Marsden's introduction is very lucid, setting out the development of sculpture at court; royal involvement with sculptors; displaying sculpture in galleries, state rooms, libraries and gardens; and stewardship of the collection.
The significant number of ancestors held in UK museums is extremely distressing and symbolic of the colonial origins of these collections. We hope that the responses gathered by The Guardian will be shared with the relevant communities to support them in bringing their ancestors home.
The new webpage, entitled 'How have objects come to be in the V&A?', points out that for some objects, their journeys have involved known histories of violence, coercion or injustice, while for others there remains uncertainty over exactly how they came to be here.
Although the AGO had planned to jointly purchase Goldin's moving-image work Stendhal Syndrome (2024) with the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) and Minneapolis's Walker Art Center, it pulled out in mid 2025 after its modern and contemporary curatorial working committee voted 11-to-9 against it. The move was unexpected, especially as the AGO already had three Goldin works in its collection. (The VAG and Walker Art Center proceeded with the joint acquisition.)
Bregman claims, 'Today the whole of Europe risks turning into one big Venice, a beautiful open-air museum. A great destination for Chinese and American tourists. A place to admire what was once the centre of the world.' This statement encapsulates the concern that Europe is losing its cultural significance.
The exquisite, jewel-encrusted boxes were badly damaged in 2024, after they were among seven treasures stolen from Paris's Musée Cognacq-Jay by a gang of axe-wielding thieves. The perpetrators broke into the temporary exhibition, titled "Luxe de Poche," or "Pocket Luxury," on November 20, making off with goods that were, at the time, reported to be worth more than €1 million.
Stephen Friedman was overdue filing when he went into liquidation on 2 February, closing his London gallery immediately (his New York venue shuttered around the same date). At the time of writing, invoices remain unpaid and artists unable to retrieve works from storage companies. In a statement, Friedman says 'all matters are now subject to the administrator's consideration'.
Due to the lack of viable alternative storage options and in light of the significant financial pressures facing the county council, no suitable alternatives were identified. However, the council admits that the works have not been offered to any of the county's museums or galleries.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote about the "inalienable" rights of man in the US Declaration of Independence 250 years ago, it's possible he lifted the term from the French. And long before it was ever used as an adjective to describe human rights, it defined royal property. To this day, "inalienability" remains a cornerstone of public collections in France-and many other countries-impacting museums and their ability to deaccession, including for purposes of restitution.
The traditional museum experience, pausing in front of an object, and absorbing its history visually or by reading its description, has long shaped how collectors and others relate to cultural treasures. Yet, over the last few decades, digital technology has quietly rewritten many of those rules, changing not only how collections are exhibited but also how they are documented, preserved, and even inherited.
The snippet carries the phrase "Fathers of the Senate!" which is nowhere found in surviving Washington documents. The expression is borrowed from ancient Roman Senate-specifically the Latin patres conscripti , or "Conscript Fathers"-and quite possibly wasn't the patrician tone Washington intended to set for a young republic. It is unknown why or how it was used in this case as the manuscript from which the fragment was cut is long lost.
For some eminently wealthy individuals, amassing a first-class art collection is an ideal way to spend their money. And while some high-profile art collectors end up donating their collections to museums or other cultural institutions, others take a different approach, reselling their art after a certain amount of time. Which brings us to this week, when billionaire David I. Koch's collection of Western art hit the auction block at Christie's, setting a number of records in the process.
An analysis of two paintings in museums in the US and Italy by the 15th-century Flemish artist Jan van Eyck has raised a profound question: what if neither were by Van Eyck? Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata, the name given to near-identical unsigned paintings hanging in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Royal Museums of Turin, represent two of the small number of surviving works by one of western art's greatest masters, revered for his naturalistic portraits and religious subjects.
Dating back multiple centuries, the sculptures had been stolen from Tamil temples and smuggled out of India in the mid-20th century, leaving murky provenance records before the Smithsonian's acquisition. The museum said that one of the three bronzes, "Shiva Nataraja" (Chola dynasty, c. 990 CE), will remain at the NMAA for an ongoing exhibition on a long-term loan agreement, sparking questions about the Indian government's capacity to make decisions on what is technically the religious property of the temple of origin.
