ‘time to tell new stories’ as people from south Asian diaspora contribute experiences

A museum with a dizzying, encyclopaedic collection that spans Egyptian mummies, dinosaur skeletons and live Costa Rican frogs is to reopen next year after a £15m revamp – with a promise to be more inclusive and imaginative.

Manchester Museum has about 4.5m objects from around the world, a mix of exhibits from natural sciences and human cultures all under one roof.

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Salford museum pays £7.8m for LS Lowry’s Going to the Match

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Purchase of 1953 painting beloved by football fans made possible by gift from charitable foundation

A painting by LS Lowry beloved by football fans and art enthusiasts has been bought by the Lowry museum and gallery in Salford, saving it from disappearing into a private collection.

The museum paid £7.8m including fees for Going to the Match, painted in 1953, at an auction on Wednesday evening. The purchase was made possible by a gift from the Law Family charitable foundation, which was set up by the hedge fund manager and Conservative party donor Andrew Law and his wife, Zoë. The painting had been estimated to fetch £5m-£8m.

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Stolen Tasmanian Aboriginal artefacts are finally home. But there’s a catch: they’re only on loan

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Cultural objects kept in museums around the world are in nipaluna/Hobart for an exhibition. But Aboriginal communities are calling for them to stay permanently

In 2014, pakana woman Zoe Rimmer left the British Museum in tears after viewing a 170-year-old kelp water carrier taken from lutruwita/Tasmania in their collection. As she cried, the seed of a big idea was planted: how could she get the rikawa, and other Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural artefacts sitting in institutions across the world, home?

“Seeing our ancestral belongings in a storage facility in the British Museum was quite emotional,” says Rimmer, who until recently was senior curator of First Peoples art and culture at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG).

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‘It’s about ethics’: Nigeria urges British Museum to follow US and repatriate bronzes

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Culture minister says UK institution ‘should learn from what has happened’ as Smithsonian returns 29 Benin artefacts

The culture minister of Nigeria has urged the British Museum to follow the example of the Smithsonian Institution, which on Tuesday returned ownership of 29 Benin bronzes to Nigeria at a celebratory event in Washington.

Lai Mohammed praised the move by the US National Museum of African Art, which follows a recent restitution agreement with Germany that included the handover of two Benin bronzes. Last year, Mohammed’s ministry formally requested the return of Benin artefacts from the British Museum in London.

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Uffizi Galleries sue Jean Paul Gaultier over use of Botticelli images

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Any use of Italy’s publicly owned art to sell merchandise requires permission and payment of a fee

Italy’s Uffizi Galleries are suing the French fashion house Jean Paul Gaultier for damages that could exceed €100,000 (£88,000) after the company’s allegedly unauthorised use of images of Botticelli’s Renaissance masterpiece The Birth of Venus to adorn a range of clothing products, including T-shirts, leggings and bodices.

The matter came to light earlier this year after the Uffizi in Florence was notified of the garments being advertised by Jean Paul Gaultier on its website and social media.

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Most expensive Jane Austen novel sells for £375,000

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Inscribed first edition of Emma to go on display in UK for first time at Chawton House, Hampshire

An inscribed copy of a Jane Austen novel has become the most expensive of the author’s works ever sold after being bought for £375,000 and will go on public display in the UK for the first time.

The unique first edition of Emma – which carries the handwritten message “from the author” – achieved the highest sale price for any printed work by the novelist.

The three-volume edition has been deposited at Chawton House, Hampshire, the former home of the author’s brother, Edward, now a research institution specialising in women’s writing, after its American buyer insisted it stay in the UK.

Peter Harrington, the London rare book dealers, said it was the only presentation copy of an Austen novel with a written inscription known to exist. As was the custom, the book is inscribed by the publisher rather than Austen herself and was presented to her friend Anne Sharp, who was governess to Edward’s children.

Pom Harrington, the owner of Peter Harrington, said: “The buyer of this unique copy of Austen’s Emma expressed his wish for the work to stay in England.

“We immediately thought of Chawton House – given its connections to both Austen and her brother Edward. Chawton House’s support of early women’s literature made it the perfect choice, as Sharp served as confidante, cheerleader and sometime critic of Austen’s works.

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Campaigners celebrate as V&A severs Sackler links over opioids cash

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London museum bows to years of pressure and removes signs acknowledging the family behind the OxyContin crisis

Campaigners calling for the name Sackler to be dropped from cultural landmarks are celebrating this weekend. Their smiles mark five years of demonstrations and dramatic stunts as another major arts institution – London’s Victoria and Albert Museum – takes down signs acknowledging the financial contribution from this wealthy family.

The museum is dropping it controversial ties with the Sackler family, descendants of US makers of addictive opioid prescription drugs. It’s a victory for the campaign group Sackler P.A.I.N, which staged a dramatic public protest at the gallery in November 2019. The group, led by American artist Nan Goldin, argued that donations from the family that founded now-bankrupt Purdue Pharma, maker of the painkiller OxyContin, were a moral stain on cultural institutions that accepted them.

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Mexican rebels donate museum money for canoes to refugee rescues

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Madrid museum buys three hand-carved canoes from Zapatistas, with proceeds going to Open Arms NGO

Three exquisitely decorated canoes hand-carved in the jungles of southern Mexico and borne across the Atlantic on a ship tasked with a peaceful, symbolic – and cumbia-soundtracked – invasion of Spain could soon find a permanent mooring in the heart of Madrid.

More importantly, proceeds from the sale of the small boats could help save some of the tens of thousands of men, women and children who risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean each year.

