16 February 2026 Addis Ababa’s Africa Hall after its renovation. Photograph: Rory Gardiner In the heart of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a modernist architectural treasure has been meticulously brought back to life, capturing international attention and earning some of the most prestigious honors in heritage preservation. Africa Hall, an iconic structure that first opened its doors in 1961 and served as a defining meeting place for African leaders, has now completed a multi-million-

14 February 2026 Mike Wazowski and James P Sullivan, stars of Monsters Inc. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian London has become the latest global city to host an ambitious celebration of one of the most beloved animation studios in the world with the opening of the Mundo Pixar Experience, a sprawling immersive exhibition that invites visitors to step inside the vibrant worlds of Pixar’s films. Spread across more than 3,500 square metres in Wembley Park, the exhibition re-

12 February 2026 Venus and Cupid by Artemisia Gentileschi. Photograph: IanDagnall Computing/Alamy In the corridors of Western art history, the nude has been a dominant motif for centuries, often presented through the eyes of male painters whose ideals and fantasies shaped how bodies, particularly female bodies, were depicted and consumed by audiences. Masters like Botticelli and Titian offered visions of beauty rooted in myth and desire, their canvases filled with goddesses a

7 February 2026 Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata, on display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A near-identical painting is in the Royal Museums of Turin. Photograph: incamerastock/Alamy An artificial intelligence analysis of two small Renaissance paintings traditionally attributed to Jan van Eyck has sent ripples through the art world by calling into question who actually painted them and prompting a broader conversation about how technology is reshaping the s

10 January 2026 A centuries-old mystery surrounding one of the most famous works of art in history may be moving closer to an answer as art historians and technical experts revisit evidence that Leonardo da Vinci himself might have painted a nude version of the Mona Lisa. The possibility is rooted in long-held speculation about a charcoal drawing known as La Joconde Nue or Monna Vanna, a semi-nude figure bearing striking similarities to the iconic Mona Lisa that has sparked d

6 January 2026 Protest banners against the cost-cutting exercise hang from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp. Photograph: Zeno Druyts/BELGA MAG/AFP/Getty Images In Antwerp, a city long revered for its rich artistic heritage, the staccato of protest has replaced the usual hush of reverence that envelops its museums. At the heart of a growing cultural storm is the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA), an institution founded in 1985 that has become a cornerstone of

2 January 2026 Marguerite endormie, 1920. She was Henri Matisse’s favourite subject. Photograph: Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris In a move that resonates through the art world and deepens the cultural riches of Paris, the Musée d’Art Moderne has received an extraordinary gift: 61 artworks by Henri Matisse that had been privately held within his family for generations. The donation, revealed in early January, has been hailed by museum officials as both historic and deeply generou

31 December 2025 Pablo Picasso’s 1941 watercolour Tête de femme, valued at €1m, on display at Christie’s auction house in Paris. Photograph: Benoît Tessier/Reuters A remarkable new charity initiative has turned one of the 20th century’s most iconic artists into an unlikely beacon of hope for medical science by offering anyone in the world the chance to own a Pablo Picasso painting for the price of a modest ticket. The Alzheimer’s Research Foundation in France has launched an

09 December 2025 Nnena Kalu’s award represented a watershed moment for the international art world, the chair of the judges said. Photograph: Courtesy of the Artist and ActionSpace In one of the most talked-about moments of the 2025 art season, Scottish artist Nnena Kalu has been awarded the prestigious Turner Prize, becoming the first person with a learning disability to receive the honour since the prize’s inception in 1984. The announcement came on December 9 in Bradford,

02 December 2025 The Winter egg was commissioned in 1913 by Nicholas II. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Zuma Press/Shutterstock In a dazzling display of artistry, history and sheer monetary heft, a jewel-studded masterpiece commissioned more than a century ago for the mother of Russia’s last tsar sold at auction in London for a record-breaking £22.9 million, reaffirming its place as one of the most coveted objects from a vanished imperial world. This exquisite object, known a

