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Museum Wiesbaden Will Be Germany’s First Institution to Return Colonial-Era Human Remains to Indonesia

The Museum Wiesbaden will return 10 human skulls to Indonesia in a formal ceremony on November 10. The Hessen Wissenschaft, the state culture ministry, said it will be the first German museum to return human remains from the Dutch colonial era to the country, reports Monopol . Out of respect for the deceased individuals, the remains will be covered with a cloth during the ceremony. Located in the state of Hesse and about an hour west of Frankfurt, the Museum Wiesbaden’s founding collection dates to the late 18th century and early 19th century, when it was assembled by father-son collectors Johann Christian Gerning and Johann Isaac Freiherr von Gerning. It ranged from paintings and drawings to books and maps to insects and coins. At the suggestion by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the younger Gerning donated his holdings to the Duchy of Nassau; they were subsequently split up into three museums and then transferred to the city of Wiesbaden in 1900. Since 1973...
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Nearly Everyone Is Concerned About How Museums Use AI in Exhibitions, Survey Says

A new survey suggests that the broad majority of US museum visitors are worried about how AI is used in the production of exhibitions and marketing materials, mirroring an anxiety about AI that proliferates widely today. The American Alliance of Museums’ 2026 survey showed that just 9 percent of respondents accepted the use of AI in museum shows. Nineteen percent were unbothered by the notion that AI could used for brainstorming but not exhibition texts, meanwhile, and 29 percent said they felt no reservations about the usage of AI to write emails sent by museum officials. Forty-three percent of respondents said they expected humans to “develop all content from museums, including exhibitions, emails…everything.” AI is not yet widely used to produce exhibitions. But a New York Times report from this past weekend revealed that a handful of forthcoming shows will incorporate it, though not always in the form of wall texts. For one, the Smithsonian’s...
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Michelangelo’s Secret to Vibrant Colors of the Sistine Chapel Revealed, Sydney’s New Powerhouse Museum to Open Amid Controversy, and More: Morning Links for November 4, 2026

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter. Good Morning! Researchers believe they’ve uncovered the secret to Michelangelo’s intense colors in the Sistine Chapel fresco The Last Judgement. Powerhouse, Sydney’s new $641 million arts, design, science and technology museum, is opening on November 7, but controversy continues to rock the institution. Despite the Democratic blue wave sweeping Congress, beleaguered President Donald Trump still can’t get the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as blue as he continues to promise, with reporters spotting new areas of discoloration and cracks. The Headlines STROKES OF GENIUS . Researchers believe they’ve uncovered the secret to Michelangelo ‘s intense colors in The Last Judgement fresco in the Sistine Chapel , reports The Times of London . A recent cleaning and close inspection revealed he made his own paintbru...
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Former High Museum COO Sentenced to One Year in Prison for Siphoning $600,000 to Buy Guitars

A federal judge sentenced the former chief operating officer of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta to one year in prison and one year of supervised release for stealing more than $600,000 from the museum. Brady Lum, 60, served as the High Museum’s COO from January 2019 until December 2025, when he resigned. He began siphoning money from the museum in September 2019, around nine months into the job, until November 2025, when it was discovered. Lum’s theft involved the purchase of “non-business items and services for himself, including expensive guitars and other music equipment, personal music lessons, and woodworking equipment, through direct supplier invoicing and the High Museum’s corporate credit card reimbursement process,” according to a press release from the Office of US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, which prosecuted the case. The release adds that Lum concealed the theft by “submitting altered invoices, using his position to ...
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Dia Art Foundation Teams Up with MCA Australia on Two-Part Exhibition for Indigenous Artist d harding

New York’s Dia Art Foundation will co-present a two-part exhibition of work by the Indigenous Australian artist d harding to be split between Dia Chelsea and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney. The New York component will open in February, with the other part slated for March; both will run into August of next year. “A through line in harding’s practice is the concept of transfer—a consideration of how histories are carried through materials, techniques, and places, transporting ancestral knowledge into dialogue with the spaces in which their work is encountered,” Dia curator Jordan Carter said in a statement. “Presented in parallel at two institutions, bridging Australia and the U.S., this two-part exhibition reveals the iterative logic, conceptual depth, and cultural resonance of harding’s practice.” For the Dia show, harding has drawn inspiration from a number of site visits to the foundation’s storied Land art holdings in the American ...
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Miquel Navarro, Sculptor of Large-Scale, Pared-Down Cities and Valencia’s Beloved ‘Pink Panther,’ Dies at 81

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Miquel Navarro, a sculptor known for his pared-down installation of cities that reflected on the promises of modernity in the latter-half of the 20th century, died on Sunday at 81 in Mislata, Spain, after a long illness, reports El País . Navarro’s hometown of Mislata, just outside València, served as a never-ending source of inspiration for him throughout his career. “The city that inspired part of his imagery was also where he lived, worked, and developed much of his creative process. From his studio in the Morería neighborhood, the artist built a universal career without ever relinquishing his connection to the land where he grew up,” the Mislata City Council said in a statement announcing his death. Part of a generation of Spanish artists who came to prominence in the 1980s, Navarro would make his first “City” sculpture in 1973, two years before the Franco regime ended. “In the fifties, I would approach the city on a tram, and the encounter with it w...
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Remembering Dolores Huerta: Artists Barbara Carrasco, Judith F. Baca, Yreina D. Cervántez, and Vincent Valdez Reflect on the Iconic Activist’s Legacy

“It’s hard to believe this amazing icon is gone from our world,” artist Judith F. Baca said of Dolores Huerta, the labor activist who died last week at 96. A cofounder of the United Farm Workers of America, Huerta is best-known for her decades-long dedication to fighting for the labor rights of farmworkers in the fields of California and more broadly for helping to galvanize the Chicano civil rights movement. She recruited members to the union’s cause, led strikes and ensured that companies felt the impact of the absence of the farmworkers whom they exploited, and negotiated the contracts that provided material change to the lives and working conditions for campesinos and campesinas . “She turned the phrase ‘Sí, se puede!’ into a chant that animated rallies and marches well into a new century,” as the Los Angeles Times put it . “She was always conscious of having women be at the table,” artist Barbara Carrasco told ARTnews , noting that as a UFW negoti...
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