Stolen Masterpieces, Shaken Museums, Restitution Reckonings

A legal fight in London is turning on what, exactly, was sold—and when. The Art Newspaper reports that Yoed and Natasha Anise are suing the London-based Alison Jacques gallery for breach of contract after the gallery cancelled the sale of three Monica Sjöö paintings: Meeting the Ancestors at Avebury (1993), Forest Beings (1997), and Amazon Women of the Bronze Age (1999). The couple bought them on 6 October 2023 for £two hundred sixty four thousand, discounted 20% from £three hundred thirty thousand, but the works stayed on loan to Sjöö’s retrospective as it traveled. After a dinner tied to the Modern Art Oxford opening, the estate objected and the sale was rescinded. The case is due in Central London County Court in March 2027.

China’s top cultural authority is tightening the screws on museum safety after a run of summer failures. The Art Newspaper says the National Cultural Heritage Administration ordered public museums to strengthen emergency management following blackouts and overcrowding. On 4 August, the Terracotta Warriors Museum in Xi’an lost power and air-conditioning across its three pits and main hall around 1pm; the outage lasted several hours, and visitors used flashlights, with the first reports spreading on Rednote. Similar outages hit the Lu Xun Museum in Beijing on 7 August and the Datong Museum in Shanxi on 8 August. Zhejiang Museum also apologized on WeChat after overcrowding and malfunctioning gates caused delays on 6 August, with notices citing system overload and aging equipment worsened by extreme heat.

Three stolen modern masters are back in police hands in Italy. The Art Newspaper reports that paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne, and Henri Matisse taken from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation near Parma in March have been recovered. The Carabinieri said four men entered the foundation’s rural villa south of Parma on 22 March and removed Renoir’s Les Poissons (1917), Cezanne’s Still Life with Cherries (around 1890), and Matisse’s Odalisque on the Terrace (1922). The theft took less than three minutes, partly because the alarm was activated, and earlier Carabinieri messaging put the combined estimated value at €9m. The Guardian cited the Carabinieri’s art recovery squad in Parma saying the works were found during prosecutor-ordered searches; the investigation continues.

A new book from Trevor Paglen argues that today’s image world isn’t just changing—it’s being rebuilt under our feet. The Art Newspaper reviews How to See Like a Machine: Images After AI, published 19 May by Verso Books, a 192-page collection of Paglen’s essays from the last decade. The book focuses on two transformations: the rise of computer vision and the rise of generative media. In these essays, images are framed less as representations and more as operational interfaces serving corporate or state interests, with huge implications for power and daily life. Paglen also digs into training datasets like ImageNet, highlighting how biased categorization can flow into real systems. The review is by Nick Hackworth, a writer, curator, and art adviser, and it treats the book as both clear on tech and grimly persuasive.

Colombia’s Museo de Arte de Pereira has shut its doors after a devastating earthquake tore into the region’s cultural infrastructure. ARTnews reports that after Monday’s 7.4 quake in northern Colombia, curator Alejandro Garces posted Instagram photos showing collapsed walls, X-shaped fissures through galleries, and damage near the museum’s 300-seat theater, writing that “70% of the cultural infrastructure of Risaralda is in ruins.” Pereira sits about 35 miles from the epicenter. Engineers inspected the museum on August 11 and found the damage extensive “but not structural,” according to board member Rosa Ángel—beams and columns are sound, but many walls and roofs must be rebuilt. The museum, founded in 1974 and reestablished as a museum in 1996, now faces an uncertain timeline and funding picture.

The art world has lost a key figure in video and performance. ARTnews reports that Kit Fitzgerald died on August 3 at 73, with the news announced on Instagram by her husband and longtime creative partner, Peter Gordon, who wrote that she fought “a rare and aggressive cancer” while maintaining “beauty and wonderment.” Trained as a painter, Fitzgerald brought what she called “technology with a humanness” into electronic art, using vivid color and dynamic light. She was at the vanguard of artists critically engaging with television; she and John Sanborn were among the first artists to receive commissions from PBS and the BBC. Their collaboration Interpolation (1979) was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2023. Fitzgerald was included in MoMA’s “Video Art: A History” (1983), and she contributed To Sorrow (1984) to “The Arts for Television” (1989).

Pace Gallery’s restructuring continues to reshape its leadership ranks. ARTnews reports that Amelia Redgrift, the gallery’s chief communications officer, and Dani Forest Brandi, a senior sales director, have resigned—two months after Pace laid off roughly 50 employees in a sweeping reorganization. Neither was part of the layoffs. Redgrift was recruited from Hauser & Wirth in late 2019, shortly after Pace opened its new Chelsea headquarters, and she helped steer communications through the pandemic and public campaigns including the Don Marron collection partnership with Gagosian and Acquavella. Forest Brandi joined after working as an executive assistant at Marian Goodman gallery, rising from Marc Glimcher’s executive assistant to chief of staff, then into sales, eventually becoming senior sales director. Forest said her next role will be formally announced in September.

A new French law is giving renewed momentum to one of West Africa’s longest-running restitution efforts. ARTnews reports that descendants of Omar Saïdou Tall—remembered in Senegal as a Muslim mystic, scholar, and military commander—hope to recover the “treasure of Ségou,” taken in 1890 when French troops led by General Louis Archinard seized belongings from Tall’s family palace in Ségou, in today’s Mali. The trove includes nearly 500 manuscripts plus jewelry, weapons, and other artifacts spread across French museums and the national library. Le Monde quotes Thierno Madani Tall in Dakar saying the law is essential and that it’s time for the objects to come home. Senegalese officials plan a formal request after completing a full inventory, while French curators digitize manuscripts.

A Picasso stolen while on loan more than six decades ago is now at the center of a court fight. ARTnews, citing Hyperallergic, reports that the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation filed suit in New York State Supreme Court against Massachusetts residents Lawrence Jay Handler and Wendy Cohen Handler over Femme dans un fauteuil (Woman in an Armchair), a small 1918 painting that disappeared from the University of Pittsburgh in 1961. The Guggenheim had lent it for a fall-semester exhibition and expected it back later that month; it was discovered missing on February 5. According to the complaint, the Handlers bought it from the now-closed Beadleston Fine Art in 1999, and in 2023 it surfaced for private sale at Christie’s, where it has remained. The Guggenheim seeks the painting’s return and three dollars million to five dollars million in compensatory damages, per an August 13 filing.

A new digital memorial is preserving the voices and lives of journalists killed in Gaza. The article reports that Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) launched “The Living Record” on August 12 as an oral archive honoring around 240 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since October 2023. It includes translated eulogies, such as an audio tribute by independent journalist Doaa Shaheen to Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, 28. Her eulogy describes him as someone who “ran into the line of fire,” and says he covered events as they unfolded because he believed the Palestinian narrative was worth the effort. The piece states al-Sharif was killed with four other journalists on August 10, 2025, in a targeted Israeli strike on their media tent near al-Shifa Hospital. The project launched with 24 memorial pages, with 21 more to be added through the fall.

That’s it for today’s episode—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more art world news you can actually use, and until then: Chinga la migra

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