“The displays are inspired by an annually updated exhibition called Russia – My History, which was launched in 2013 by Tikhon Shevkunov, a Russian Orthodox bishop who is reportedly close to President Putin. … The presentation is meant to encourage patriotism by offering positive interpretations of Russian and Soviet history. Ivan the Terrible’s bad reputation is presented as a product of Western fake news, for example, and Stalin is credited with restoring the Russian empire.”

“A painted wooden crucifix by Michelangelo Buonarrotti has returned to its original home, the Basilica of Santa Maria del Santo Spirito in Florence, after a fresh restoration and a year on the road. Carved by the artist when he was 18 or so, it’s one of his earliest extant works.”

For one thing, the entire metaphor has changed: “What began as an organic black form spreading across the landscape of the Miracle Mile, in homage to the color and texture of the La Brea Tar Pits adjacent to the museum, has become a less fluid, harder-edged and more muscular form in sand-colored concrete.”

The Work “will not go where historical Native American art is often found, in the galleries for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. They will go instead in the American Wing, among paintings and sculpture by Gilbert Stuart, John Singer Sargent, Frederic Remington and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, ‘to display art from the first Americans within its appropriate geographical context,’ as the museum says.”

“A particularly destructive species, Monopis sp., also known as the pale-backed clothes moth, has recently been discovered for the first time by English Heritage, which is now enlisting the help of the public to map the spread and intensity of a menace that only a few decades ago seemed as relevant a historical plague as the Black Death. Anyone with a precious cashmere sweater now resembling a piece of lace will sympathise.”