Category Archives: Museums

Criticism mounts of ‘climate killer’ modern art museum in Berlin

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Calls for construction on Museum of the 20th Century to be halted until energy efficiency issues addressed

A vast modern art museum under construction in Berlin has been castigated by conservation experts and architecture critics for its poor environmental credentials, as the energy crisis intensifies scrutiny of the efficiency of new buildings.

The Museum of the 20th Century, designed by the Swiss star architects Herzog and de Meuron, is intended to propel the German capital into the top tier of world cities for modern art, competing with New York’s Moma and London’s Tate Modern.

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Forgotten photos show how Kenyan archaeologists unearthed secrets of their own country

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Exhibitions in UK and Africa rewrite history by celebrating discoveries of overlooked black excavators in colonial era

The photographs are rare, the subject choice unusual, but what the photographer captured was a common sight in the early 20th century: a team of colonised people, hard at work under a hot sun, excavating an ancient monument.

Today, without these photos, taken in Kenya in the 1940s and 50s, there would be scarcely any evidence that African Kenyans were present at archaeological digs. Their contributions and priceless finds were credited to their European bosses – and their important role in unearthing the history of their own continent has been all but forgotten.

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‘The sheer scale is extraordinary’: meet the titanosaur that dwarfs Dippy the diplodocus

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One of the largest creatures to have walked the Earth is to become the Natural History Museum’s new star attraction

It will be one of the largest exhibits to grace a British museum. In spring, the Natural History Museum in London will display the skeleton of a titanosaur, a creature so vast it will have to be shoehorned into the 9-metre-high Waterhouse gallery.

One of the most massive creatures ever to have walked on Earth, Patagotitan mayorum was a 57-tonne behemoth that would have shaken the ground as it stomped over homelands which now form modern Patagonia. Its skeleton is 37 metres long, and 5 metres in height – significantly larger than the museum’s most famous dinosaur, Dippy the diplodocus, which used to loom over its main gallery.

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Celtic gold coins worth ‘several million euros’ stolen from German museum

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Third-century coins taken in heist involving ‘cut off’ phone and internet connections in Manching, Bavaria

Thieves have stolen a hoard of Celtic coins worth several million euros from a German museum after apparently disrupting local telephone and internet connections.

Employees at the museum in Manching discovered on Tuesday that a “showcase was broken” and the collection of 450 coins had been stolen, local police told AFP.

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Digital Benin project reunites bronzes looted by British soldiers

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Comprehensive database of Benin bronzes held by museums raises questions about where they belong

Cheerfully gnashing their magnificent fangs as they stand side by side, the two bronze leopards look back on a journey that was as adventurous as it was cruelly absurd.

Looted by British soldiers on a punitive expedition to the west African kingdom of Benin in 1897, the bronzes were shipped to the UK, where they spent some time guarding the fireplace of army captain George William Neville’s Weybridge home. They were later put in display at Moma in New York and bought by a French art collector – who eventually sold them back to the colonial administration in Lagos in 1952 with a considerable mark-up.

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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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