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The British Museum was briefly evacuated Saturday after staff discovered what was described as a “suspicious device” inside a restroom, prompting a police response at one of the world’s most visited museums. The Metropolitan Police were called to the museum’s Bloomsbury headquarters around 2:50 p.m. local time after reports of a suspicious package, according to  The Independent .  Officers investigated the object and later determined it posed no threat. Visitors were allowed back into the museum shortly after 4 p.m. and normal operations resumed. In a statement, the museum said it had also received what it described as “malicious communications” before the evacuation. “The safety and security of our visitors, colleagues and volunteers is always our highest priority,” a museum spokesperson told  The Independent , thanking visitors and staff for their cooperation during the evacuation. The museum decli...

Jordan Soli dives over to score a first half try for Ories against Poneke on Saturday. He is the clear-cut leading points scorer in the Swindale Shield – more below. Photo: Andy McArthur.  Welcome to a new week and new month of rugby. There is a whole lot going on over the next few weeks...

Julio Le Parc, the Argentine-born artist whose shimmering mobiles, vibrating light installations, and participatory environments helped redefine the relationship between art and its audience, died on May 30 in Paris. He was 97. His son, Yamil Le Parc, confirmed the death to the Argentine newspaper  La Nación . The artist had been hospitalized in recent days after a decline in health and died at the American Hospital in Paris. According to his son, Le Parc remained deeply engaged with his work until the end and had been eagerly anticipating a  major retrospective  scheduled to open at Tate Modern in London on June 11. He had hoped to attend the exhibition, which surveys nearly seven decades of his career. For more than six decades, he pursued a simple but radical idea: art should not be something that happens to viewers. It should happen with them. Working with mirrors, light, movement, color, and optical effects, Le Parc became one of ...

A group of House Democrats will ntroduce legislation  aimed at stopping President Donald Trump’s proposed triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery, opening a new front in the growing battle over the administration’s efforts to reshape some of the nation’s most visible public monuments. Representatives Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Dina Titus (D-Nev.) announced this week that they will introduce the Arlington National Cemetery Viewshed Protection Act, which would explicitly prohibit construction of the proposed arch and bar the use of federal funds for the project. The legislation follows a recent vote by Trump appointees on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts approving designs for the monument.  The Trump administration has argued that the arch would serve as a commemorative structure tied to celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. Critics, however, contend that the project violates the Commemorative Works Act, which generally req...

Anthony Haden-Guest says nearly 100 of his cartoons have spent the past 15 years hanging in a Hamptons mansion owned by socialite and collector Libbie Mugrabi. Now he wants them back. In a lawsuit filed this week in New York State Supreme Court, first reported by the  New York Post ,  the veteran critic, cartoonist, and fixture of New York society accused Mugrabi of refusing to return 97 original drawings that were allegedly entrusted to her for a planned exhibition that never took place. The complaint alleges that roughly 15 years ago Haden-Guest provided the drawings to Mugrabi for a show at her Southampton home. Under the arrangement, according to the filing, the works would be framed at Mugrabi’s expense, displayed for prospective buyers, and either sold or returned. Instead, the exhibition never happened and the drawings remained hanging in the house, according to the lawsuit. “There was no contemplation whatsoever” that Mugrab...

South by Southwest (SXSW) London returns for its second edition next week, taking over more than 20 venues clustered around the Trueman Brewery in Shoreditch. Known for its mix of technology, business, and music, and its focus on navigating global uncertainty, this year’s festival will also spotlight five visual artists exploring how technology is reshaping the creative industries. After launching in Austin, Texas, in 1987 as a music industry conference and festival, SXSW has grown into a massive global event. While still centered in Austin, London became its first European edition last year. Titled “Spain in Transmission: New Digital Work,” the art program at the London event is curated by Patrick Moore, the former director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Five artists are involved: Enrique Agudo, Filip Custic, Jesús Moratiel, and Marina Núñez — all from Spain — while American artist Molly Gochman is bringing her  Dispersed G...