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British Museum receives major bequest of Chinese porcelain and jades

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Sir Joseph Hotung’s gift is ‘one of the most generous ever received’ by museum

An outstanding collection of Chinese porcelain and jades has been left to the British Museum in “one of the most significant bequests” of its history.

The artworks come from the collections of Sir Joseph Hotung, a businessman, philanthropist and art collector, who died last year.

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London museum to return 72 Benin treasures to Nigeria

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Horniman museum is first government-funded institution to hand back artefacts looted by British forces in 1897

A London museum is to return 72 treasured artefacts, including its collection of Benin bronzes, to Nigeria in what experts described as an “immensely significant” moment.

The Horniman museum said it would transfer the ownership of the historic objects to the Nigerian government after an unanimous vote by its board of trustees.

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Portrait of tyrant Thomas Picton moved to side room in Welsh museum

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Exhibition includes two specially commissioned works reframing story of former Trinidad governor

For more than a century, the portrait of Thomas Picton hung in a prominent position at the National Museum Cardiff, the image’s description hailing him as a military hero rather than a tyrant and a torturer, before it was removed from view in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.

From Monday the two-metre-tall portrait of Lt Gen Picton is back on display in the Welsh capital – but in a very different context.

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After 350 years, sea gives up lost jewels of Spanish shipwreck

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Marine archaeologists stunned by priceless cache long hidden beneath the Bahamas’ shark-infested waters

It was a Spanish galleon laden with treasures so sumptuous that its sinking in the Bahamas in 1656 sparked repeated salvage attempts over the next 350 years. So when another expedition was launched recently, few thought that there could be anything left – but exquisite, jewel-encrusted pendants and gold chains are among spectacular finds that have now been recovered, having lain untouched on the seabed for hundreds of years.

The Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas (Our Lady of Wonders) went down on the western side of the Little Bahama Bank, over 70km offshore, but the newly discovered treasures were found across a vast debris trail spanning more than 13km.

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Oxford University may return items looted from Nigeria by Britain in 1897

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University council supports claim for 97 artefacts, including bronzes, currently held in city’s museums

Oxford University could return almost 100 artefacts that were looted by British colonial forces in 1897, after Nigeria requested the repatriation of the cultural items this year.

The 97 objects, including bronzes, were taken from Benin City by British troops and are currently held in the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

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Germany hands over two Benin bronzes to Nigeria

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Two countries sign restitution agreement covering more than 1,000 items in German hands

Germany has physically handed over two Benin bronzes and put more than 1,000 other items from its museums’ collections into Nigeria’s ownership, more than a century after they were looted by British soldiers from the once powerful kingdom in west Africa.

The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, and the culture minister, Claudia Roth, signed a restitution agreement with their respective Nigerian counterparts, Zubairu Dada and Lai Mohammed, in Berlin on Friday afternoon.

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V&A to display its first African fashion exhibition

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Galleries will showcase designers who are often overlooked, in an effort to acknowledge colonial histories within the museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum will open its first African fashion exhibition this week, more than 170 years after it was founded.

Featuring designers who have worked with names including Beyoncé and architect David Adjaye, Africa Fashion aims to look across the fashion of the continent, exhibiting designs, photographs and films from 25 of the 54 countries.

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Sudanese museums seek return of artefacts taken by British colonisers

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Items include armour, banners, and two skulls taken from Omdurman battlefield

Museum officials in Sudan are hoping for the return of priceless artefacts and body parts taken by British soldiers, colonial administrators and travellers, saying they could help bring peace to the unstable east African country.

The items include valuable armour, weapons and clothing, and the banners of fighters who resisted the British force that invaded and colonised Sudan 124 years ago.

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Revealed: why Van Gogh’s ‘empty chair’ paintings were never shown together

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Sister-in-law hid one dedicated to Gauguin because of ‘anger at the French artist’s attacks on his former friend’

Shortly before Vincent van Gogh cut off his left ear and had a breakdown after quarrelling with his fellow artist, Paul Gauguin, in the French city of Arles in 1888, he created a pair of extraordinary paintings. One, Gauguin’s Chair, depicts a couple of books and a lit candle discarded on an ornate armchair. The other, Van Gogh’s Chair, shows a tobacco pipe and pouch on a rustic wooden chair and is instantly recognisable as one of the most famous paintings in the world.

Now, the mystery of how the diptych of paintings came to be split up – and why the picture of Gauguin’s chair was kept in the family collection while Van Gogh’s Chair was sold off – has finally been solved.

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Museum of Rescued Art showcases stolen relics that have returned to Italy

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Etruscan, Greek and Roman artefacts that are being returned have gone on display in Rome

A museum to showcase dozens of relics that were stolen from cultural sites in Italy and trafficked to the US has opened in Rome.

About 100 of the 260 Etruscan, Greek and Roman artefacts that are gradually being returned to Italy have gone on display as part of the first exhibit in the Museum of Rescued Art, which is being hosted in a space among the ruins of the ancient Baths of Diocletian.

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‘Germany was 10 years behind’: how Brexit helped Europe’s galleries

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Curators who left the UK after the referendum took with them experience that is reshaping their cities’ art scenes

One of the things Stephanie Rosenthal acquired during her 10-year stint in London’s gallery world is an appreciation of the British art of queueing with a smile on your face.

After the German art historian quit her job as chief curator at the Hayward Gallery in the wake of Britain’s referendum on leaving the European Union, she exported her specialist skills back to her country of birth.

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