Conservation & Preservation

True mettle: restoring Hampton Court Palace's glorious but scarred Baroque iron screens

Reviving 17th-century Tijou screens commissioned by Protestant monarchs William and Mary means undoing decades of damage and haphazard repairs

Van Gogh gets a facelift: conservation of self-portrait to be revealed in London

The Kröller-Müller Museum painting will be unveiled in the Courtauld Gallery’s exhibition

a blog by Martin Bailey

Catholic church's proposed redesign of Notre Dame interior provokes outrage

Plans to revamp the fire-ravaged cathedral with contemporary art and multilingual projections of Bible quotes have been compared to Disneyland

Restoration of Courtauld Gallery's Botticelli altarpiece yields surprising new discoveries

Technical studies on neglected painting cast valuable light on the workings of the Renaissance master's Florence studio and on the question of attribution

Ancient Krishnas are reunited with their body parts

A collaboration between the Cleveland Museum of Art and the National Museum of Cambodia revealed that each boy god had been given the other’s limbs during earlier conservation work

Of teapots and rubabs: a story of breaking and mending in Afghanistan

In a country that has been at war with others and itself for decades, the danger lies in forgetting how to repair the damage, says archaeologist and cultural heritage specialist Bastien Varoutsikos

Getty Foundation donates $1.3m to preserve Arizona national monument

The Wupatki National Monument contains an ancient Indigenous complex and more than 5,000 adjacent archaeological sites

A sneak peek at France's first cultural venue celebrating stained glass

The Cité du Vitrail will open in the medieval town of Troyes in spring 2022, but preview tours are running this weekend for the European Heritage Days

Ancient Chinese sites hit by flash floods this summer

Deadly rains in central Henan province threatened key Unesco World Heritage sites and hundreds of national relics. Experts warn the disaster may be a taste of future trouble

Canadanews

Klee Wyck, a historic home used by Emily Carr in West Vancouver, to be demolished

The property, bequeathed to the district by a physician friend of the artist for use as an arts centre, has been neglected for decades

Protocols are already available to help save Afghanistan’s cultural heritage

In 2015, the Association of Art Museum Directors established a structure under which museums can act to protect cultural property in immanent peril

Afghanistananalysis

Afghanistan: the historical sites of key concern after the Taliban's return

From the Bamiyan Valley to an ancient spiritual centre of Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, former Unesco senior official Francesco Bandarin looks at the embattled country’s most important landmarks

Vancouver public sculpture is for the birds no more

Stacked car installation that became a roost for local pigeons and starlings—and was covered by their poo—will be restored and eventually relocated

Eccentric Wentworth Woodhouse estate—home to centuries-old camellias—gets set to bloom again in Yorkshire

The rambling 365-room mansion is being rescued from near collapse, starting with its tea house

British Museum to restore glass artefacts shattered in Beirut explosion

Eight vessels from the Archaeological Museum of the American University of Beirut will undergo conservation thanks to €25,000 grant from Tefaf fund

Nailed it: Kizhi Pogost church is finally restored on Russian island of remarkable wooden buildings

Newly reopened 18th-century Church of the Transfiguration, topped with 22 domes, is said to have been built without a single nail

Ageing plastic from Communist East Germany comes under the microscope in Getty research project

Scientists will study how Soviet-era household objects "made to last 30 or 40 years" can be preserved

Ai Weiwei’s animals feel the heat as conservators treat them to al fresco waxing at Lacma

Sculptures arrived from China ahead of a show of works of Chinese contemporary art

Cinematic revival: Hong Kong's post-war landmark State Theatre to be restored by 2026

Billionaire collector and property developer Adrian Cheng is leading the project to reopen the defunct 1950s cinema as a "cultural oasis"

Robert E. Lee’s former Virginia mansion reopens to the public with an enlightening focus on the enslaved

Arlington House, where wealthy white privilege contrasts with bondage and suffering, has undergone a $12.3m rehabilitation and reinterpretation

Neglected corners of US history: National Trust for Historic Preservation designates 11 most endangered places

Places range from Alabama farms where civil rights marchers once camped to a Utah site where Chinese railroad labourers stayed

Woolworth Building in San Antonio, a landmark in civil rights history, is spared from demolition

Former 1921 dime store, which peacefully desegregated its lunch counter in 1960, will house an Alamo museum

V&A restores casts of warriors that adorned ancient Iranian palace for once-in-a-lifetime display

New exhibition on 5,000 years of Iranian civilisation will feature museum's rarely seen replicas of life-sized friezes from King Darius’s “very excellent” palace

Getty teams with city of Los Angeles to identify places that are important to African American heritage

Conservation effort goes beyond architectural distinction to highlight sites where Black residents embraced their culture and advocated for advancement

After long complaints about pollution and blocked views, Italy bans cruise ships in Venice’s historic centre

Decision will affect partying art collectors and redirect the mass tourism routed through the Giudecca Canal

Solace through conservation: World Monuments Fund makes strides in restoring war-damaged sites in Yemeni city

Amid debilitating war, conservation of mausoleum and museum palace in Taiz is now complete

Gifted to the English city 80 years ago, Coventry's medieval Charterhouse will finally open to the public

After a £4.3m National Lottery Heritage Fund grant and years of restoration, the historic priory is set to open this summer

Beirutnews

France gives €500,000 towards reconstruction of Beirut's blast-hit Sursock Museum

French aid will restore the stained-glass windows and Arab salon of the historic villa, which was severely damaged in port explosions last August