"The estate, known as Villa Aurora, had a price tag of €471 million ($546 million) and could have become the most expensive residential property sold at auction. But instead of a flurry of international bidders, the sale was met with crickets." - Artnet
Italy formed its Carabinieri Art Squad back in 1969, but the US didn't create a dedicated equivalent until 2004. Yet since then, the unit has recovered more than 200,000 items worth more than $900,000, investigating everything from museum thefts to forgeries to money laundering to shipwrecks. - Hyperallergic
The topic of the Nazi role in antiquities looting is increasingly drawing attention, in part through the work of scholars who are peeling back the mysteries of what happened to the objects that were excavated or seized eight decades ago. - The New York Times
In past centuries, it had some notable visitors: Galileo, Goethe, Stendhal, Gogol, Tchaikovsky and Henry James. At the top of the hill stands the 30,000 square foot Villa Aurora. Built in 1570, it's recently undergone some restoration. - NPR
"With the aid of curators and artists from Native American backgrounds, curators across the U.S. are broadening narratives, questioning stereotypes, and collapsing categories." - Artnet
The far-right National Rally party released a 3½-minute video this weekend showing its presidential candidate speechifying to the camera while walking back and forth in front of the Paris museum — whose management is very unhappy at being dragged directly into politics like this. - Artnet
Government officials have tried to grapple with the best course of action for monuments that are symbols of both divisiveness and history, balancing the need to confront America’s past without glorifying it. - The Daily Beast
The shockwave of the series, and later the book, "Ways of Seeing reframed the conversation about how art is interpreted, focusing on the nature of ownership and the language of appreciation as well as the ways in which advertising appropriates the motifs of painting." - The Economist
Why is the BBC protecting Eric Gill's Prospero and Ariel? "Gill’s work ornaments a key national building. What, in his case, justifies continued public display of a piece whose revised but still monumental message is 'made by a famous child abuser'?" - The Guardian (UK)
These arts projects are "collaborative endeavours without a single author. Many include pieces of public art or sculpture, but the 'project' is what happens around them: workshops and other initiatives that prioritise communication and engagement with communities." - The Economist
A collective of anonymous workers called Decolonize SAM is calling for a boycott and demanding the museum stop removing unhoused people from museum property, provide de-escalation training for frontline staff, and other intervention strategies that center around harm-reduction and mutual aid. - Hyperallergic
As one of the six editors who made the decision (the vote was 5-1) put it, "Wikipedia really can't be in the business of deciding what counts as art or not, which is why putting NFTs, art or not, in their own list makes things a lot simpler." - Artnet
The I.M. Pei-designed wing, which contains the museum's collection of Modern and contemporary art, will shut down from the end of February through June in order to replace the 23,000-square-foot skylight in the atrium. - DCist
Clark, who gave up 35 items he bought between 2003 and 2008, is "the latest in a line of people taken in by Douglas A.J. Latchford, a British art dealer who died in 2020 while facing charges of antiquities trafficking." - The New York Times
