Icons in Peril, Restitution Wars Escalate

One of Russia’s most valuable religious and artistic treasures, Andrei Rublev’s early 15th-century “Trinity” icon, is reportedly at risk after a climate-control capsule broke down at the Trinity–St Sergius Lavra near Moscow. RBC cited Ksenia Chernega, a nun who runs the Moscow Patriarchate’s legal department, saying the icon has been temporarily replaced in its capsule by a copy—RBC reports staff say that swap happened in August. The Tretyakov Gallery’s press service told Tass on 14 September that the icon “is in the Lavra’s restoration workshops,” and that museum staff are “checking its condition.” Ekho reported humidity inside the case spiked to 80%, far above the 50–55% previously recommended.

Staying with urgent heritage protection, Unesco has awarded the 2026 Unesco/Jikji Memory of the World Prize to two Gazan heritage professionals for rescuing and digitising rare Palestinian documents and manuscripts. Historian Abdul Latif Hashim and researcher-engineer Haneen Al-Amassi received the forty thousand dollars prize at a ceremony in Cheongju, Korea, on 4 September, after being selected from 58 nominations. Their emergency response team recovered rare documents from beneath rubble, including holdings from the Medieval Great Omari Mosque Library in Gaza’s old city, mostly destroyed in December 2023 by Israeli shelling. Unesco says they preserved and digitised more than twenty five thousand pages from the Mamluk and Ottoman periods, and—working under Eyes on Heritage with support from the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme—established Gaza’s first specialised manuscript restoration laboratory.

Across the Atlantic, two new lawsuits filed Monday in Los Angeles are renewing long-disputed bids to recover art lost during the Holocaust, as heirs and representatives look to new state and federal laws for an opening. The Los Angeles Times reports a 2024 California law and the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of 2025—signed by President Trump in April—aim to stop cases being tossed on technical grounds or because time has passed, and allow California law to apply in situations where it previously didn’t. One suit, filed in federal court by daughters of Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, seeks watercolors she was forced to paint at Auschwitz-Birkenau on Josef Mengele’s orders. The memorial’s spokesperson Pawel Sawicki said the portraits “must remain” as documentation of Mengele’s crimes.

Another Los Angeles lawsuit filed Monday targets a major museum: the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and Daniel Gryczman sued the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena in Los Angeles Superior Court, seeking the return of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s 16th-century diptych Adam and Eve. The work was part of the collection of Dutch Jewish dealer Jacques Goudstikker and was seized by the Nazis. The LA Times reports Allied forces later returned much of the collection to the Dutch government, which sold the diptych to collector Norton Simon in 1971. Goudstikker’s surviving heir, Marei von Saher, assigned her rights to the painting to the Jewish Federation and its board chair, Gryczman, who said any proceeds from a future sale would support financially struggling Holocaust survivors in Los Angeles. Von Saher’s daughter Charlène called victory “justice” and a step toward restoring Goudstikker’s legacy.

And speaking of murky provenance, a civil racketeering lawsuit filed September 9 alleges a multimillion-dollar scheme involving forged Andy Warhol works. Real-estate investor Richard Perlman filed in Miami-Dade county court, saying he, his wife, and son spent more than six dollars million between 2023 and 2024 on over 200 fraudulent Warhol prints—works depicting Superman, Queen Elizabeth, and other figures. First reported by the Wall Street Journal, the complaint claims the works were painted in Peru, smuggled into the United States, and falsely authenticated by an international network. Perlman says the family bought purported Warhols from Leslie Roberts of Miami Fine Art Gallery, and that Christie’s later “expressed concerns about the authenticity,” prompting a 2024 lawsuit against Roberts that settled out of court. The suit also names dealer Nathan Isen, plus Oscar Cordova, Edward Kurstak, and retired dentist Allan Dampf.

Up in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has broken ground on its new modern and contemporary art wing, the Tang Wing, named for emeritus trustee Oscar L. Tang and his wife H. M. Agnes Hsu-Tang. The project has been in development since 2014 and accelerated after Tang and Hsu-Tang gave one hundred twenty five dollars million in 2021—then the Met’s largest capital gift—toward renovating the modern art wing. Mexico City–based architect Frida Escobedo was announced as designer in 2022, and the designs were revealed in 2025, with an opening planned for 2030. The Met says it has raised six hundred seventy dollars million to cover construction and a “significant portion” of operating costs. The one hundred twenty six thousand-square-foot wing will include nearly seventy thousand square feet of exhibition space across five levels, with recessed top floors for terraces and a café on the top floor.

