New Museums, Old Wounds: Restitution and Rehangs

Two museum openings lead this week’s episode of The Art Newspaper’s podcast. Ben Luke visits V&A East in London with its director, Gus Casely-Hayford, as the museum opens on Saturday, 18 April. Casely-Hayford walks through commissions, displays, and the first exhibition, The Music is Black: A British Story, emphasizing community-driven programming and the museum’s relationship to East London. The episode then heads to California, where the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has opened its new building by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor—costing more than seven hundred dollarsm—prompting debate over its scale, cost, and fit for LA. Ben speaks with correspondent Jori Finkel. Work of the Week is William Blake’s Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils (around 1826), discussed with co-curator Anne Hodge as part of William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy at the National Gallery of Ireland, open until 19 July.

Zurich’s controversial Emil Bührle Collection has been completely redisplayed at the Kunsthaus Zurich, where it’s on long-term loan. Opening this week, the rehang puts 205 works on view, including five paintings by Vincent van Gogh—and one forgery. A sixth Van Gogh is being conserved, while a seventh has been withdrawn due to a Nazi-era issue. The Art Newspaper notes how dense the presentation is: 190 of the 205 works are tightly installed. The collection’s scrutiny is inseparable from its founder, Emil Bührle (1890-1956), an arms dealer who made his fortune selling weapons from neutral Switzerland during the Second World War, then bought much of his art during the Nazi period and immediate post-war years. Provenance data has been published, but questions persist—especially around works tied to persecuted Jewish owners. Among the Van Goghs discussed are Self-portrait (summer 1887), Head of a Peasant (March 1885), and The Sower at Sunset (November 1888), with complicated ownership histories.

In Florence, The Art Newspaper’s Big Review gives Rothko in Florence five stars, describing Mark Rothko’s canvases in the hushed former monastic cells of the Museo di San Marco as pulsing with spiritual intensity beside Fra Angelico’s frescoes. The exhibition is staged across three locations, with the bulk of roughly 70 works at Palazzo Strozzi, plus five paintings at San Marco and two installed in the Michelangelo-designed vestibule of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. Co-curated by Rothko’s son, Christopher, alongside Elena Geuna, the show explores how Florence and its art shaped Rothko (1903-70), who visited the city three times in the 1950s and 60s. The review argues the exhibition’s key achievement is showing Rothko thinking spatially—how his paintings don’t just depict space, but can seem to define it. It also notes an awkward ticketing system requiring separate entry for each venue, but says the payoff is substantial.

Lebanon’s ministry of culture has filed an urgent complaint with Unesco amid fears that Israeli forces have destroyed the 12th-century Chama’ Citadel, a site granted enhanced protection in 2024. The Art Newspaper reports that Samar Karam, director of archaeological sites at the directorate general of antiquities in North Lebanon, says Lebanese authorities contacted Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of Unesco’s World Heritage Centre, and Krista Pikkat, director of Unesco’s Culture and Emergencies Entity, on Monday (13 April). They expressed “deepest concerns” over reports of “destruction and complete demolition” of the citadel by military bulldozing operations, with Israeli forces occupying the area as fighting with Hezbollah continues. Because access is blocked, Lebanon asked Unesco to assess damage via satellite imagery. Culture minister Ghassan Salamé also wrote to Unesco director general Khaled El-Enany urging action. A Unesco spokesperson said the agency is verifying reported damage to Chama’ and to sites in Qana. Lebanon also flagged other at-risk cultural properties, including Dubieh Castle in Chakra and Oum El Amed near Naqoura.

Hyperallergic speaks with Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury, a Bard College professor and winner of the 2026 Creative Capital Award, who is spending a sabbatical year in Beirut with her husband, historian Ziad Abu-Rish, and their daughter Leyl. The interview unfolds against the backdrop of war: it notes that on March 2—two days after the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran—Israel began bombarding Lebanon. As of the interview’s writing, it reports more than two thousand two hundred ninety four Lebanese killed by Israel, including 177 children and 91 healthcare workers, with at least 357 deaths on April 8, dubbed Black Wednesday, when over 100 bombs were dropped on Beirut in 10 minutes. El Khoury describes survival mode and displacement, saying their apartment and street are no longer safe. The conversation also revisits her interactive live art performance with Abu-Rish, The Search for Power, set at their 2018 wedding and built around an investigation into Beirut’s power outages—showing, through documents and shared storytelling, that protests over blackouts stretch back to the early 1920s under French colonial rule.

