NewsRestitution report 2018
Scholars call for Berlin centre on colonial-era heritage
Appeal published in Die Zeit welcomes Macron report but says debate should not be limited to restitution
NewsExhibitions
Berlin's 200-year-old replica workshop finds a niche at new Museum Island hub
First-ever exhibition on the Gipsformerei, which copies works for museums and Jeff Koons, will open the James Simon Gallery next summer
PreviewExhibitions
Female artists emerge from shadow cast by Berlin Wall
Exhibition at Dresden's Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau reveals how women in the Eastern Bloc were often more radical than the men
NewsDocumenta 14
Documenta deficit caused by Athens overspending widens to €7.6m in final audit
Shareholders agree to increase funding for the 2022 edition
NewsMuseums & Heritage
Washington Principles: the restitution of Nazi-looted art is still a work in progress, 20 years on
Major conference in Berlin this week marks anniversary of landmark agreement
NewsLouvre Abu Dhabi
Austrian company behind Louvre Abu Dhabi dome is insolvent after non-payment
Spiralling costs of museum project chiefly to blame for bankruptcy, say press reports
NewsAppointments & departures
Sotheby’s Germany chief Philipp von Württemberg resigns
Heinrich von Spreti will serve as interim managing director until a replacement is found
NewsRestitution
Dusseldorf auction house returns Dutch seascape to heirs of Jewish art dealer Max Stern
Auctioneer Frank Hargesheimer compensates consignor, sees “moral duty” to restitute art lost due to Nazi persecution
PreviewExhibitions
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's exotic art was inspired by cabaret, circuses and the travels of fellow artists
New show explores the flights of fancy made by the Expressionist who never ventured outside Germany and Switzerland
NewsMuseums & Heritage
Berlin’s Natural History Museum receives an eye-watering €660m of public funds for rebuild
Vast sum outstrips budget for reconstruction of city’s royal palace and creation of Humboldt Forum
NewsVienna
Austrian culture minister Gernot Blümel ‘is a no-show’, claims opposition
Austrian People’s Party politician has refused to schedule parliamentary culture committee meetings and has overseen a decline in the culture budget
NewsPolitics
Merkel calls for more women in the arts on day she announces exit from politics
The German Chancellor also welcomed debate on colonial-era art at a ceremony in the Humboldt Forum
NewsArt market
Villa Grisebach to sell founder’s collection to raise funds for new Museum of Exile
Two-day auction will include works by Picasso, Matisse, Egon Schiele, collected by Bernd Schultz over six decades
NewsDonations
Vienna’s Albertina museum receives €90m donation of 1,323 works from Essl Collection
Works will be shown in a new home for contemporary art opening next year
NewsMuseums
Nigeria plans museum for art looted from Benin
Benin Dialogue Group announces three-year schedule for new Royal Museum to display looted objects now in European collections
NewsConservation
Graff portrait of Saxon noblewoman shakes off centuries of grime and varnish
Its restorer puts it on display at Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie
NewsRestitution
Sotheby’s to auction Kirchner and Kokoschka paintings returned to Jewish dealer’s heirs
The paintings restituted to family of Alfred Flechtheim carry top estimates of $20m each
InterviewHumboldt Forum
Berlin's Humboldt Forum: how its director plans to confront Germany’s colonial past
Hartmut Dorgerloh says institution will discuss presentation of non-Western art “together with critical friends and the communities”
NewsDocumenta 14
Documenta obelisk, dismantled last week, to remain in Kassel after all
Artist Olu Oguibe accepts alternative location, saying work’s humane message is urgently needed
NewsMuseums
Fire consumes depot at Deutsches Museum
Burned storage depot housed 8,000 exhibits; museum fears “heavy damages”
NewsMuseums
Sweden's Nationalmuseum reopens—and goes free
Government waives charges after funding five-year, £100m refurbishment
FeatureGermany
'Poor but sexy' no more: property boom drives out Berlin's artists
The German capital once attracted talent from across the world with its cheap rents, but gentrification is making an exodus already seen in London and New York
PreviewExhibitions
Largest ever exhibition on Pieter Bruegel the Elder opens in Vienna
Show at the Kunsthistorisches Museum unites more than three-quarters of the artist's paintings
NewsMuseums
Deutsche Bank opens Berlin palace fit for its vast art collection