From New York museum-building to digital preservation in Italy, a new platform called Preserving Assisi has launched to document the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi and its masterpieces by Giotto, Cimabue, Simone Martini, and Pietro Lorenzetti. The site, launched by Haltadefinizione—part of Gruppo Panini Cultura—in collaboration with the General Custody of the Sacred Convent of Saint Francis, is free to access. A team mapped the basilica’s interior and exterior using ultra-high-resolution gigapixel photography and three-dimensional surveys, allowing visitors to explore the complex virtually while creating a detailed record for research, documentation, monitoring, and conservation over time. Lucia Panini said the purpose is “to organise and preserve knowledge,” while Haltadefinizione’s Luca Ponzio called it one of their most complex projects and said it will keep growing through new acquisitions and research. Friar Marco Moroni pointed to the 1997 Assisi earthquake as a lesson in the value of high-quality records.

Staying in Madrid, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is expanding to a second location a few blocks from its current site, El Pais reports, because its galleries have become overcrowded. The new site is the city-owned Ice and Automobile Palace in Madrid’s Literary Quarter, a one hundred seven thousand six hundred thirty nine-square-foot building unoccupied since 2007, slated for a €70 million renovation and a project completion date of 2032. More than 360 works by 21st-century artists will be shown there from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation’s contemporary art collection, TBA21, created by Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, daughter of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. Minister of Culture Ernest Urtasun said the museum now receives more than a million visitors and “this palace has become too small.” Minister of Finance Arcadi España announced the government will transfer the new building to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation, with design competitions expected this year and construction slated to begin in 2029.

From Spain to the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV marked his 71st birthday on Monday by opening the exhibition “AQVA: Catastrophe and Wonder” at the Vatican Apostolic Library in Vatican City, where French artist JR installed a massive black-and-white work titled Diluvium. The installation stretches nearly 230 feet and reproduces an 1886 Gustave Doré illustration of a biblical flood. JR told Le Figaro he wanted to “create a bridge between people and institutions,” saying the symbol of creating a wave on the library could resonate with libraries worldwide. The pope’s visit was his first to the 15th-century library, and he likened it to a heart, describing its opposing motions—systole and diastole—as movements toward the center and toward the periphery. The exhibition also includes Undae, a black-and-white video of a wave in Brazil, and Bill Moran’s typography series Letterfishes. It will be on view from September 25 to May 14, 2027.

Across the Pacific, news from ShanghART Gallery: Chinese artist Liang Shaoji has died at 81 in Shanghai following an illness. ShanghART, his longtime dealer, noted that in 1989 Liang began his lifelong “Nature Series,” using silkworms and silk farming as both medium and “collaborative partners.” He introduced silkworms to objects ranging from shoes and plastic cups to massive iron chains, oil barrels, and earthquake debris, guiding the insects as they covered these forms in white silk threads and effectively “made” their own sculptures. Liang worked across sculpture, textiles, film, performance, and sound. His 2024 solo show Sea of the Cloud at the Sea World Culture and Arts Center in Shenzhen included a giant iron chain covered by silkworm silk before a filmed ocean landscape, inspired, he said, by watching a silkworm save itself by catching a single thread. Liang was born in Shanghai in 1945, won the CCAA in 2002, and received the Prince Claus Award in 2009.

Back to Britain for a reminder of how personal photography can carry activist force. A comment piece on Sunil Gupta focuses on his survey at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, opening this month, and especially the series From Here to Eternity (1999). The work consists of six photographic diptychs made after Gupta’s HIV positive diagnosis four years earlier: intimate self-portraits—often naked or half-naked, sometimes during treatment—paired with tightly cropped, unpeopled urban scenes of closed shutters, locked doors, and bolted gates. These locations are queer clubs and saunas, photographed dormant in daylight, and Gupta has described the images as capturing an ambiguity and limbo—asking whether those spaces were shutting him inside or outside, and noting he felt unwanted in LGBTQ circles as a person with HIV. The piece also traces his earlier projects, from Friends and Lovers in 1970s Montreal to Exiles (1986–87) in Delhi, and notes the show runs 19 September to 31 January 2027.

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, and until then: Chinga la migra

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