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Reframing Rembrandt, one of the Dutch Golden Age’s greats, is no small feat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art seems poised to pull it off, with an exhibition next year that will bring several of the artist’s works to the United States for the first time. “Rembrandt and the Ancients,” organized with the Louvre Museum and opening in New York in November 2027, is billed as the first in-depth museum examination of the artist’s fascination with the art and mythology of Mediterranean antiquity. It will also be the Met’s first major exhibition dedicated to Rembrandt in 20 years and will mark the US debut of at least three paintings: Bathsheba Holding King David’s Letter , Oath of the Batavians , and Woman Bathing in a Stream . The works will join more than 120 paintings, prints, and drawings from more than 40 institutions in what Met CEO and director Max Hollein calls “an unprecedented and powerful ensemble that reveals the depth of Rembrandt’s vision.” The show will be...

On Tuesday, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) returned 22 antiquities to Greece. The cache includes decorated pottery from the 8th through the 4th centuries BCE that had been seized during an illegal antiquities trafficking investigation in and around Tel Aviv in 2020. The ceremony took place at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and was attended by Lina Mendoni, the Greek Minister of Culture; Pninat Yanai, the Israeli Ambassador to Greece; and Amir Ganor, director of the IAA’s Anti Theft Prevention Unit. This handover marks the first time Israel has returned contested items to Greece. In a social media post , the IAA states that the 2020 seizure involved raids of an unnamed gallery, warehouses, and apartments which uncovered “thousands of archaeological items from Israel and around the world.” The investigation was prompted by suspicion of looting at ancient sites in the Mediterranean. The IAA does not clarify why it took Israel six years ...

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance , the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday. It’s fun to celebrity watch the entrance to Frieze London in Regent’s Park before the fair begins. As the floodgates opened for the VIP preview on Wednesday, Oscar-nominated actor Andrew Garfield and his girlfriend, actress Monica Barbaro , strolled in. Also present were Tilda Swinton , Bianca Jagger , London-based designer Dilara Findikoglu , and Raf Simons , Prada’s Belgium-based co-creative director and a longtime art collector. “I like everything about London,” Simons told ARTnews , “especially its people.” The night before, amid the horde at the opening of Thaddaeus Ropac ’s Georg Baselitz show, actor Damian Lewis was sizing up the big canvases. A couple of blocks down, you could find Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist casting his discerning eye at a Turner-ins...

Pope Leo XIV addressed a group of directors of globally renowned museums on Saturday at the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican, underlining the Catholic Church’s “special affinity with the arts.” The pontiff spoke to members of the Bizot group, also known as the International Group of Organizers of Major Exhibitions, whose member institutions include the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Singapore, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the British Museum in London, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, among other world-class institutions. Founded in 1992, the group takes its name from Irène Bizot, former director of France’s Réunion des Musées Nationaux, who was instrumental in its establishment. Rijksmuseum director Taco Dibbits is its current president. The organization’s members met in Rome and Vatican City, including at the Vatican Museums, for a meeting devoted to the theme of...

Getty Images, a massive image licensing company with hundreds of millions of assets in its library, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to The Hollywood Reporter , the company plans to undergo a restructuring process and emerge as a private company, with support from billionaire Charles Koch’s investment firm, by the end of the year. ( ARTnews and THR are both owned by Penske Media Corporation, which has had an exclusive global media partnership with Getty Images since the fall of 2022.) The bankruptcy announcement on Monday follows a failed $3.7 billion merger between Getty Images and Shutterstock, a rival photo and video licensing marketplace, announced in January 2025. The goal at the time was to “combine in a merger of equals transaction, creating a premier visual content company.” The new company would be called Getty Images Holdings, Inc.; Getty Images’s chief executive Craig Peters would stay on as CEO of the new entity. Instead, a y...

Best & Fairest starting halfback Esi Komaisavai celebrates a try for Paremata-Plimmerton against Johnsonville in early June. Photo: Stewart Baird Photography. By Scott MacLean, of the WRRA A big part of our end of season pieces is to name teams based on the Men’s Billy Wallace and Women’s Erin Rush Best & Fairest standings, which...