The new, 360-foot-high museum is currently under construction and will be located in the Royal Arts Complex in King Salman Park. The building’s design is by Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill.

The Saudi Museums Commission announced the appointment of Fischer in a press release on July 11, calling the flagship museum “a pivotal moment in Saudi Arabia’s cultural renaissance” and part of the commission’s commitment to establishing state-of-the art institutions.

Fischer’s appointment and the new museum are part of several initiatives aimed at expanding its arts and culture sector while shifting the country’s reliance on oil. In addition to the $10 billion King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) development in central Riyadh, Saudi cultural initiatives include the city-wide art festival Noor Riyadh and the Diriyah Biennale, the most recent of which opened in February. The city has also been chosen for World Expo 2030 and the FIFA World Cup in 2034.

Fischer stepped down as director of the British Museum last August after the institution announced that more than 1,500 items from its collections were lost, stolen, or damaged. Fischer was initially expected to depart earlier this year. However, whistleblower Ittai Gradel said that he had alerted Fischer and other senior museum officials about the thefts in 2021. While Fischer initially claimed that he took Gradel’s allegations “seriously”, he later withdrew them and said he held responsibility as director for the British Museum failing to “respond as comprehensively as it should have”.

The 18-foot-tall bronze monument to women and justice was beheaded in the early morning on July 8 while the campus was experiencing harsh weather and power outages due to Hurricane Beryl.

Footage of the vandalism was obtained by campus police, according to the New York Times, which first reported the news.

“We were disappointed to learn the statue was damaged early Monday morning as Hurricane Beryl was hitting Houston,” Kevin Quinn, the university’s executive director of media relations, said in an email to ARTnews. “The damage is believed to be intentional. The University of Houston Police Department is currently investigating the matter.”

The female figure, whose braided hair forms a pair of horns, wears a lacy collar in allusion to similar ones worn by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Supreme Court justice.

The sculpture was installed in a plaza at the University of Houston after five months of display to critical acclaim at Madison Square Park in New York City. But when it traveled to Houston, it drew criticism from the anti-abortion Christian group Texas Right to Life, which called for a campus-wide protest “to keep the Satanic abortion idol out of Texas.” The University of Houston responded by cancelling a planned opening and artist talk, as well as choosing not to show an accompanying video work also by Sikander.

It’s worth noting that Sikander’s artist statement about the work contains no mention of Satanism. “The rams’ horns are universal symbols of strength and wisdom,” Sikander told Art in America earlier this year. “There is nothing Satanic about them.”

“The calls to remove this proud symbol of female autonomy unintentionally underscored the reason Sikander had created it in the first place,” Eleanor Heartney wrote in that profile of Sikander.

Sikander described the vandalism of Witness as “a very violent act of hate” and told the New York Times that it should be investigated as a crime.

In a written statement to ARTnews, Sikander said it was “important to point out the cowardice behind the violent act, trying to cloak the narrative to the storm. I urge the University of Houston to release the footage from the security camera to show that it was intentional hateful vandalism.”

In addition to exhibitions at museums around the world, Sikander has been the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant. A survey of her work is being held as a collateral event in tandem with this year’s Venice Biennale.

Quinn initially told ARTnews that conservators have been called in to advise on the necessary repairs to Witness, and that the university had been in contact with Sikander about repairing the artwork “as quickly as possible.”

But Sikander has other plans. “I don’t want to ‘repair’ or conceal,” Sikander told the New York Times. “I want to ‘expose,’ leave it damaged. Make a new piece, and many more.”

On July 11, Quinn confirmed to ARTnews that the artist had requested the sculpture be left beheaded. “We respect the artist’s wishes and will leave the sculpture as is,” he said in an email statement.

Update, July 10, 2024: Addition of written statement from Sikander.

Update, July 11, 2024: Addition of written statement from Quinn on Sikander’s request.

The decorated guns are inlaid with gold and silver, as well as engraved images of Napoleon, and carried an estimate from the Osenat auction house of €1.2 million to €1.5 million. The auction took place on July 7 in the city of Fontainbleau, south of Paris.

