Museum Price Tags, Stolen Legacies, DNA Secrets

The British Museum’s Bayeux Tapestry exhibition has been getting five-star reviews, but The Art Newspaper’s visit was about what it’s like for regular, paying visitors on the first public day. With a £33 ticket in hand, the writer queued 20 minutes to enter, then another 25 minutes in a long, dim corridor designed to acclimatize eyes to the low light needed for the 950-year-old textile. Inside, the first sight of the 70-metre tapestry is described as genuinely striking, its colours still remarkably preserved. But you view it in a slow shuffle of about 100 people, with announcements every two minutes urging everyone to keep moving. After 35 minutes, it’s done—nearly £1 a minute—memorable, tightly organized, and exiting through the gift shop.

In Amsterdam, The Art Newspaper reports that the Rijksmuseum is going microscopic with Rembrandt’s The Night Watch (1642). As part of the five-year “Operation Night Watch” restoration and research project—taking place behind a glass wall—experts will spend six months sampling bacteria from areas with and without varnish. The project is partnered with Artis-Micropia, a microbes museum that’s part of Amsterdam zoo. The samples will be cultured and presented in an installation called The Night Watch Lives starting 11 November: a life-sized reproduction showing which microorganisms live where on the painting. Katrien Keune, the Rijksmuseum’s head of science, says the idea includes exploring how visitors’ bio-material might register on the work—while noting that “Rembrandt’s DNA” would be the “Holy Grail.” Microbiologist Eline van Bloois adds that microbes aren’t inherently good or bad.

ARTnews follows the complicated aftermath of a theft in southern France: four Renoir works were stolen from a museum on Tuesday, but two were abandoned in the museum garden and recovered—Portrait of Madame Pichon (1895) and Coco Lisant (1905). Two other Renoirs are still missing, and one of them—Jeune femme au puits (1886)—already had a restitution claim attached to it. According to Le Monde, descendants of Paris-based Jewish dealer Jadwiga (also Hedwig) Zak, who died in Auschwitz, had filed a formal request for its restitution. The Canada-based Mondex Corporation confirmed to ARTnews it has been working with the heirs; founder James Palmer said a petition was sent to the French government about a year ago. Musée d’Orsay curator Paul Perrin told Le Monde the work was seized during World War II by the German organization Otto and later ended up in Bavaria.

In France, Libération reports—and ARTnews relays—that artist Claude Lévêque has been ordered to stand trial in a French criminal court for rape and sexual assault of three minors. His lawyers have appealed, a move expected to further delay proceedings in Seine-Saint-Denis that have already taken years to reach this stage. Court documents leaked to Libération describe accusations that Lévêque used “his position and his aura as a renowned contemporary artist” to create conditions for abuse and moral influence over the minors. The victims were between eight and 18 years old during the alleged crimes, between 1989 and 2007, and he faces charges including sexual assault involving violence, coercion, threat, or surprise, and indecent assault on a minor under 15 by a person in a position of authority. Lévêque has denied the accusations, while also claiming the relationships were consensual; a later Le Monde report notes court reasoning on why that claim is contradictory for minors.

Doha is getting a new permanent pavilion devoted to Gerhard Richter, and The Art Newspaper says it’s scheduled to open in November. The announcement was made on 10 September in Berlin by Qatar Museums at the Neue Nationalgalerie during Berlin Art Week. The 94-year-old artist designed Doha Pavilion: Gerhard Richter with architect Annabelle Selldorf. Qatar Museums chair Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani described it as “a three-dimensional experience of Richter’s work,” rooted in a visit Richter made to Qatar in 2013. The irregular six-sided structure sits in a waterside park linking the IM Pei–designed Museum of Islamic Art with the future Art Mill Museum. Its exterior patterns derive from Abstract Painting (724-4), 1990, which Richter digitised, cut into eight thousand one hundred ninety two strips, and rearranged beginning in 2011. Inside: three Strip paintings, a Strip Tower, and two Mirror works, lit by an oculus.