The Palais Populaire will be a permanent exhibition space for the bank's 55,000 works
NewsRestitution
Swedish museums call for panel to advise on Nazi-loot claims
“It shouldn’t be entirely up to us,” says Daniel Birnbaum, the director of Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, which recently restituted a Kokoschka painting
NewsBerlin
Ambitious project to build replica Berlin Wall blocked by city authorities
Russia film-maker Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s giant installation based on 700 hours of film faces insurmountable bureaucratic hurdles
PreviewExhibitions
Berlin blockbuster: from the world's oldest figurative art to sculptures bombed during the war
Survey at Martin-Gropius-Bau boasts a staggering 1,000 exhibits discovered over the past 20 years in Germany
NewsConservation
German court orders restorer to pay dealer €26,000 after eight-year dispute
Munich-based dealer claimed paintings he sent for cleaning had been ruined
NewsArt market
Red tape is stifling German auctions
Stringent cultural heritage laws and bureaucracy are making consignments much harder to find
PreviewExhibitions
Brillo Boxes ‘faked’ by museum director included in new Andy Warhol show
Pop artist's fist institutional exhibition revisited 50 years on at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet
NewsMuseums
Städel Museum publishes oral history of postwar German art
Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz and Kasper König are among more than 70 interviewees in the project, called Café Deutschland
NewsRestitution
Sweden's Moderna Museet returns Kokoschka work to Jewish dealer's heirs
The 1910 portrait of a marquis was sold by Alfred Flechtheim’s employee after the dealer fled Nazi Germany
NewsGermany
Police remove giant Erdogan statue from German city square after aggressive exchanges
City authorities in Wiesbaden say it posed a threat to security
NewsPerformance art
Berlin to get replica wall with visa controls in giant art installation on Soviet era
Russia film-maker Ilya Khrzhanovsky teams up with Brian Eno, Marina Abramovic, Massive Attack for project called DAU
NewsLoot
Georgia returns still life painting looted by Stalin's Trophy Commission
Country's stance contrasts that of neighbouring Russia, which still holds around a million items of war booty looted from Germany
NewsMuseums
Okwui Enwezor hits out at ‘besmirching’ by Haus der Kunst
Former artistic director says being blamed for museum’s financial woes was among “most shocking” moments of his career
NewsArtists
Berlin artists face poverty, meagre pensions and a yawning gender pay gap, survey reveals
“Women are particularly affected by this precarious situation,” study’s author says
NewsGermany
Münster on track to raise funds for Eisenman fountain as artist and gallery reduce price
Fund-raisers have so far raised €300,000 of €800,000 needed
NewsDocumenta
Prosecutor drops investigation into Documenta financial management
The exhibition's manager, Annette Kulenkampff, welcomes prosecutor’s decision
NewsMuseums
Dresden’s Albertinum brings out East German art to ‘build bridges’
Museum director Hilke Wagner seeks to address lingering prejudices with exhibition and events
NewsMuseums
Munich's Haus der Kunst cancels Joan Jonas exhibition amid financial woes
“Management errors of the past” are responsible for troubles, statement says
PreviewExhibitions
Playtime: how artists have been unleashing their inner child this summer
From superhero action figures to Chianti-infused treasure hunts and poolside art, exhibitions are exploring the importance of play
NewsAntiquities & Archaeology
Cologne archaeologists unearth oldest library in Germany
The foundation walls contain niches used to store scrolls
NewsConservation
Berlin restores murals neglected for more than a century
Only ten of the wall paintings—created in housing complexes to offer visual relief from the booming German capital—remain
NewsPolitics
German Green Party politicians launch petition 'for freedom of the arts'
Online campaign criticises right-wing governments in Austria, Hungary and Poland and warns that Germany could be next
NewsDocumenta
Documenta to name new artistic director by early 2019
Quinquennial appoints eight-member search committee for curator of 2022 edition
NewsRestitution
German museum returns tattooed Maori skull to New Zealand
The preserved head was held in Cologne's Rautenstrauch Joest Museum of world cultures for 110 years
NewsAuctions
German government steps in to buy Giambologna as minister says Bayer should have donated it to ‘people of Dresden’
Sotheby’s withdrew bronze sculpture of Mars from auction at last minute