According to auction house president Jean-Pierre Osenat, the weapons were nearly used to end the French ruler’s life in 1814 after his army was defeated by foreign forces.

“After the defeat of the French campaign, he was totally depressed and wanted to commit suicide with these weapons but his grand squire removed the powder,” Osenat told AFP, which first reported the sale.

As that failed suicide, Napoleon ingested poison but survived that attempt after vomiting. The French emperor later gave the two pistols to his squire General Armand de Caulaincourt, whose descendants consigned them to the auction house.

Other sales of Napoleon memorabilia that have garnered seven-figures include one of the famous “bicorne” hats, which sold for $2.1 million at another Osenat auction in November. Its original estimate was $650,000 to $870,000.

The French Ministry of Culture announced it designation of the two pistols as national treasures on July 6, shortly before the auction took place.

The designation and issuance of the export ban certificate meant the beginning of a 30-month period where the French government can make an offer to purchase the two pistols from their unidentified new owner, who also has the right to refuse.

Any cultural property deemed a national treasure, regardless of its value or age, can only leave France on a temporary basis.

“Being classified as a national treasure gives an incredible value to the object,” a representative of the Osenat auction house told the AFP, asking not to be named.

SPK is the largest cultural employer in Germany, with approximately 2,000 employees and 4.7 million objects across 15 museums in Berlin, as well as libraries, research institutes, and archive facilities. Current president Hermann Parzinger will retire at the end of next May after 17 years in the position.

Ackermann, who is currently director general of the Dresden State Museums, will be managing a “major overhaul” of the state-funded organization after a two-year, 278-page study published in 2020 said that the SPK was “too large to function effectively.”

She was unanimously chosen by a search committee that included Germany’s culture minister, Claudia Roth, and will officially start in the position on June 1 next year. She had also served on the foundation’s advisory board for several years.

In a press statement released by the organization, Roth called Ackermann “an excellent museum manager, art expert and strategist who is well connected both nationally and internationally.”

“One of the important factors in her appointment was her proven track record in successfully shaping transformation processes,” Roth said. “I am sure that she will bring the comprehensive reform of the SPK to an excellent conclusion and take the foundation into a sustainable and successful future with extraordinary expertise, new ideas and much energy.”

Ackermann’s previous work experience includes taking over the management of the Stuttgart Art Museum in 2003 at the age of 38, making her the youngest director of a major museum in the country at that time. In 2009, Ackermann became the director of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf. In 2016, she was appointed the general director of the Dresden State Museums. Dresden State Museums, whose 15 institutions receive more than 2 million visitors annually.

In addition to working as a curator and museum director, Ackermann was co-chair of the Bizot Group until 2023 and also served on the executive board of the Goethe Institute until earlier this year. Ackermann is also jury chairman of the Kaiserring Goslar art prize for international artists in modern and contemporary art.

The SPK was first established in 1957 to oversee the world-class art collections in West Berlin. After the Berlin Wall separating East and West Germany fell in 1989, the organization’s focus has been combining the collections and overseeing major projects, such as the multi-decade renovation of the Pergamonmuseum.

The independent report released in 2020 prompted the directors of individual museums in Berlin to write an open letter criticizing the SPK for its bureaucracy, hierarchy, lack of funding, and ability to make decisions and as hindering their ability to give “a quick response to topical questions and desires of the public.” The report also identified several staffing shortages in multiple departments.

In April, the SPK announced that several of its museums would close on Mondays and Tuesdays to help save money in response to ongoing funding issues and growing operating expenses.

The artists hail from 28 countries and according to organizers, approximately 25 percent of the works featured will have never been exhibited before.

The artists include Algerian-French installation artist Adel Abdessemed, Italian ceramicist and visual artist Chiara Camoni, Singaporean time-based media artist Priyageetha Dia, French-American multi-media artist Camille Henrot, South Korean sculpture designer Choi Jeong Hwa, Brooklyn-based artist Chitra Ganesh, Japanese multidisciplinary artist Aki Inomata, Scandinavian sculptural artist duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, Hong Kong-based conceptual artist Isaac Chong Wai, and New Zealand video artist Lisa Reihana. Also included will be works by French-American sculptor Louise Bourgeois, German artist Joseph Beuys and Guerreiro do Divino Amor, who represented Switzerland at the most recent Venice Biennale.