In London, ARTnews reports that Tschabalala Self’s Lady in Blue is now on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth—and the reviews are split. The bronze sculpture depicts a Black woman walking, wearing a baby blue dress with a slit and matching heels. It’s the 16th artwork to appear on the plinth since 1998, a program funded by the Mayor of London with support from Arts Council England and Bloomberg Philanthropies, with a new work every two years. Justine Simons, London’s deputy mayor for culture and the creative industries, called the figure a tribute to everyday women—“Monumental in scale—but at the same time relatable.” Critics Laura Freeman at the Times of London and Jonathan Jones at the Guardian each gave it four stars, praising its joy, humor, and life. The Daily Telegraph gave it two stars, calling it “yet another artistic dud,” and Steven Barrett wrote on X that it felt tacky déjà vu.

Hyperallergic rounds up “15 Fall Art-ennials, From St. Louis to Dakar,” pitching autumn as a season of new beginnings beyond Venice. The list spotlights a new triennial at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Walker Design Triennial: Beyond Materialism, running Oct. 17 to Feb. 14, 2027, featuring 95 works and examining how design can engage social issues rather than profit-driven consumption. It also highlights the inaugural Bienal de Yucatán: Vocal across venues in Mérida, Mexico, from Nov. 26 to Feb. 28, 2027, bringing together 75 artists—named participants include Yoko Ono, Teresa Margolles, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Oscar Murillo, and Jean-Luc Moulène—around language and idiom. The guide also previews Museum of the City of New York Triennial: The Photography Triennial: After Dark (Nov. 20–April 25, 2027), focused on nightlife and the night shift, with photographers including Elle Pérez and Kia LaBeija among others.

Hyperallergic’s essay “Standing in the Shadow of No Towers” traces how 9/11 reshaped immigrant life, South Asian activism, and art-making in New York. The writer remembers dancing Sundays at the Tribeca nightclub Vinyl, and only realizing how close it was to the Twin Towers after the attacks, when the sidewalk filled with bags of socks and clothes gathered for survivors people believed might still be pulled out alive. Working at HBO at the time, the author describes walking toward the downtown office and hearing a Bangladeshi fruitseller, Amin Miah, say in Bangla, “Duita biman marse, ami dekhsi”—“two planes hit, I saw it.” The essay recalls phone lines jammed, evacuations, and the scramble to find loved ones, including artist Reiko Yamamoto. It then turns to the days after: a vigil organized by Sreenath Sreenivasan of SAJA for a Sikh hate-crime victim, and conversations about how quickly belonging—and suspicion—shifted.

Hyperallergic reports that the School of Visual Arts will end its graduate Photography, Video, and Related Media program as it faces a mounting deficit. SVA Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Jason Koth disclosed the termination in an email shared with Hyperallergic, saying MFA Photo candidates can complete their degree without interruption, and the program will close out in its 40th year with the Class of 2028’s graduation. Koth called it a “painful decision,” attributing it to SVA’s economic challenges, a nationwide decline in enrollment in graduate-level photography programs, and broader federal policy and financial pressures that made the current model untenable. The move follows SVA’s recent announcement that it will end its graduate curatorial practice track next spring with the retirement of founder and chair Steven Henry Madoff. Founding chair Charles Traub, who launched the program in 1988, said he believed the closure could have been avoided with better coordination and more aggressive strategies for addressing the future of AI.

The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt is coming home to Scotland, Hyperallergic reports, and the timing is especially poignant. The project began in 1989 under Scottish activist Ally Van Tillo, who died on August 30. On Saturday, September 12, the quilt will be shown in its entirety in its home country for the first time, on view at Glasgow contemporary art venue Tramway through October 4. The quilt follows four years after Cleve Jones began the US AIDS Quilt in San Francisco in 1985, but grew as a separate UK edition memorializing people lost to HIV and AIDS. After nearly two decades in storage and an exhibition at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall last year, it returns with archival material on its Scottish origins. First displayed at Hyde Park in 1994, it now has 335 panels representing over 600 people, built from three-by-six-foot sections echoing a grave plot’s dimensions.

That’s The Daily Art 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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