Last Friday, the Trump administration erected 13 statues on Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington D.C.—including an equestrian monument dedicated to the Revolutionary War figure and slave owner Caesar Rodney that was removed from view in Wilmington, Delaware amidst the Black Lives Matter movement in June, 2020. The statue depicts Rodney’s famed 1776 ride from battle in Dover, Delaware to Philadelphia, where he cast the decisive vote for the country’s Independence. Rodney died in 1784, at his home on the Byfield plantation, where he owned 200 slaves. Surrounding the statue are 12 soldiers, who “represent the collective sacrifice of those who served during the Revolutionary War, reflecting the broad range of individuals who contributed to the nation’s founding,” according to a written statement spokesperson from the Department of the Interior. The spokesperson continued, “as we approach America’s 250th anniversary, the Trump administration has been comm...

The first thing I see upon entering Ren Light Pan’s tiny New York studio is a large canvas with a monochrome image of Sleeping Hermaphroditus . It’s the one that’s in the Louvre: a life-size marble Roman copy of an ancient Greek bronze from the 2nd century C.E. Pan shows me a series of smaller images on canvas, variations on this classical figure by other artists. But Pan’s big one is most arresting, in part because it’s from a photograph in which we see the legs of spectators behind the reclining marble figure.  It’s not surprising that a transgender artist would choose this subject, or that a transgender writer would immediately recognize it. Hermaphroditus is a supposedly mythical figure. He was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, so hot he turned the head of Salmacis. She was a rather wayward naiad who tried to force herself on the boy. The gods granted her prayer to unite them forever—and they became Hermaphroditus.  In Western visual culture, Herm...

“Listen…! It’s a goal!” One of the most memorable spoken moments in New Zealand sporting sporting broadcast history, and uttered by Wellington rugby commentator Winston McCarthy Winston John McCarthy was a leading rugby personality in the middle years of the twentieth century and he remains one of the most famous rugby broadcasters in New Zealand,...

When the Belarus Free Theatre opened “Official. Unofficial. Belarus.” at La Chiesa di San Giovanni Evangelista di Venezia earlier this month, it marked the first time Belarus had a presence at the Venice Biennale in six years—and the first time it appeared there not as a state, but, as curator Daniella Kaliada put it, as “a self-governing, self-authored cultural body.” The distinction matters enormously. Belarus has only appeared at the Biennale a handful of times, and not since President Alexander Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 2020. In exile since those protests, the Belarus Free Theatre has been at the forefront of efforts to counter the dictatorial Lukashenko regime and telling the country’s story on the international stage. In Venice, the Theatre translates its approach to visual art, stepping away from the plays and theater productions that have become its calling card, to stage an e...

Despite a considerable number of penalties and some four yellow cards, there was no shortage of entertaining play for the neutral viewer at this game at Helston Park. The Rams scored early off a near side lineout back on their side of halfway, but Johnsonville ran in three tries before halftime, including two to wing...

General Swindale Shield action from Lyndhurst Park on Saturday, where competition leaders Tawa beat bottom placed Avalon. Like all their recent matches, Avalon were in the contest throughout much of the first half before falling away. Tawa won 47-7. Photo: Stewart Baird.  Monday morning edition: The settled weather rolls on, but we don’t want to...

The upcoming presentation of the Bayeux Tapestry, a 230-foot-long embroidered cloth depicting the Norman invasion of 1066, figures to be the blockbuster exhibition of the year for the British Museum. The institution is pricing tickets like it is. On Thursday, the museum said that tickets to see the tapestry, which goes on view September 10 through July 11, 2027, will cost £33 for a standard adult ticket, or about $45. That’s the high end, for “peak” times. During off-peak times, i.e. non-holiday, non summer weekdays until 5:10 p.m., an adult ticket will cost £27. Tickets for Students and disabled visitors are a flat £25. All tickets get you a 40-minute visit with the tapestry. The first two weeks of the exhibition and the last two weeks of the exhibition will be treated as “peak” tickets no matter the timing. If that wasn’t all confusing enough, the British Museum said it is also offering “super off-peak...

The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust released a statement on Saturday slamming the recent decision by New York’s Danziger Gallery to offer an AI-generated artwork referencing the famed photographer’s work at the 2026 edition of the AIPAD Photography Show in April. The artwork, which still appears on Danziger’s website, does not contain a title but is headlined A.I. GENERATED, From the prompt: Make a realistic color version of Ansel Adams’ iconic “Moonrise Over Hernandez”. It is listed as printed by master printer Esteban Mauchi. Danziger offered the piece in its booth at the fair—which ran from April 22 to April 26—alongside work by Seydou Keïta, Hoda Afshar, and Matthew Porter, among others. In the statement, the trust said it “did not authorize, endorse, consent to, or acquiesce” to the work being exhibited or offered for sale and claimed that the piece “exploited Ansel’s name, reputation, and his most iconi...