The theme of the 4th edition is “Nurture Gaia”, showcasing artworks exploring femininity and ecology and the event will take place across nine venues across Thailand’s capital city. The theme was announced last October.

This year’s venues include local museums, galleries, a shopping mall as well as three ancient heritage sites: Temple of Dawn (Wat Arun), Temple of the Reclining Buddha (Wat Pho), and Temple of Iron Fences (Wat Prayoon).

The program for the show includes performances and symposiums, including a performance piece by Kira O’Reilly; a theatrical piece about the deaf community by Amanda Coogan; as well as sculptures by Choi Jeong Hwa on display at several venues.

The Bangkok Art Biennale started in 2018. Its curatorial team is led by chief executive and artistic director Apinan Poshyananda.

Bank of America Private Bank managing director Joshua Greenberg said that while there has been a “massive depreciation” in the yen over the last three or four years, the weak currency could specifically play a role in sales of moderately priced art, which he defined as work valued at between $100,000 and $250,000.

“Collectors are coming from the US and Europe to get exposure to that art,” he said. “We think that the value of their currency relative to the yen at this fair could have a modest impact.”

Given the location of Tokyo Gendai, Bank of America Private Bank senior vice president and head of art sales Drew Watson said he didn’t know of many Americans attending the fair this year, likely because of its geographic location. But, he said, the weak currency would only be a positive for foreign buyers. “People feel like they have more money or more purchasing power, making them more likely to make large, discretionary purchases on assets like art,” Watson told ARTnews. “I think that that component can’t really can’t be ignored.”

One way dealers are hoping to lure Americans is by pricing art in US dollars, not in yen. Ceysson & Bénétière director Maelle Ebelle told ARTnews that the gallery’s solo presentation of South Korean artist Nam Tchun-Mo would be priced in US dollars. It’s also worth noting the three top-selling blue-chip Japanese artists—Yoshitomo Nara, Yayoi Kusama, and Takashi Murakami—are also represented by the major galleries Pace, David Zwirner, and Perrotin, who price their wares in US dollars.

Ebelle said it was a “sensitive time” for the international market, noting the latest Art Basel UBS report, as well as the national elections in the United States and France. “Our strategy is to keep moving forward internationally and keep up with defending and presenting our artists in the world,” she wrote in an email to ARTnews.

Art adviser and art dealer Arushi Kapoor said that currency fluctuations definitely affect the buying and selling decisions of her clients. “Ten cents makes a huge difference, especially for works over $1 million,” she told ARTnews.

A recent notable example was the sale of Alberto Giacometti’s Femme Leoni (1958), highlighted by former Philips chairman David C. Norman in a post on Instagram. Femme Leoni sold at Christie’s this May for $22.2 million, $3.3 million less than when it sold at Sotheby’s in October 2020 for $25.9 million. Artnet reported the consigner of Femme Leoni was Yusaku Maezawa. If it was indeed a Japanese collector like him who consigned the work, they might have made money in the process.

In October 2020, $1 was equal to 105 yen. Right now, $1 is equal to 161 yen. This means that, even though the sale resulted in a drop in value, the Giacometti work’s value has climbed by nearly 800 million yen, if the seller was indeed Maezawa.

Kapoor strongly recommended that collectors looking to similarly take advantage of currency fluctuations time them correctly and speak with a banker first. “It take about two weeks for a payment to go out,” she said.

Ultimately, collectors with the largest means will continue to acquire new works despite currency in fluctuations or geopolitical events. “Art collectors are always going to just buy art,” Art adviser Dane Jensen told ARTnews. “There’s still a lot of money at the top—it’s just about whether they feel like spending it.”

“The money has to come from somewhere,” Mark Jones, who served as interim director last year, told the Sunday Times on June 30.

Jones told the Sunday Times that while museums should remain free of charge for British taxpayers and foreign visitors under 25, visitors from abroad should pay a general admission fee to institutions such as the British Museum and the Natural History Museum.

