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Berlin Museum Oversees Digital Resurrection of Hundreds of Paintings Destroyed During World War II

Hundreds of paintings lost to the ravages of war—including multiple works by Peter Paul Rubens, Paolo Veronese, Anthony van Dyck, and Caravaggio—will soon be viewable online courtesy of a digitization initiative by Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie. The museum’s formidable collection of Old Master paintings was damaged by two fires around the end of World War II. But as reported by the Art Newspaper , digital renderings made from high-resolution glass negatives from a photo-documentation campaign started in 1925 are bringing the works back to life, in a way. “The losses have long represented a major gap in the visual record and in attribution, provenance and conservation research,” according to TAN . But records by way of the glass negatives—most of them made by the German photographer Gustav Schwarz, as part of an ongoing process related to new acquisitions that continued until 1944—stand to make the works accessible. “They have tremendous documentary value—not only for the museum and the ...
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Magic Anzac Day Rounds of the past 25 years

Above: Trytime for Ories in their one-point Anzac Day win over Pōneke in 2015.  Saturday’s fourth round of the 2026 Swindale Shield will be the fifth time that club rugby has been played on Anzac Day since our records began in 2002 (Anzac Day also fell on a Saturday in 2001 but we don’t have...
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Diego Rivera’s Grandson Donates 150,000 Objects to Major Mexico City Museum

Mexico City’s Museo Anahuacalli is set to receive more than 150,000 objects from Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera, the grandson of Diego Rivera, in a donation that significantly expands the museum’s holdings and renews attention on the artist’s original vision for the site. As first reported by  The Art Newspaper , the gift spans centuries, from 16th-century ceramics to textiles, photographs, wooden objects, prints, and archival material tied to Rivera and his circle. The works will be transferred in stages over the coming months, beginning with ceramics and followed by manuscripts and correspondence, with completion expected by the end of the year.  Coronel Rivera, a photographer and art historian, spent more than four decades assembling the collection. It brings together pre-Hispanic objects, family documents, and works from his own career, though it does not include paintings by Rivera or Frida Kahlo.  Speaking to the Art Newspaper , Coronel Rivera said the collection h...
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Matchday Scoring highlights: Johnsonville (23) v Wellington (3)

Johnsonville beat the Wellington Axemen in frightful conditions at home at Helston Park in their third round Swindale Shield and Mick Kenny Memorial Cup match. Johnsonville scored two first half tries, to first-five Niall Delahunt and to fullback Jacob Walmsley, and then kicked a penalty on halftime to lead 15-3 at the interval. A second...
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James Hayward, West Coast Painter with a Cult Following, Dies at 82

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James Hayward, a West Coast painter whose abstractions earned him a loyal cult following among artists, died on April 16. He was 82, according to a brief obituary posted by his studio over the weekend. Hayward may not be among the most well-known names to emerge from the postwar period, but many artists knew and loved his work. Mike Kelley, for example, once praised him as “one of the few truly important West Coast painters.” His process was marked by a certain eccentricity that differentiated his art from a lot of similar work. From the mid-1970s onward, Hayward largely produced monochrome abstractions. But where many single-color canvases from the era were characterized by the smooth, even application of paint, Hayward purposefully left his materials chunky and thick. Referring to the phrase “monochrome abstraction,” Hayward told Artillery of his work, “People ask what does that mean—you know, lay people? I say, well basically I make one-color paintings of basically nothing.” A...
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‘Same families, same calls’: Police raise concern over repeat harm and youth crime in Māngere-Ōtāhuhu

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Māngere Bridge and surrounding South Auckland neighbourhoods, where police are responding to repeat family harm and youth offending. Photo: aboutmangerebridge Local Democracy Reporting | Free Public Interest News Service By Taelegalolo’u Mary Afemata of Local Democracy Reporting. Police are raising concerns about repeat family harm and youth crime in Māngere and Ōtāhuhu, with officers returning to the same households again and again. Speaking to the Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board, Inspector Mohammed Atiq, Counties Manukau West Area Prevention Manager, said the pattern is clear and hard to break. “It’s usually the same people over and over again, so it’s not new that we go to new places when we go to somebody we’ve actually been there before, they don’t have their own capability or problem-solving skills to sort their problems out and that’s why they get into that situation,” Atiq said. He said many of these cases involve children, which means police cannot simply step back....
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Sideline Conversions 20 April (some rugby news and information to start the week)

The Northern United and Hutt Old Boys Marist teams in action at Porirua Park on Saturday. Photo: Kinetic Images. A wild Saturday saw most matches played in conditions more akin to mid-July than Mid-April, and a handful spanning at least four grades that didn’t go ahead. The most high profile of these was the Paremata-Plimmerton...
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