Daniel Sikkema, the estranged husband of murdered New York art dealer Brent Sikkema, was found guilty Friday in a Manhattan federal court, according to the  Wall Street Journal . Daniel Sikkema faced charges tied to a murder-for-hire plot that prosecutors said led to the dealer’s killing at his vacation home in Rio de Janeiro in 2024.  The case has gripped the art world since Brent Sikkema, the founder of the Chelsea gallery then known as Sikkema Jenkins & Co.,  was found stabbed to death  in Brazil at age 75. Prosecutors argued that Daniel Sikkema orchestrated the killing from New York amid a bitter divorce and custody dispute involving the couple’s son. Federal prosecutors accused Daniel Sikkema of hiring Alejandro Triana Prevez, a Cuban former security officer living in Brazil, to carry out the murder. According to court filings and testimony presented during the trial, Prevez entered Brent Sikkema’s Rio townhouse in the early hours of Jan...

As demand accelerates for autonomous undersea systems that can move quickly from concept to deployment, Canadian marine technology firm Cellula Robotics and Metron, Inc . are formalizing a long-term partnership aimed at delivering next-generation capability to the United States defense market. Announced on May 19 in Houston, the 10-year agreement brings together Cellula’s commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) long-endurance autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) platforms with Metron’s adaptive mission autonomy and decades of operational experience in undersea warfare and maritime domain missions. The agreement builds on several years of collaboration between the two companies, including support work tied to the Defense Innovation Unit’s CAMP project. Together, the firms are positioning the partnership as a pathway to faster fielding, scalable deployment, and long-term operational support for US defense customers seeking reliable autonomous underwater capability. At the core of th...

By Kevin McCarthy  It’s the penultimate round but really, it may as well be the final round of Super Rugby Pacific for the Hurricanes, if they execute this weekend. There are as always the odd booby traps to make things tasty, however. The Crusaders host the Chiefs at their new home. Should they win, then...

A sacred Buddhist hall on the top of Mount Misen in Japan was destroyed by fire—but an “eternal flame” said to have been burning for more than a millennium was rescued and moved to another site, where it continues to glow. As reported in the New York Times , Reikado Hall, in the south of Japan, “was reduced to a charred skeleton after a fire tore through the building, engulfing its wooden prayer rooms.” No one was injured, fortunately, and the flame that had been burning for some 1,200 years was salvaged and transferred to a less traumatized location. In a statement, the Daisho-in temple, which oversaw the damaged hall, said, “We have received many messages of sympathy. Thank you for your concern.” Reikado Hall had been rebuilt after a previous fire in 2005, after an accident following cleanup from a typhoon. The cause of the latest fire in under investigation. The Times noted that Japanese temples and shrines, often constructed with materia...

Harald Metzkes, the so-called “Cézannist of Prenzlauer Berg” who made classically indebted and symbolically rich paintings following Germany’s surrender in World War II, died last Thursday in Brandenburg at the age of 97. His death was confirmed to the German Press Agency by his son, the sculptor Robert Metzkes. “Metzkes became particularly well-known in East Germany because he had no interest in socialist realism,” wrote Monopol , which asserted that he created his own “world theater” in work that wriggled free of East German strictures. The magazine quoted Robert Metzkes saying, of his father, “He wasn’t concerned with implementing cultural policy demands.” Metzkes was born in 1929 in Saxony, Germany, and in 1949 started studying painting at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. In 1959 he moved to East Berlin, where he established a distinctive painterly style that “combined poetic imagery, references to classical modernism, and deeply symbolic...