“The British put a very high value on free entry to museums—that is our tradition,” he said. “People who support museums as taxpayers shouldn’t also have to pay to visit them.”

Jones said the admission price of “around £20” would also reduce crowds at exhibits and the length of time for visitors waiting to enter.

“The museum is too busy for people to experience it as they should; fighting your way through the crowds doesn’t put you in the best state of mind to look at the collections,” Jones told The Sunday Times.

The former head of the Victoria and Albert Museum also said the additional revenue could improve staff pay and lower the price of tickets for special exhibitions.

Last December, the British Museum announced a controversial, £50 million ($63.3 million) 10-year-sponsorship deal with BP that would help fund the refurbishment and redisplay of the museum’s permanent collection. The total cost of the “extensive refurbishment” for the London museum is between £400 and £500 million, according to the Independent.

Jones was appointed to the interim director position at the British Museum in September after the institution admitted that more than 1,500 items from its collections had been lost, stolen, or damaged, prompting director Hartwig Fischer’s resignation last August. Jones left the position this month following the permanent appointment of Nicholas Cullinan in March.

In Jones’s interview with the Sunday Times, he also said the institution should share the long-disputed Parthenon Marbles with Greece.

“If we were ever to find a way to create a partnership with the Greeks over the Parthenon Marbles, we would need to find a way to fund it,” said Jones.

German Historical Museum president Raphael Gross authored the 165-page report and presented it on June 28 in Zurich. After critics accused the foundation of “white-washing” the provenance of items, the canton and city of Zurich, as well as the trustees of the Swiss art museum Kunsthaus commissioned the report.

The foundation’s namesake, Emil Georg Bührle, built his fortune selling weapons to Nazi Germany, as well as from forced labor in Nazi concentration camps and “welfare” Swiss institutions where women were forced to work. Bührle was also known to have purchased art looted by Nazi soldiers.

Gross’s research team investigated five works and found the stories of numerous Jewish collectors behind them were “hardly mentioned” in the provenance research of the Bührle Foundation, and “crucial milestones are overlooked.”

The five works were Vincent van Gogh’s Head of a Peasant Woman (1885), Willem Kalf’s Nautilus cup (ca. 1660), a Paul Cezanne landscape from around 1879, Paul Gauguin’s The Street (1848), and Cézanne’s Madame Cézanne with a Fan (1879/1988).

“Without the Jewish collectors, the Bührle Collection would be a different one,” Gross said. “Or to put it another way: without persecution, the Bührle Collection would never have come into being.”

The report strongly recommended further provenance research and for the Kunsthaus to set up a committee of professionals to determine how to handle items in the collection lost or confiscated due to Nazi persecution.

Gross’s report also questioned whether the Swiss art museum should continue to explicitly name the collection after the German weapons manufacturer, which “dignifies his name and thus his entire collection” well as well as obscures “the fate of the Jewish previous owners persecuted by Nazism.”

“The question arises as to whether a public institution can resolve this with its moral and ethical stance,” Gross said.

According to the Art Newspaper, Bührle’s sale of anti-aircraft cannons to both the Allies and Nazi Germany was so successful, he became the richest man in Switzerland during WWII. In 2012 Bührle’s namesake foundation agreed to loan 205 works to Kunsthaus Zurich. These works were exhibited in a new $210 million building extension in 2021, sparking criticism. Artist Miriam Cahn also announced she would pull her works from the institution in response to the exhibition of the Bührle collection.

As a result of the controversy, Gross was commissioned to compile a report by the city and canton of Zurich and the Kunsthaus trustees in May. Out of the 205 items in the Bührle collection, Gross identified 62 as having previously belonged to Jewish owners during the Holocaust but had mostly been classified by the Bührle Foundation as “unproblematic” or having “no indication of problematic connections.” “Works with particularly incomplete provenance were classified as unproblematic,” the report said.

A press statement from the city and canton of Zurich and the Zurich Art Society said they expect to comment on the initial conclusions and announce next steps by mid-July. They also thanked Gross and his team of experts “for their comprehensive and very valuable work.”

