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BAYEUX TAPESTRY SPLIT? In an opinion piece for The Guardian, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said a deal to return the Parthenon marbles, located in the British Museum, was still within reach, as long as Greek ownership is recognized. In an essay provocatively titled “Britain would not cut up the Bayeux tapestry. So seize this moment and reunite the Parthenon sculptures in Greece,” Mitsotakis urged British lawmakers to show “political will and courage.” He also said he had been “surprised” by British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan‘s recent comments to the Financial Times, observing that the Bayeux tapestry loan could serve as a model for a similar arrangement with the Parthenon marbles. That suggestion, and any kind of loan agreement, would be unacceptable, Mitsotakis said, as it would ultimately entail “a scheme that would mean we ‘borrow’ parts of our own monument.” Indeed, he uses Cullinan’s comparison of the two iconic monuments to make a very different point: “Both were conceived as single works, intended to be seen and understood as a whole…Nobody would seriously contemplate cutting what survives of the tapestry in two and displaying half in London and half in Bayeux, and claiming this was an adequate way to understand it. Yet that is exactly what happened to the Parthenon sculptures.” Related Articles Brazilian Artist Lucia Laguna Dies, Artworks by Bolivian Artist Alejandro Mario Yllanes Resurrected from the Dumpster, Uzbekistan's Centre for Contemporary Arts Tashkent Opens, and More: Morning Links for September 23, 2026 Study Finds Mismanagement is Driving Away American Museum Workers, Investigation Claims Eiffel Tower is Victim of Dysfunctional Oversight, and More: Morning Links for September 22, 2026
BREAKFAST BREAK-IN. Thieves made off with six bronze sculptures by Peter Gehring valued at over €100,000 ($114,000), from the garden of the artist’s former home-turned museum, near Munich, reports Monopol andEvangelische Zeitung. Police announced yesterday that suspects entered the museum garden following a recent national “Open Monument” event, which gives special public access to museums and government buildings. The next morning, on September 13, around 10 am, the sculptures were reportedly loaded into a car and whisked away. Police are actively investigating the case.
Heidi, the hot young Berlin gallery, has picked up and moved to London as “less and less experimental art is being shown” in the German art hub, which is also attracting less “buyer footfall,” per the gallery’s founder, Pauline Seguin. [The Art Newspaper]
Adam Pendleton will paint in black the grand, 19th-century stairway at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, for his forthcoming exhibit there. [The New York Times]
Diego Rivera’s 1950s stone relief on the Olympic stadium at Mexico City’s Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) is one of three monumental, three-dimensional murals on the campus being restored with support from the World Monuments Fund (WMF), including other works by David Alfaro Siqueiros and Juan O’Gorman. [The Art Newspaper]
The US has returned $5 million worth of 36 looted antiquities to Syria, including a “monumental stone relief” stolen from Palmyra while under ISIS control, plus 13 items that had been seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [The New Region]
Take a look around London Design Festival and the overlapping London Fashion Week, where art and design collide, reaching toward “softness and calm,” ahead of Frieze Week in October. [ARTnews]
WEAPONIZED ARCHAEOLOGY. Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government in Israel is using ancient archaeological heritage as a tool for justifying the seizure of Palestinian land in the West Bank, reports the Financial Times. The area in and around Sebastia is a case in point. Israeli authorities have issued an expropriation order for over 494 acres near Sebastia, claiming they can grab the land to protect and develop archaeological sites there. So far, Israel’s top court has frozen their efforts, but about 560 Palestinian families directly concerned remain in fragile uncertainty over their future. “The order is not justified: not legally, not professionally, not ethically,” said Alon Arad, the leader of an Israeli organization that protects heritage sites, Emek Shaveh. “This expropriation shows more than anything the weaponization of heritage and archaeology, and the way they are being manifested into an annexation program that has nothing to do with archaeology or heritage,” he added.