When Powerhouse Parramatta, the enormous new cultural center opening in the city of Parramatta west of Sydney, Australia, opens later this year, a new commission by the British-Indian sculptor Bharti Kher will welcome visitors as the entrance. Art Asia Pacific reported the news. The sculpture, titled Tree of Life , will be monumental in scale and will be made up of four stacked bronze and clay heads. Tree of Life is part of Kher’s ongoing “Intermediaries” series , which she began making in 2016. Many of these large-scale sculptures re-create or transform fragments of found ritual objects into hybrid creatures. The Powerhouse Parramatta commission is not Kher’s first foray into public art: from fall 2022 through summer 2023, Ancestor , an 18-foot-tall bronze mother figure also referencing an “Intermediary” piece, was installed in Central Park, and from 2018-20, The Intermediary Family , based on a collection of small clay objects from South India, was install...

James ‘Big Jim’ Kinvig was a leading player for Onslow throughout the 1950s and early 1960s and he played a number of times for the Wellington representative team. Kinvig was well known as a big goal-kicking forward, whose most usual position was lock but he also played at prop and No. 8 throughout his career....

Every time a tech company promotes an emerging technology like AI or the metaverse, the pitch sounds the same: a promise to “unleash” the imagination, or a new “immersive world.” When Facebook rebranded as Meta in 2021, its ad showed four people looking at Henri Rousseau’s Fight Between a Tiger and a Buffalo , as it sprung to life and a portal opened before them. Four years later, when Meta debuted its Ray–Ban Meta smartglasses, the company touted its in-lens display and voice activation with an ad featuring Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt looking at Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian , i.e. the banana, which Hemsworth promptly ate. What does it say about our collective consciousness that the direction of tech innovation seems to always lead to that scene in Mary Poppins , when the nanny and her wards jump onto a chalk drawing and end up in an animated world? That question lay at the center of several works performed at Giorno Poetry Systems (GPS) earlier this month...

She is the subject of a current exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and an upcoming one at the Tate Modern. Netflix is planning an adaptation of her life. Her unibrowed face stares out from tote bags, murals, notebooks, enamel pins, refrigerator magnets, and dorm-room posters across the globe. A recent auction of The Dream (The Bed) , 1940, helped send her market value into yet a higher strata. I speak, of course, of Frida Kahlo. Add to the list a new opera. El Último Sueño de Frida y Dieg o, which recently opened at the Met, stages an oneiric reckoning with two famed painters. The premise is deceptively simple: on a November day in 1957, Frida returns from the underworld during Día de los Muertos for a brief reunion with her husband, who is himself not long for the world of the living. Carlos Álvarez as Diego and Isabel Leonard as Frida in a scene from Gabriela Lena Frank’s “El Últi...

Rene Matić was named the winner of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, one of the most prestigious honors in the field. They received the £30,000 ($40,250) prize for their exhibition “AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH,” which closed at CCA Berlin in February. Matić, who is based in London, works across photography, sculpture, sound, poetry, and film to examine social dynamics of race, gender, and intimacy through the lens of national symbols (flags are a recurring motif). Their practice includes an excavation of British subculture, including the “rude boy,” a fashion and ideological formation that emerged in the aftermath of postcolonial resistance movements. Part photography, part sculpture, and part installation, AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH positioned itself within the rise of right-wing populism, asking how the personal intersects with—and survives—the political. It extended an earlier exhibition staged at Vitrine Gallery titled “Born ...

A lineout scene in Saturday’s match between Petone and Ories. Petone won 39-10. Photo: Kinetic Images. Photos from the weekend at https://ift.tt/Ios1a4G The Swindale Shield reached its halfway point on Saturday and the race for the first round title is heating up with several teams in the mix and no conclusive favourite at this point....

The Hanwha Ocean shipyard in Geoje, South Korea covers 4.9 million square metres. It employs roughly 31,000 people, operates its own fire departments, hospitals, and daycare centres, and produces approximately 45 to 60 vessels per year. Vanguard visited the Geoje facility and Hanwha Ocean’s Siheung R&D campus in late April as part of an editorial trip hosted by Hanwha, gaining firsthand access to one of the production facilities under consideration for Canada’s submarine fleet renewal. From explosives to ocean giants Hanwha’s origins trace to 1952, the year before the Korean War armistice, when the company was founded as Korea Explosives Co. What followed over the next seven decades is one of the more remarkable industrial stories in modern history. Korea emerged from the war as one of the poorest nations on earth. Within a generation it had become one of the world’s dominant industrial powers, and shipbuilding was central to that transformation...