Turkey has scored another high-profile restitution after the Denver Art Museum returned a marble head of a bearded man stolen from the ancient city of Smyrna. According to ARTnews, the sculpture’s provenance indicates it was likely carved in the fifth century BCE in Smyrna—ancient Greek İzmir—on Turkey’s Aegean coast. Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, said it was unearthed in the city’s agora, and credited “cooperation and constructive dialogue” with the Denver Art Museum for bringing it home. The marble head is now on view at the İzmir Archaeology Museum. ARTnews places the return within Turkey’s broader campaign to reclaim cultural heritage. It points to March’s first official repatriation from Canada: seven manuscript pages with Arabic and Ottoman Turkish texts, two rare printed pages, and two examples of modern calligraphy, dating from the 17th to 19th centuries, intercepted in 2024 by the Canada Border Services Agency en route from Istanbul to Vancouver. The story also notes 2024 returns tied to Manhattan DA investigations, including objects from the Met, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and collector Aaron Mendelsohn.

A legal battle over fragile medieval murals in Spain still isn’t resolved in practice. The Art Newspaper reports that nearly a year after Spain’s Supreme Court ruled in May 2025 that the National Art Museum of Catalonia—MNAC—must return the Sijena Monastery murals to the Royal Monastery in Aragon, the Barcelona museum has not yet moved them. The 13th-century murals were removed from the monastery in 1936 after it was set on fire during the Spanish Civil War. MNAC restored them, transferred them to canvas, and has displayed them since 1961, controversially, reconstructing lost portions using photographs taken before the fire. A museum spokesperson said the works haven’t been returned due to “technical arguments.” MNAC says transport and relocation could damage them—especially if moved to an environment that isn’t climate-controlled, unlike their current setting in a sealed section of MNAC’s Oval Hall, also used as an event space. A video on MNAC’s website shows the murals installed on semicircular arches in a space meant to evoke the original architecture; the paintings depict Old and New Testament scenes and a genealogy of Christ, with influences from English miniature painting and Byzantine art.

The Peabody Essex Museum is hosting Said in Stone, billed as the first comprehensive retrospective for late 19th-century sculptor Edmonia Lewis. The exhibition assembles her work into what the essay describes as a kind of reunited family of sculptures, spotlighting a Black and Indigenous artist who fought for recognition through sheer force of craft. Central to the show is Forever Free (1867), which the piece calls, “as far as we know,” the first formal visual representation of emancipation by a Black American artist. The sculpture shows a man standing, holding up a broken chain, with a young woman kneeling beside him with hands clasped in prayer. The retrospective also features Indian Combat (1868), Hiawatha (1868), a bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1871), Hagar in the Wilderness (1875), and Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (1864), tying Lewis’s subjects to American history, literature, and Biblical narrative. The article notes the exhibition will travel to the Georgia Museum of Art in the fall and to the North Carolina Museum of Art next spring.

Finland is dialing back its Venice Biennale presence over the planned reopening of the Russian Pavilion. ARTnews reports that Finland’s political leadership will not attend this year if the Russian Pavilion goes on view, with Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture stating Russia must not be allowed to participate “as long as Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine continues.” Minister of Science and Culture Mari-Leena Talvitie said some public officials will still attend to support Finnish arts and culture. The decision stops short of full withdrawal, but it sharpens pressure on the Biennale, where Russia is preparing a national pavilion for the first time since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. ARTnews notes that in March, 22 high-ranking politicians from European nations signed an open letter led by Latvia calling Russia’s presence “deeply troubling,” and Finnish officials signed too. Earlier this month, the European Commission warned the Biennale it could lose a €2 million grant for its 2028 edition if it fails to address concerns about potential violations of EU sanctions. The Russian pavilion, titled The Tree is Rooted in the Sky, is expected to present a multidisciplinary program of musicians, poets, and artists.

In Los Angeles, ARTnews argues the new David Geffen Galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art could help rewrite art history, asking whether a museum can present a non-linear story of art and still be legible. The building opens to members on April 19 and to the public on May 4. The review says LACMA’s approach places works from multiple centuries and regions in close proximity, rejecting old hierarchies where European art dominates and other traditions get sidelined. The new one-level structure, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, is presented as a “laboratory” and “platform for experimentation,” with objects from the museum’s 15 curatorial departments able to move anywhere—no department has a fixed home, and some, like costumes and textiles, have more on view than ever. The article traces the 25-year campus rethink, noting Michael Govan became director and CEO in 2006 and by 2009 the museum pivoted to working with Zumthor. It cites a final cost of seven hundred twenty four dollars million, including about one hundred twenty five dollars million from LA County, and points to design controversies, a 10 percent reduction in exhibition space, and engineering that allows the building to sway five feet without compromising structural integrity.

That’s today’s download—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more.

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