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Italy Purchases Rare Caravaggio Portrait for $34.7 M.

Italy has purchased a rare Caravaggio portrait for €30 million ($34.7 million), one of the largest sums ever paid by the state for a work of art, according to the country’s culture ministry. The painting, depicting the cleric Monsignor Maffeo Barberini—who would later ascend as Pope Urban VIII—was described as being of “exceptional importance,” Alessandro Giuli, Italy’s culture minister, said in a statement. The portrait had been kept in a private collection in Florence and was first shown publicly in 2004 in Rome. Following its purchase by the Italian state, it was transferred to the permanent collection of the Palazzo Barberini, the historic residence of the Barberini family, where it will be exhibited alongside other works by Caravaggio. The master Baroque artist painted Barberini around 1598. The composition anticipates his eventual rise to power: draped in a resplendent green cleric’s cloak, his right hand is outstretched, casually issuing orders to an unseen figure outside th...
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Chicago, Meet Your New ‘Neighbors’: Expo Gets a New Satellite Fair, In a Luxe Gold Coast Apartment

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Collector Mirka Serrato was walking her dog through Chicago’s affluent Gold Coast neighborhood when she came across Ramiro Verdugo, the groundsman tending to the garden at an imposing neoclassical residence. Both Latin American, they hit it off. She was looking for a place to live, and an apartment was available. She ended up living there very happily for about three years before she moved to Dallas, where she’s closer to her family, in her native Mexico. But she wasn’t ready to let go of the Windy City, not entirely. “Leaving Chicago was not an option,” she told ARTnews in an interview. “Seeing the place empty after all it gave to me was torture.” Serrato has a day job in PR but studied at the Sotheby’s Institute, and she resolved to turn the place into a venue for an art show or event. Then she went looking for the right person to help her. She met Jonny Tanna, founder of London’s Harlesden High Street gallery (the rare such business that has a manifesto ), at a party at the Fonda...
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Collective Climate Action Implemented by Los Angeles Arts Institutions

In part a reaction to the wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles just over one year ago, a number of the city’s most significant arts institutions issued a collective pledge to follow climate-minded guidelines known as the Bizot Green Protocol. Initiated in 2015 by the Bizot Group, a network of art museum directors from institutions around the world, the protocol has been amended and revised in the decade since, as catastrophes attributable to climate change have intensified. Institutions behind the newly issued pledge include the Getty, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the Hammer Museum, and the blue-chip gallery Hauser & Wirth. “This is the first time that Los Angeles art institutions have announced together their commitment to these recommendations, and it is our hope that it will motivate others to commit as well,” Camille Kirk, sustainability director at Getty, said in a press release. A joint statement from the collectiv...
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Iranian Media Reports Damage to Chehel Sotoun, a UNESCO-Listed Palace

Chehel Sotoun, part of a UNESCO World Heritage landmark in the Iranian city of Isfahan, was damaged following airstrikes in the area, according to Iranian state media. The report comes one week after Golestan Palace in Tehran suffered significant damage from aerial bombardment linked to US-Israeli strikes on Iran.  A roughly minute-long video posted to X by Iranian state media appears to show doors blasted open. The grand windows of the 17th-century Chehel Sotoun Palace seem to have shattered. The report noted that the office of Isfahan provincial government, located approximately 100 meters from the palace, was targeted by a strike on March 9. The entire palace complex was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list as part of the Persian Garden in 2011. The serial listing encompasses nine historic gardens across Iran that collectively illustrate the evolution and diversity of the Persian garden tradition.  Chehel Sotoun ...
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Decades in the Making, Institut Restellini’s Amedeo Modigliani Catalogue Raisonné to Release Next Month

After over 40 years in the making, Institut Restellini’s Amedeo Modigliani catalogue raisonné will finally release next month. Pace will host a book launch at its London gallery on April 21, with a day-long symposium to follow on April 30 at Pace’s 540 West 25th Street space in New York. To say the publication is a labor of love for Marc Restellini, Modigliani scholar and founder of the Institut, would be an understatement. At six volumes and over 2,000 pages, with 100 works newly confirmed as authentic, half of which are already in major museum collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the catalogue raisonné seems poised to redefine the field of authentication, or at least Restellini hopes so. “I would like our approach to become the standard,” Restellini told ARTnews . “I hope that with this catalogue people will see what can be achieved. My hope is that after this catalogue, people will say, ‘This is really the...
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Building Canada’s Northern Shield: Aecon Partnership Advances Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar Program

Canada’s effort to modernize its continental defence architecture is taking another step forward. A newly confirmed partnership involving Aecon Group Inc . , Pomerleau , and Stantec has executed an agreement to deliver the first stage of the Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar (A-OTHR) Program in Ontario—an initiative designed to strengthen the early-warning capabilities that protect North America’s northern approaches. Announced in Toronto on March 4, 2026, the agreement with Defence Construction Canada marks a significant milestone in the implementation of one of Canada’s most important defence infrastructure programs. The project forms part of the modernization of the North American Aerospace Defense Command early-warning architecture and the renewal of Canada’s North Warning System . A Collaborative Delivery Model The project will be delivered through a collaborative Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) model designed to bring government and industry partners together in a highly co...
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Sideline Conversions 9 March (some rugby news and information to start the week)

The first weekend of pre-season is under the hood, here’s much of what is happening this coming Saturday. Hutt Old Boys Marist v Pōneke v Napier Pirate (Game of Three Halves), NZCIS Petone v Marist St Pat’s, North Park Tawa v Oriental-Rongotai, Lyndhurst Park Varsity Rams, v Old Boys University Goats, Massey #4 Feilding Yellows...
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