26 November 2025 Poor decapitated piglet … Scarecrow III, 2006, which has its origins in a McDonagh story. Photograph: © Estate of Paula Rego. Courtesy Ostrich Arts Ltd and Cristea Roberts Gallery Between 2005 and 2007, Paula Rego entered what many consider the most powerful and unsettling phase of her career, a period when her work fused deeply personal history with stark, brutal storytelling. The trigger was a dark play she saw in 2003, a story that would radically reshape

22 November 2025 Hollywood legend Barbra Streisand is publicly expressing regret over a decision she made nearly three decades ago selling a painting by the Austrian master Gustav Klimt just days after another of his works sold for a staggering $236 million at auction. Streisand posted on Instagram that she bought Miss Ria Munk on her Deathbed in 1969 for $17,000, which she then sold in 1998 after shifting her interest to architecture and the Arts & Crafts movement. The timin

14 November 2025 CCTV of Larry Fraser breaking in to the Grove gallery in Fitzrovia, central London.Photograph: Metropolitan police/PA In a dramatic twist that blends street-art iconography with criminal desperation, 49-year-old Larry Fraser has been sentenced to 13 months in prison after the theft of a limited-edition print by the elusive graffiti artist Banksy from London’s Grove Gallery in September 2024. According to court records, Fraser carried out the smash-and-grab bu

07 November 2025 Pierre Moscovici discusses the heist. Photograph: Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters In a stark report published by France’s national audit office, the Louvre Museum’s recent robbery of crown jewels estimated at €88 million was described as “a deafening wake-up call” highlighting the grave deficiencies in the institution’s security and maintenance systems. The audit covered the museum’s operations from 2018 to 2024 and revealed that despite sufficient funding, the Lou

1 November2025 Joseph Langelinck in full flow. Photograph: Judith Jockel/The Guardian At the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf a new kind of museum tour is turning heads not for quiet contemplation but for loud provocation. Dubbed the “Grumpy Guide” experience, performance-artist Carl Brandi, who takes on the persona of the curmudgeonly art historian “Joseph Langelinck,” leads visitors through the galleries with derision, sarcasm and confrontational remarks aimed at both the exhibits

31 October 2025 A 3D model of the 30 St Mary Axe building, known to most Londoners as the Gherkin. Photograph: Alicia Taylor In the cavernous exhibition space of Foster + Partners’ Sydney studios the hum of conversation softens as visitors gather around a meticulously detailed scale model of 30 St Mary Axe the London skyscraper known colloquially as the Gherkin, its spiralling form captured at one-hundredth its real size. But this isn’t merely a model of a building: it is a t

29 October 2025 A guest views Vincent van Gogh’s Women Picking Olives (1889, middle), another painting from his olive trees series, at the Met in New York. Photograph: Bjanka Kadic/Alamy The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has been sued by the heirs of a Jewish couple who allege that the museum knowingly accepted and later transferred ownership of a Olive Picking (1889) by Vincent van Gogh that they claim was looted by the Nazis in the 1930s. According to the lawsuit f

27 October 2025 An extraordinary sound system … Peter Doig’s exhibition House of Music at Serpentine Gallery, London. Photograph: Guy Bell/Shutterstock In their studios around the world, artists are hitting play and allowing music to become an unseen collaborator, notes, rhythms and melodies weaving themselves into their creative process. According to interviews conducted by The Guardian, creatives like Chris Ofili, Lindsey Mendick, Ragnar Kjartansson and others shared how sp

24 October 2025 Still Life with Guitar, a 1919 gouache and pencil work valued at about €600,000, has been found by police after disappearing in October. Photograph: Spanish National Police/AFP/Getty Images Tiny but iconic, a 1919 painting by Pablo Picasso titled Still Life with Guitar valued at around €600,000 was recovered this week after vanishing en route to an exhibition in southern Spain, concluding a case that authorities say never involved a grand heist but rather a ba

22 October 2025 On the morning of October 19, 2025, thieves executed one of the most audacious museum heists in modern memory when they stole eight priceless pieces of French crown jewellery from the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The raid played out almost as a cinematic sequence. Disguised as construction workers, the perpetrators arrived on a basket lift at a first-floor window over the Seine-facing façade of the museum, around half an hour after opening.