Masterworks Stolen, Restitution Wars Escalate

A brazen museum heist in Italy is leading the headlines. Thieves stole three works from the Magnani Rocca Foundation’s villa near Parma on the night of March 22, according to reports first aired by the Italian broadcaster Rai and then picked up by outlets including Le Monde and Agence France-Presse. Police said four masked burglars forced open a door and, in just a few minutes, made off with Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Les Poissons (The Fish) (1917), Henri Matisse’s Odalisque sur la terrasse (Odalisque on the terrace) (1922), and Paul Cézanne’s watercolor Tasse et plat de cerises (Cup and plate of cherries) (ca. 1890). An alarm reportedly stopped them from taking a fourth painting, which they abandoned.

Staying with art-law stakes, The Art Newspaper calls this a generational moment for Nazi-looted art claims in the United States. On 16 March, the US House of Representatives passed an expanded version of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (Hear) Act of 2025 after it previously passed the Senate, and it’s now awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature. The 2016 Hear Act created a six-year statute of limitations running from a claimant’s actual knowledge of both the claim and the work’s current location. The new bill aims to make that framework permanent and eliminate “technical defences” so claims can be decided on their merits. Frank Lord of Withers Art and Advisory notes courts have often relied on laches, and he argues legislation can’t fix gaps in the historical record.

Now to a deliciously nerdy attribution debate in Chicago. The Art Newspaper reports that the art historian Gary Schwartz is arguing a painting long deemed to be a workshop copy of Rembrandt van Rijn’s Old Man with a Gold Chain (1631) was actually painted by Rembrandt himself, and should be treated as an autograph replica. The original has been at the Art Institute of Chicago since 1922, and since last autumn it has been shown side-by-side with the second version under the wall text “Double Dutch: A Rembrandt and a Workshop Copy,” which stresses there’s no consensus. The second painting—slightly smaller and on canvas rather than panel—is on loan from the Sir Francis Newman Collection in the UK, and it stays in Chicago until 16 June.

Still in the orbit of the European art establishment, leadership news is rippling through the market. Guillaume Cerutti has departed all of his positions in François Pinault’s portfolio, The Art Newspaper reports. After it emerged last week that he was leaving as president of the Pinault Collection, Artémis announced on 27 March that he will also leave the chairmanship of the boards of Christie’s and the football club Stade Rennais. No explanation was given, and sources said the split was a surprise. Artémis said Cerutti will be replaced as chair of Christie’s board by François-Henri Pinault, chief executive of Kering. François Pinault, 89, will resume as executive president of the Pinault Collection, and a spokesperson said there are no plans to appoint a new president or an interim replacement.

Across the Pacific, the auction market delivered a burst of confidence. ARTnews reports that Christie’s, Phillips, and Sotheby’s generated a combined one hundred sixty four dollars million across their modern and contemporary art evening sales in Hong Kong, aligned with Art Basel Hong Kong week—up from last spring’s one hundred thirty nine dollars million and rebounding from last autumn’s one hundred thirty six dollars million. Christie’s led on March 27 with HKsix hundred fifty five dollars million (eighty three dollars million), topped by Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild at HKninety two dollars million (eleven dollars million) and Sanyu’s Cheval agenouillé sur un tapis at HKsixty three dollars million (eight dollars million). Sotheby’s followed on March 29 with HKfive hundred forty eight dollars million (seventy dollars million), led by Joan Mitchell’s La Grande Vallée VII at HKone hundred twenty nine dollars million (seventeen dollars million), sold to an online bidder.

Back to Spain for a painting that almost never moves. ARTnews reports that the Basque regional government has formally asked Spain’s Ministry of Culture to authorize a temporary loan of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao—potentially the first time it has traveled since being installed at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía in 1992. The proposed dates are October 2026 to June 2027, tied to the 90th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica on April 26, 1937. Imanol Pradales, the lehendakari of Basque Country, called the loan “a formula for symbolic reparation and historical memory,” and a message about war and dictatorship. The Reina Sofía has “strongly discouraged” any transfer, citing fragility, while the Basque government proposed a joint commission to evaluate viability and costs.

Also in Madrid, Hyperallergic spotlights a major retrospective for Juan Uslé at the Museo Reina Sofía. Ese barco en la montaña (That Ship on the Mountain) includes around 100 works spanning four decades, and curator Ángel Calvo Ulloa frames the show around a childhood memory: the shipwreck of the Elorrio off the Cantabrian coast in December 1960, which Uslé witnessed as a boy. Early galleries include drawings and paintings from the 1980s with marine themes, like a small untitled 1987 drawing that feels ghostly, with hazy pencil marks and torn edges. The exhibition follows Uslé’s reinvention in New York in the early 1990s—he’s been based there since the late 1980s—and includes an expansive presentation of his daily photographs of steps, windows, bricks, and fences that echo his painted structures.

Keeping the focus on artists shaping public conversations, ARTnews reports that the British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen is this year’s winner of the Erasmus Prize from the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation. The award includes one hundred fifty thousand euros—about one hundred seventy two thousand dollars—plus “adornments,” described as a folded paper booklet printed with text in Desiderius Erasmus’s script. The prize honors an exceptional contribution to the humanities, social sciences, or arts in Europe and beyond, and this year’s theme for McQueen is “Ecce Homo, Behold the Human Being.” ARTnews notes McQueen’s films including Occupied City (2023), Ashes (2015), and Static (2009), as well as his feature 12 Years A Slave (2013), and points to his 2024 installation Bass at Dia:Beacon as a recent move into sound and light.

From Philadelphia, ARTnews turns to Sky Hopinka and a new site-specific installation at the Barnes Foundation. Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) has spent the last year and a half photographing the American landscape, and that travel culminated in Red Metal Dust, made of 11 panels layering landscape photography with copper sheets. In the interview, Hopinka connects the material to the Ho-Chunk word for copper—mąąsšuc, meaning “red metal”—and says the “dust” in the title draws from stories about people coming from dust. The photographs span everything from images shot from an Amtrak train window to aerial photos taken while flying over the US, plus specific places like Arizona, Washington’s coast, Tulsa, and Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Finally, a brisk roundup from ARTnews Morning Links pulls together culture, politics, and power. In Hebei Province, a secret trial of detained artist Gao Zhen, 69, was scheduled to begin, according to the New York Times. He faces up to three years in prison for sculptures made over 15 years ago that authorities said mocked Mao Zedong, under a 2018 slander law forbidding tarnishing historical figures or questioning official narratives. The trial will be closed to the public, and Gao Qiang—Zhen’s brother and artistic collaborator—said, “The authorities may have already decided for the court what the outcome should be.” The same links item notes architects criticizing a model design of President Trump’s new massive ballroom for the White House grounds as impractical and done without public review.

That’s the download for today—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more art world news you can actually use. Chinga la migra

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