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The Headlines
MAJOR BENIN BRONZE RETURN. The Netherlands is returning 113 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, reports Dutch News. Dutch Minister of Education, Culture, and Science Eppo Bruins approved the decision to return what the government said were objects looted by British soldiers in 1897 from the Kingdom of Benin, located in modern-day Nigeria. On Wednesday Bruins signed an agreement to transfer the Bronzes to Nigeria, following the latter’s official request for their return. The artifacts are of great significance to Nigeria and “represent the single largest return of Benin antiquities directly linked to the 1897 British punitive expedition,” said Olugible Holloway, Director-General of the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments in a statement. Most of the restituted objects concerned have been housed in the World Heritage museum Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam, and this is reportedly the fifth time the Netherlands has restituted artworks taken from communities during the colonial era, following the recommendation of a committee dedicated to the issue.
ART FORGERY WORKSHOP UNCOVERED IN ROME. A workshop producing fake Picassos and Rembrandts, among other artists, has been busted in Rome, where police seized 71 canvases as evidence, reports The Guardian. Rome prosecutors suspect an art restorer may be behind the fakes that were sold online, while forged certificates guaranteeing authenticity” and a host of art supplies were among the “important evidence” found on the site. A few months ago, Italian police also uncovered a pan-European forgery network that produced copies of artworks by Banksy and Andy Warhol, to name a few.
The Digest
Hong Kong’s M+ contemporary art museum and New York’s Museum of Modern Art have formalized an agreement that could soon see them share shows, research, and donor development resources. It marks MoMA’s first collaboration of this type with a major institution in Asia. [ARTnews]
Archie Moore and curator Ellie Buttrose, who represented Australia at the last Venice Biennale and won the Golden Lion for Best National Pavilion, have called for the reinstatement of dropped artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino to the country’s pavilion planned for the 2026 edition of the Venice exhibition. Their “statement in support” of Sabsabi and Dagostino, written to the pavilion organizers Creative Australia, also demanded “transparency on the Board of Creative Australia’s decision-making process.” [ArtReview]
For the first time, the Prado Museum is uniting eight works by El Greco from around the world, which he completed for the Santo Domingo el Antiguo monastery and mark the Spanish Renaissance artist’s first major commission. This includes his monumental painting The Assumption of the Virgin, on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, and last displayed at the Prado over a century ago. [El Pais]
Mexico City’s iconic, hot-pink La Cuadra San Cristóbal compound designed by Mexican architect Luis Barragán will open to the public as a cultural destination in October. It will display works by artists, architects, and designers, melding traditional Mexican architecture with Modernist geometric abstraction. [Artforum]
The California College of the Arts in San Francisco has raised nearly $45 million from numerous sources, announced the school on February 14. “The new donor group was anchored by a substantial matching gift of $22.5 million from the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation,” and together, “will bridge the college into the next fiscal year,” and “address its current deficit,” impacted by years of declining enrollment exacerbated by the pandemic, said the institution in a statement. [Press release]
The 12th edition of the Cape Town Art Fair returns with 124 international exhibitors, including the likes of Goodman Gallery and ArtThrob, from 21 to 23 February, with 30 first-timers. The event billed as “the largest contemporary art fair on the African continent, will overlap with the Stellenbosch Triennale, which opened yesterday, running through April 30. [The Citizen and Stellenbosch Triennale website]
The Kicker
THE NAZI PLUNDERER WHO CONTINUED LONG AFTER WWII. The new, two-part PBS documentary, “Plunderer: The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief,” by Hugo Macgregor uncovers the brazen crimes of Nazi crony, and “ruthless” Paris dealer Bruno Lohse who eluded justice, in Min Chen’s retelling, for Artnet News. Much is known today about the efficient Nazi looting of artworks owned by Jewish families, but the tale of Lohse, appointed in Paris by Nazi military leader Hermann Göring, is particularly shocking for his concealment and profit from stolen artworks long after the war, when he resumed his clandestine art dealing in Munich. Lohse even managed to fool historian Jonathan Petropoulos, who is at the center of the documentary, and spent years investigating Lohse, only to be tricked by him. When Lohse died in 2007, a vault registered under his name was found in a Zurich bank, containing a looted Pissarro painting that he had insisted he knew nothing about, even appearing to send Petropoulos on a wild goose chase through an elaborate sham.