NewsCultural policy
German culture budget grows to €1.8bn
Newly-funded projects include abandoned department store that was the set for The Grand Budapest Hotel film
NewsPhotography
Hamburg addresses German genocide in Namibia with photography exhibition
Show of Marc Erwin Babej’s work comes as Namibia calls on Germany to return cultural treasures
NewsDonations
Saudi Arabian foundation donates €9m to Berlin Museum of Islamic Art
Funds donated by Alwaleed Philanthropies will support exhibitions and education, including “Multaka” project to train refugees as museum guides
NewsOpenings
Deutsche Bank to open Berlin art centre Palais Populaire in September
First exhibition will show around 300 works on paper from the bank’s vast corporate collection
NewsGermany
Gerhard Richter creates Foucault pendulum for Münster church
Artist's donated installation pays tribute to "a small victory for science"
NewsArt Basel 2018
Olafur Eliasson’s Little Sun teams up with Ikea
Project aims to produce affordable, off-grid tools
NewsRestitution
Angola recovers six artefacts looted from museum during civil war
Dundo Museum's lost objects were traced by the Sindika Dokolo Foundation
NewsMuseums
German museum and auctioneer Im Kinsky tussle over looted glass goblet
Object was returned to consigner not museum from where it was looted at the end of Second World War
NewsMuseums
Okwui Enwezor steps down as director of Munich’s Haus der Kunst
Enwezor cites ill health as reason for departure
NewsAuction houses
Beckmann painting auctioned for record €4.7m in Berlin
Villa Grisebach says price is the highest paid for any work in a German auction
NewsMuseums
Jewish Museum displays kippa worn by Berlin assault victim
The cap is the first “rapid response” exhibit in new vitrine
NewsMuseums
Kunsthalle Mannheim unveils €68m extension backed by German billionaire
Foundation of Hans-Werner Hector, one of the country's richest people, contributed €50m to the revamp
NewsDocumenta 14
Dispute erupts over location of Kassel’s Documenta obelisk
Artist Olu Oguibe believes the city caved in to demands from the anti-immigration AfD, which opposes the monument
NewsContemporary art
Gerhard Richter donates 18 works to provide permanent accommodation for the homeless
Sale aims to raise €1m to help buy 100 dwellings
NewsLooted art
Berlin’s Ethnological Museum returns Alaskan grave artefacts looted by explorer
The objects “do not belong in our museums”, says the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
NewsMuseums
Germany presents code of conduct on handling colonial-era artefacts
Culture Minister says colonial past has been a blind spot for too long
NewsLooted art
Hamburg museum says its Benin bronzes could return to Nigeria—but not yet
Applied arts institution is showing the sculptures in a looted art exhibition
NewsConservation
Damaged art undergoes intensive care in Berlin’s Bode Museum
The institution is using funds from a private foundation to restore works scarred by war
NewsMuseums
Käthe Kollwitz Museum finds new home in west Berlin
Its current venue will be leased to the new Museum of Exile from the end of 2019
PreviewExhibitions
Spark your wanderlust with a wander through Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie
New exhibition looks at how love of travel was a prominent feature of 19th-century German Romanticism
NewsRestitution
German researchers trace Jewish newspaper mogul’s vast Nazi-looted art collection
The Mosse Art Research Project, a cooperation with the German government, identifies eight works and launches online database
NewsCollectors
Berlin bans collector from exhibiting art in industrial district
Axel Haubrok is fighting zoning restrictions after buying the former premises of the chauffeur service for top East German officials
NewsRestitution
Canadians withdraw from Düsseldorf show about Jewish dealer Max Stern
Max Stern Foundation seeks reimbursement of costs from the German city
NewsLooted art
Germany to fund museum investigations into provenance of colonial-era artefacts
The German Lost Art Foundation, which also looks into Nazi-loot, will allocate the government grants
NewsDocumenta
Documenta appoints Sabine Schormann as third director in less than a year
She will take over following last edition's €5.4m budget fiasco
PreviewExhibitions
Turkmenistan sends treasures to Berlin in diplomatic move
Bronze Age artefacts from Margiana go on show at the Neues Museum
NewsMuseums
Germany to pilot free-entry museums at Humboldt Forum
New coalition government waives charges for permanent collections in Berlin complex for first three years—but critics warn of consequences