David D'Arcy

A new documentary tracks David Hammons, the art world's invisible man

A new documentary surveying the revered but elusive artist is playing at New York's Film Forum

Antiquities trafficking investigator appointed president of Harvard Law Review—a position once held by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Barack Obama

Apsara Iyer says looting of Indian temples was a "wake-up call" to understanding how cultural heritage and crime intersect

Filmsreview

Art heist film Inside starring Willem Dafoe is no masterpiece

Actor’s tortured solo performance as a thief fails to steal the show

Booksreview

Book review | The tale of a magnificent boat with a violent colonial history

This account of the theft of a South Seas cultural treasure by German colonists in the late 1800s reveals a series of atrocities

Art from persecuted Jewish dealer draws scrutiny at National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC

Findings about the provenance of two Old Master drawings in the museum’s collection may test the pro-restitution stance recently adopted at US national institutions

Nam June Paik the prophet: documentary creates chronological collage of pioneering video artist's life

Director Amanda Kim’s "Moon Is the Oldest TV" supplements a timeline of the artist’s life with archival footage of his work

Lootnews

Revelations in Cambodia looting scandal name ‘scholar’ at Denver Art Museum as accomplice to disgraced dealer Douglas Latchford

Researcher Emma Bunker aided the notorious looter in sourcing and selling Southeast Asian antiquities

Venezuelan artists make a comeback in Miami

Art from the beleaguered country is on show at the Pinta fair, from Modern abstraction to textile works by Indigenous people

Life of elusive artist David Hammons—who once sold snowball sculptures on the streets of Manhattan—emerges in new documentary

The Melt Goes on Forever tracks the revered US artist’s career, without his direct participation, to illuminating effect

Multiple William Kentridges dramatise the philosophy of art-making in new television series

Three parts of the nine-part work premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this month

Obituariesfeature

Remembering Claes Oldenburg: reluctant Pop Art pioneer and maker of outsize sculptures

The artist denied that his huge sculptures of everyday objects were Pop Art, insisting he was not trying to make a comment consumerism or capitalism with them

Photographyinterview

Life inside Nazi death camps, as captured in prisoners’ clandestine photographs

Christophe Cognet on his new documentary, From Where They Stood, which focuses on extermination camp prisoners’ photographic acts of resistance

Skulls and sequins: book celebrates the art of the Haitian streets 

Recently published catalogue of a touring show from 2018 shows the work of artists who draw inspiration from the urban landscape of the Caribbean nation

Booksreview

Non-conformers? Encyclopaedic guidebook attempts to redefine Outsider art

Lisa Slominski's book expands the canon of "self-taught" and "folk" artists to include Hilma af Klint and the Mexican Muralists

Glass art about animals in the Chornobyl exclusion zone takes on new edge

Sibylle Peretti’s glass sculptures, on view in New York and Washington, focus on the wildlife around the Ukrainian nuclear plant that has been taken over by the Russian military

Film review

At Sundance, new films tackle painful legacies through archaeology, urban design and more

Also featured is a visually stunning documentary about bird rescuers in Delhi and a cinematic essay about the sexual power dynamics of cinema

Mondrian at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is Nazi loot, heirs allege

In 1937 the work, which had belonged to art historian Sophie Küppers, was seized by Nazi authorities and eventually sold to New York collector A. E. Gallatin

Haitian artists show in Miami but worry about home

As order collapses, the country's residents lack food, water and power—but cultural life survives amid the chaos

The top four art documentaries at DOC NYC

The documentary festival includes films about Jesse Krimes, Eadweard Muybridge and the fraught power dynamics of making money from art

JR news

JR takes on borders and prisons in new film

The French artist’s special gift is to make subversive images seem not just unthreatening, but irresistible

Booksreview

New Man Ray book brings artist's long-hidden Jewish heritage out of the shadows

A study of Man Ray, best known for his photography but also a self-professed painter, explores his barely acknowledged Jewishness and his relationship with Marcel Duchamp

Film review

Disasters sweep across the screen in Nature by Artavazd Peleshian

The first new film in 30 years by the veteran Armenian director, commissioned by the Fondation Cartier, had its premiere at the NY Film Festival this week

Two veteran lawyers from New York's Herrick Feinstein create new firm, Kaye Spiegler—and save on moving fees

The boutique firm will continue to work from the same offices, but wants to take on riskier contingency cases

Through animation and home videos, three films in Toronto try to retrieve a lost Jewish past

The features Charlotte, Where Is Anne Frank, and Three Minutes – A Lengthening give an afterlife to some of the victims of the Holocaust

Hello Kitty, meet Louis Wain: a new film portrays the eccentric life of a cat painter

Benedict Cumberbatch portrays the ill-fated Victorian illustrator who can be thanked—or blamed—for the rise of the feline in popular culture

'A thunderstorm of ash and cloud': Artists remember 11 September

On the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, artists reflect on how the event has impacted their work

Chuck Close, artist of monumental pictures and a monumental fall, dies at 81

The debate over the artist's place in post-1970 history, quiet since allegations against him were made in 2017, is sure to gather steam

Institutionalising 9/11: The Outsider documents Ground Zero museum’s contentious formation in Facebook premiere

Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the attacks, a new film follows the challenges behind the making of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York

Now 62, but still wielding spray paint, Kenny Scharf is filmed by his daughter

The family portrait documentary follows the highs and lows of the street artist’s life and career