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Two Republican members of the House of Representatives want to know more about how the Smithsonian Institution evaluates proposed exhibits after a museum display tied US-made munitions to the destruction of civilian’s homes in conflict zones. “The Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency is concerned that the Smithsonian Institution (Smithsonian) does not properly review proposed exhibits in its museums,” says a letter to outgoing Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch III, penned by subcommittee chairman Tim Burchett of Tennessee along with Georgia’s Brian Jack. The move comes in the wake of a July hearing at which Anthea Hartig, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) was grilled by lawmakers, including Burchett, who demanded to know, “Dr. Hartig, are you America first? Do you love America?” Burchett and Jack say that at that hearing, members requested information on the Smithsonian’s content review process but...

The Metropolitan Museum of Art became an unwitting new home for a work by the Los Angeles–based artist David (Sabastian) Miklatski, who snuck a drawing onto one of the institution’s walls and documented its time there for all the world to see. As reported by Hyperallergic , “In a viral Instagram reel, multi-hyphenate artist David (Sabastian) Miklatski detailed the steps of creating and surreptitiously installing a drawing on one of The Met’s gallery walls last Sunday, October 25. The work in question, The MET 2027 , is an oil pastel painting depicting a Met Gala attendee ascending the staircase flanked by shrubs and photojournalists as police in riot gear beat down protestors in a fiery scene in the foreground.” Miklatski’s Instagram reel , set to the soundtrack of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” (aka “Teenage Wasteland”), shows his work at the Met interspersed with starry images from the Met Gala—which the artist describes as “an event where billionaires donat...

It has been a summer of change for Pace Gallery, and its 2024 accounts that were filed 10 months late with Companies House, the British government’s business register, reflect that. The group’s turnover totaled $67.69 million in 2024, a 35.5 percent drop from 2023, which cashed in $104.95 million. A pre-tax loss of $2,429 was recorded for 2024 compared to a $6.8 million profit for 2023. (The mega-gallery’s UK registered company, The Pace Gallery Limited, serves as the umbrella company for its operations in Europe and Asia, excluding Tokyo as well as the US.) “This reflected a continuation of the sector-wide contraction in global and UK art markets as well as a continued reluctance by some clients to buy which became most pronounced in 2024 and continued through 2025 and into 2026,” Pace Gallery said in the filing. “The market conditions led the directors to initiate cost saving measures across the group, but despite these measures, difficult market condit...

Widely respected Connecticut collector Mickey Cartin will offer selections from his collection, begun in 1988, at Christie’s. Upward of 80 objects, estimated to fetch as much as $8 million, will be spread over more than 10 auctions in London, Paris, and New York, from this November until July 2027. In 1971, Cartin began working at Connecticut’s Capitol Light and Supply Company, which had been started by his grandfather in 1918. He ultimately became the company’s president and grew it from a staff of a dozen to a national enterprise employing hundreds. His collection hung in his homes in the Constitution State; Delray Beach, Florida; and a 5,800-square-foot Greenwich Village apartment that is currently on the market for $10 million. Now 78, Cartin ranked on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list from 2007 to 2013. Two of the top-estimated works sketch out a picture of the diversity of his holdings. One is Roman Opałka’s over-six-foot-high painting OPAŁKA 196...

The 2026 College Sport Wellington 7s tournament was held at its usual venue of Naenae College on Labour Day Monday. Conditions were fine but windy, with afternoon gusts sweeping down the ground. The action and results from the knockout and finals matches proved close. In the Open Boys competition, St Pat’s Silverstream and Wellington College...

Solving a mystery that has puzzled experts for centuries, scientists at the University of Sheffield in England have recreated the color-changing properties of the British Museum’s storied 1,600-year-old Lycurgus Cup, which is green in typical lighting but turns red when lit from behind. “To me, it’s magic,” Lisa Hollands, a technician who worked on project, told the Guardian . She added that “people have tried it before with limited success” and called the undertaking a “labor of love.” The Roman cup, which was named one of the seven glass wonders of the world by the organizing committee behind the UN-designated International Year of Glass in 2022, bears a design that alludes to King Lycurgus from the sixth book of Homer’s Iliad . The design celebrates the triumph of Dionysus, the god of wine, over a vine-wrapped Lycurgus. In their attempt to emulate the chameleonic quality of the vessel, the researchers embedded nanoparticles of gold and silver in...