News

26 August 2026

Europol Warns of Increasingly Violent Museum Thefts

The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) today issued a so-called spotlight report revealing concerning trends in museum crimes across the continent. The report, whose contents are summarized at intelligence and regulatory tracking platform Insight EU Monitoring, comes on the heels of last October's high-profile broad-daylight jewel theft at the Louvre in Paris as well as a spate of other break-ins around Europe. ... read more (external link)

26 August 2026

Two Convicted in Hamburg Court of Selling Looted Egyptian Antiquities

Two people were convicted in a Hamburg court on Monday of money laundering in a case whose details closely match those of the two children of Serop Simonian, the German art dealer and alleged leader of an Egyptian antiquities trafficking ring that sold items to museums including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The conviction was reported by Arab News, which did not mention the names of the convicted parties or the French museum in the United Arab Emirates. ... read more (external link)

26 August 2026

Fakes Proliferate as South Asian Art Market Booms, Dealers Warn

South Asian modern art is having a very good run. Auction sales topped $100 million last year, records have tumbled, and Christie's and Sotheby's have both made a show of the category in London this summer. ... read more (external link)

26 August 2026

The Other Anguissolas: Four Forgotten Renaissance Women Painters Take the Spotlight

There can be no doubt that Sofonisba Anguissola was a star of the Renaissance era. The Italian painter lived just shy of a century, and in that time won the admiration of Michelangelo, who offered mentorship in her early twenties, and a young Anthony van Dyck, who painted her in her late nineties. A celebrated member of the Spanish court, Sofonisba gained international renown for portraits that broke with stuffy formality in favor of a more tender vivacity. Her legacy was secured when Giorgio Vasari praised her talents as a miracle in his Lives of the Artists, one of art history's foundational texts. ... read more (external link)

19 August 2026

The Luxury Industry is Contracting - So Why Are Auction Houses'Luxury Sales Booming?

If you've been following ARTnews reporting on the luxury market over the last year, you'll know that luxury sales at the major auction houses are booming. At Christie's, such sales jumped 30 percent year on year in the first half of 2025, to $468 million, before climbing a further 15 percent, to $539 million, in the first half of this year. Over at Sotheby's, luxury is even bigger: sales hit a record $2.7 billion in 2025, up 22 percent year on year and accounting for roughly 39 percent of the house's $7 billion in total sales. That compares with $2.2 billion in luxury sales in 2024 and more than $2 billion in each of the previous two years. ... read more (external link)

19 August 2026

A Picasso Stolen 65 Years Ago Has Resurfaced. The Guggenheim Wants It Back

A Pablo Picasso painting stolen while on loan from the Guggenheim Museum more than six decades ago has resurfaced, and the museum has gone to court to get it back. ... read more (external link)

19 August 2026

Renaissance Masterpieces Stolen from Sicilian Museum During National Holiday

Thieves have dealt a Sicilian museum a harrowing loss, stealing three of the five surviving devotional panels painted by Renaissance master Antonello da Messina. The assailants broke into the Regional Museum of Messina, also known as MuMem, on Saturday evening, as the port city celebrated the Ferragosto national holiday. Evading the museum's security system, they took three wood panels that once composed a six-piece altarpiece known as the Polittico di San Gregorio, a seminal work within da Messina's oeuvre and art history. A fourth, smaller work, depicting the Virgin and Child attended by a Franciscan monk on one side and Christ on the other, was also taken. ... read more (external link)

19 August 2026

Rare 300-Year-Old Book by Forgotten Dutch Master Resurfaces

The Van Eeghen family, which has owned and preserved the so-called Van Eeghen Drawing Book for over three centuries, has donated this remarkably intact relic to the Amsterdam institution to honor the late C.P. van Eeghen, who traced it to Uylenburgh and his workshop in 2013. Museum director Taco Dibbits, in press materials, called Uylenburgh fascinating artist of whom very little work has survived. ... read more (external link)

05 August 2026

A Colossal Ancient Marble Statue Emerges at a UNESCO Site in Turkey

A seven-foot-tall marble statue from the 5th century BCE has emerged from under what used to be a Roman roadway in the ancient city of Sardis, in western Turkey, reports Heritage Daily. A UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Salihli district of Manisa Province, the city served at the time as the capital of the western satrapy of the Achaemenid Persian empire and of the kingdom of Lydia. ... read more (external link)

05 August 2026

Forgotten Chagall Reemerges After 20 Years in Customs

The etching, L'Acrobate Au Violon (1924), arrived in 2005 at the roadside border as one of a truckload of artworks bound for Switzerland. French officials found two of the works, the Chagall and a 1959 drawing by Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine were not authorized to leave the country, customs authorities said. They arrested the two Swiss nationals transporting the art, charging them with hiding cultural goods, according to the London Times. ... read more (external link)

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