In response to Gross’s report, the foundation’s board told the Art Newspaper it “will examine the report and comment on it in due course.”

On June 14, the E.G. Bührle Collection Foundation announced it was seeking “fair and just” solutions with the legal successors of the former owners of six works in its collection that were on display at the Kunsthaus Zurich. As a result, five of the paintings were removed from the Swiss museum on June 20.

The museum’s board of trustees reassessed the provenance of the six works following the publication of the new “Best Practices” for dealing with Nazi-looted art published by the US State Department in March 2024.

The “Best Practices” expanded on the Washington Principles on which representatives of 44 nations and 13 nongovernmental organizations agreed on December 3, 1998, after three days of meetings at the State Department’s Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets.

The works in question were Gustave Courbet’s Portrait of the Sculptor Louis-Joseph (1863), an 1895 painting by Claude Monet of his garden in Giverny, van Gogh’s The Old Tower (1884), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s 1891 portrait of Georges-Henri Manuel, and Paul Gauguin’s 1884 La route montante.

News of the reassessment was first reported by the Art Newspaper.

The rich and famous star of Keeping Up with the Kardashians has been in the city of Paris for the past week. In addition to visiting the Louvre, she rode a horse in a Vogue World show and walked around with her boyfriend, Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny.

The photos uploaded to Instagram on June 26 show Jenner standing in front of Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana (1563), the museum’s largest painting; Antonio Canova’s sculpture Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss (1787); a closeup of the painted ceiling of the Galerie d’Apollon; a wide shot of the Greek sculptures and Roman copies in the the Salle des Cariatides; Jenner standing barefoot in front of the Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, which is now enclosed in additional plexiglass; and the iconic marble sculpture Venus de Milo from the 2nd century BCE.

Other celebrities have previously gained special access to the Louvre. The museum worked with Beyoncé for an album launch in 2018, when she and her husband Jay-Z released a video for the song “Apeshit“ to promote the couple’s collaborative album Everything Is Love. Much of the music video was filmed at the institution; the video included dramatic shots of numerous masterpieces from the collection. The museum’s website still features a self-guided tour of the highlights from the “Apeshit” video.

ARTnews has reached out the Louvre for official comment on Jenner’s visit, confirmation of when it took place, and its official policy on visitors wearing shoes.

The moves were announced late last week by Valparaiso University as part of an “administrative restructuring” meant to address the school’s declining enrollment and growing operations deficit, which is currently $9 million.

The university drew criticism last year after announcing it would sell three of the museum’s most valuable paintings worth more than $20 million in order to fund renovations of freshman dormitories.

One of the works the university wants to sell, Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting Rust Red Hills (1930), was the second work the Brauer ever acquired. The university said it was worth about $15 million, making it the most valuable of the three pieces. Frederic Edwin Church’s Mountain Landscape was valued at $2 million, and Childe Hassam’s Silver Vale and the Golden Gate was valued at $3.5 million.

News of the proposed sale prompted condemnation from the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors A suit was filed against Valparaiso University to delay the sale, with former museum director Richard Brauer and former VU law professor Philipp Brockington arguing that the plan violated the terms of the original gift agreement between the academic institution and Percy H. Sloan. Sloan donated the Church artwork and established the acquisition fund used to buy the works by Hassam and O’Keeffe in the 1960s.

Valparaiso University wrote in a court petition that the three artworks have become too valuable for it to keep safe, citing climate protests that involved the Mona Lisa earlier this year. The university estimated that security upgrades would cost between $50,000 to $100,000 and said that the professional guards, not students, would add $150,000 to the art museum’s annual staffing expenses. The university also argued that storage fees for the paintings were wasteful due the school’s current financial status.

The museum’s closure was a surprise to the local community after the opening of “America the Beautiful,” a summer exhibition of Impressionist paintings from the Brauer’s permanent collection, according to Art Daily, which first reported the news.

In addition to the closure of the Brauer Museum, Valparaiso University is also considering the closure of up to 30 academic programs, including German, theology, philosophy, and music performance.