Restitution Tangles, Warped Art Routes, Museum Reboots

A restitution plan from Los Angeles to Ghana has hit a thorny, and frankly unsettling, complication. The Art Newspaper reports that the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles wants to return an Asante drum and an ivory trumpet looted by British troops in late-19th-century military operations in Kumasi. But both instruments have human skulls attached, raising hard questions about who should receive what. Research led by the Fowler’s senior curator of African arts, Erica Jones, and her former colleague Carlee Forbes found the trumpet’s skull likely belonged to a man around 40 who may have died in battle. The drum’s attached cranium turned out to be a woman around 50, suggesting different possibilities, including later alteration to increase market value.

In London museum news, Artnet reports the Victoria & Albert Museum has opened V&A East, a new one hundred eighty dollars million outpost in east London meant to put a contemporary spin on the V&A’s more than 2.8 million objects. The building in Stratford, in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, was designed by Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey, with a boxy beige facade punctured by pointed shards of window—mixed reviews, but a distinct identity from the original V&A in west London. Senior curator Zofia Trafas White says the museum favors themes over chronology, geography, or materials, with two permanent “Why We Make” galleries showing over 500 objects and tackling topics like identity, wellbeing, social justice, and environmental responsibility.

Across the Atlantic and into Mexico City, The Art Newspaper reports a major donation to the Museo Anahuacalli from Diego Rivera’s grandson, Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera. He donated one hundred fifty seven thousand three hundred pieces from his private collection—ceramics, textiles, wooden objects, prints, photographs, archives, and a research library, dating from the 16th century to the present. The transfer will happen in stages over the coming months, starting with ceramics, then manuscripts and correspondence related to Diego Rivera, and is expected to finish before the end of the year. Coronel Rivera, a photographer, art historian, writer, and collector, built the collection over more than four decades. It includes no paintings by Diego Rivera or Frida Kahlo, but it reinforces Rivera’s long-held vision for Anahuacalli as a research-centered institution.

Also in Mexico, Hyperallergic reports that Mexico will divert a planned passenger train route after archaeologists discovered 16 pre-Hispanic artworks—drawings and petroglyphs—along the line connecting Mexico City to Querétaro. The Mexican government-backed project, supported by the National Institute of Anthropology and History, announced the discovery last week, though the initial findings were made in January. President Claudia Sheinbaum said the planned eight dollars billion train would be rerouted to preserve the site. INAH documented rock paintings on two cliffs in the state of Hidalgo, including images tied to the Postclassic period of Mesoamerican history, from 900 CE until the Spanish conquest in 1521, plus other figures it described as “prehistory,” or four thousand years ago or more.

Shifting to geopolitics and the art world’s logistics, The Art Newspaper says the US-Israel war on Iran is disrupting art transport routes as prices surge, especially affecting Asia’s supply chains. Benchmark oil prices jumped after the conflict began at the end of February, with Brent Crude Futures rising from around seventy nine dollars per barrel before the war to more than one hundred nine dollars on 2 April. Wang Jianmin, founder of Top Space Art Service in mainland China, says air freight costs for fine art soared between 70% and 300% in the opening weeks. Route disruption is compounding the issue: works by Danish artist Per Kirkeby were grounded at Doha International Airport en route to an exhibition at the He Art Museum in Shunde, China, which proceeded with fewer works. Some shippers are turning to the China-Europe Railway Express as a contingency.

Now to Berlin, where ARTnews interviews London-based co-curator Agnes Gryczkowska about Marina Abramović’s “Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition” at Gropius Bau, Abramović’s first solo presentation in Berlin since the 1990s. The show runs through August 23 and brings together historical and recent works across film, installation, sculpture, and live action, centering on ritual, eroticism, death, and the body. At the opening, Abramović’s video Tito’s Funeral (2025) played on a huge screen, showing women beating their chests in a trance-like communal mourning. In front of it, Svetlana Spajić performed live, with a brass band procession moving through the space. Gryczkowska describes the curatorial challenge of translating performance intensity into a museum setting without reducing it to documentation, and says the exhibition is structured in three chapters.

Staying with ARTnews, Genesis P-Orridge’s subversive mail art is on view in Toronto at Art Metropole through May 31. The focused exhibition draws from the National Gallery of Canada’s collection and centers on P-Orridge’s submissions to the Canadian artist collective General Idea and its FILE Magazine network in the 1970s. On view are letters, collages, photos, and other materials that chart early chapters of P-Orridge’s career, including work connected to COUM Transmissions and later Throbbing Gristle. The show also marks a return to Art Metropole, the space General Idea founded in 1974, and the first time these objects have been back there since 1999, when Art Metropole transferred its holdings to the NGC for conservation. It also coincides with 50 years since Throbbing Gristle’s premiere performance in 1976.

ARTnews also reports that West Coast painter James Hayward, known for monochrome abstractions with thick, chunky paint, died on April 16 at 82, according to a brief obituary posted by his studio. Though not a household name from the postwar era, he had devoted admirers among artists; Mike Kelley once called him “one of the few truly important West Coast painters.” Born in San Francisco in 1943, Hayward attended San Diego State University, then completed UCLA’s graduate program in 1969. His solo shows were largely West Coast, including more than 10 at San Francisco’s Modernism gallery, though he later appeared at LA’s Roberts Projects and the Pit, and New York’s Miles McEnery Gallery. He worked for much of his career on a horse farm in Moorpark and wrote Indiscretions, a book of autobiographical anecdotes.

Turning to Venice Biennale politics, Alma Allen’s US Pavilion for the 2026 Venice Biennale is drawing scrutiny over how the artist was selected, according to a report discussed in The Art Newspaper. Allen said, “I don’t think my work is political in respect to party politics,” adding that his immediate concern was practical: “some of the pieces barely fit in the doorway.” The New York Times reported that the State Department abandoned its long-standing selection model—where museums submitted proposals to a National Endowment for the Arts expert panel—and instead handed control to a newly formed nonprofit, the American Arts Conservancy, led by Jenni Parido, working with independent curator Jeffrey Uslip. Former organizers and curators raised concerns, and Robert Storr told the Times, “America will be known as having squandered a major opportunity to show serious work.”

From Venice to Basel, ARTnews reports that Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk is set to take over Hall 1.1 South at Messe Basel on Saturday June 20 as part of an “immersive experience” presented by art.klub called “WAREHOUSE ARTEFACTS.” The lineup includes Bangalter, house music producer Rampa, and French Swiss conceptual artist Julian Charrière, with details described as sparse. An Instagram post announcing the event said it will include a DJ set by Rampa and a special guest from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. The event is produced by Nordstern Basel, with the cooperation of Art Basel and Fondation Beyeler. ARTnews notes Bangalter recently returned to performing, playing his first DJ set since 2009 last October, followed by a London show in February.

That’s today’s download—links are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more art world news you can actually use, and until then, I’m signing off: Chinga la migra

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