Stories from museums, auction rooms, and art history. We cover who owns contested works, what happens to stolen paintings, how experts decide who painted what, and the history behind the headlines.
A.A. Milne sold the North American merchandising rights to his bear in 1930, and the century since has been spent in contracts, courtrooms, and, at one point, Disney's trash. As Winnie-the-Pooh turns 100, one bear has become three, belonging to Disney, to a New York library, and to everyone.
Berlin, Washington, Cambridge, and Zurich have all handed Benin Bronzes back to Nigeria. The British Museum, which holds more of them than anyone, cannot. A 1963 Act of Parliament forbids it, a judge ruled that no moral obligation overrides it, and Parliament just spent two years making sure it stays that way.
After every museum heist comes the same question: what will the thieves do with it? The answer is a lesson in what value actually is — and it has three exits, none of them a sale.
An AI firm says two famous panels aren't Van Eycks — with 91 percent certainty. The scholars who have spent careers on the painter say the model can't know that. While they argue, forgers found a better use for the machines: fake provenance for paintings that never existed.
A €100 raffle ticket bought on a whim at a Paris restaurant. A $1 million Picasso. The strangest charity draw in the art world keeps minting unlikely millionaires.
Abstract Expressionism was the movement that declared absolute individual freedom — and became, without its artists knowing, an instrument of the American state. The story of how it happened is stranger than any canvas.