Italy has established a new museum in Rome dedicated to showcasing more than 200 artifacts that are believed to have been stolen from cultural sites across the country and trafficked in the US.

211 of the artifacts, the majority of the 260 that make up the new museum’s rotating collection, were recovered during seizures led by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, which estimates the value of the grouping of recovered artifacts to be worth around $10 million.

The newly-minted institution, “Museum of Rescued Art,” is housed in the complex of the National Roman Museum that is home to the ancient city’s 306 C.E. Baths of Diocletian. The 260 artifacts, ranging from Etruscan, Greek and Roman origins, which are still being returned in batches to the Italian government, have gone on display as part of the new enterprise’s first exhibit. Some of the objects were recovered from private collections, museums, and auction houses.

Inaugurating the museum’s Octagonal Hall exhibition space on Wednesday in an official ceremony was Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini, Carabinieri commander Teo Luzi, and Massimo Osanna, director of Italy’s state museums. In a press conference, Franceschini described the objects populating the new space as having an “intangible value” linked to Italy’s “historical memory.” Many of them, he said, had never been viewed in public before.

Matthew Bogdanos, the Manhattan assistant district attorney who has since 2017 been in charge of overseeing the department’s cultural property seizures and works closely with the Carabinieri, told ARTnews the New York unit is “humbled that these repatriated antiquities can be on display for the public back in their country of origin.”

Damien Hirst, who rose to fame in the ’90s as the enfant terrible of the Young British Artists, is best known for shocking audiences with his art—from dead animals suspended in formaldehyde to floating basketballs to collections of pills—and the high price tags that have now come to accompany his works.

Hirst’s first came to prominence with his inclusion in the controversial 1988 exhibition “Freeze” that brought together several YBA artists; the show was staged while Hirst was still a student at London’s Goldsmiths College. Utilizing low-brow found objects with an entrepreneurial spirit, the YBAs exemplified a shift in what could be considered art, one that was accompanied by considerable criticism and outrage as to their art’s merit.

Hirst’s own work often centers on issues like death and systems of belief and value, in particular, focusing on the power of the art market. In September 2008, on the brink of the Great Recession, Hirst notoriously sold a body of new work at Sotheby’s, bringing in £70.5 million (around $127 million at the time) and skipping the art world’s gallery system, which would typically handle the first sales of new work. Some have argued that this ended his run “as an art-market darling,” but presently Hirst is represented by major galleries like Gagosian and White Cube. Add to this Hirst’s reputation as the U.K’s richest artist, who has amassed a serious collection of contemporary art that landed him on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list each year between 2008 and 2014.

In the years since, controversy has continued to follow Hirst, from designing the penthouse suite at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas in 2019 filled with his greatest hits to recent reports that his infamous diamond skull allegedly didn’t actually sell in 2007 for $100 million. His history of following the money has recently extended into his first foray into NFTs last summer. “The Currency,” a digital collection that riffs on his series of “spot” paintings, which are visually similar to the NFTs, gave buyers the option to decide between a physical painting or an NFT. In an added flair of drama, the piece not chosen would subsequently be burned.

But he is not only focused on the NFT market: his recent real-life exhibition, “Forgiving and Forgetting” at Gagosian’s 24th Street location was his first show in New York in four years. That show opened in January and was later extended until April 16. Through it all, Hirst has succeeded in keeping his name at the top of our minds.

May 13 – June 18, 2022

May 14 – June 18, 2022

The weather in Kassel was gorgeous today, and I spent a lot of time taking in Documenta’s abundant outdoor offerings. Many of them involved living plants, including a greenhouse by the Colombian collective Más Arte Más Acción (MAMA), a compost heap by La Intermundial Holobiente, Nhà Sàn Collective’s Vietnamese garden, and mosquito net-based structures by Cinema Caravan and Takashi Kuribayashi.

ruangrupa, the Indonesian collective behind this year’s edition of documenta, writes that they do not conceive of Kassel as an exhibition venue, but rather, an ecosystem. But this mentality not only informs installations in parks—a chatty barista at a documenta-approved coffee cart told me that, to be an on-site vender, they had to sign an agreement with the organization saying they’d source everything locally and ethically.

Yesterday, I wrote that the white cube context felt sort of irrelevant to the show. Today, I hardly went in any buildings. I found myself more impressed—and more tired. The day felt something like a scavenger hunt, and to see La Intermundial Holobiente’s compost heap alone, I walked an hour roundtrip.

I was struck by the Nest Collective’s Return to Sender, which featured giant bundles of the e-waste that often ends up on the African continent. Placed prominently in a park, the work didn’t attempt to expose a shocking truth. It didn’t have to, either—we all know we live on a trash planet, and that the effects of this reality are experienced unequally. The work was accompanied by a video in which residents in Nairobi, the city where the Nest Collective is based, discuss their relationship to secondhand clothes, which are abundant in the city and often imported from the Global North. They talked about the challenge of crafting their own unique styles and identities with these materials. The work is indicative of a recent trend in which artists position themselves as figures who might help us wade through the trash and industrial materials we are slowly drowning in.

Archaeologists from Stockholm University discovered the remains of a Viking Age shipyard, the university announced Wednesday, while excavating at Birka, known as Sweden’s first town. The find sheds light on the organization of the Viking’s maritime activities.

Established during the mid-8th century C.E., Birka is one of the best examples of city-like trading posts set up by Vikings for long-distance maritime trade. Located on the present-day island of Björkö, the ancient site, named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993, would have been a major trading hub for merchants and tradesmen across Europe.

Birka had a rampart surrounding the city for defense and legal, economic, and social boundaries. The shipyard, however, as well as a boat landing site currently undergoing research, are both located outside of the rampart. Until this point, efforts have been focused within the rampart.

Archaeologists from Stockholm University conducted a systematic survey of the shipyard using mapping and drone investigations. Along the shore, the team uncovered a stone-lined depression with a wooden boat slop at the bottom, where boats would have been serviced. They also found large quantities of unused and used boat rivets, whetstones made from slate, and woodworking tools.

“A site like this has never been found before, it is the first of its kind, but the finds convincingly show that it was a shipyard,” said Sven Isaksson, professor of archaeological science at Stockholm University, in a press release.

Earlier this year, Netflix debuted Inventing Anna, a miniseries that offered a fictionalized account of Anna Delvey’s attempts to scam the rich and famous, some of whom were in the art world. Now, there is “Reinventing Anna,” a series of NFTs minted by none other than Delvey herself, who is currently behind bars.

The NFTs are images of prints that Delvey, an artist in her own right, has created. The three prints minted so far offer stylized versions of episodes from Delvey’s own life. Each is available for just 0.08 ETH, or around $90.

In one print, Delvey pictures the time she spent in ICE custody. (Her deportation to Germany is reportedly still pending.) Shown facing the viewer in a field of ICE detainees turned away, Delvey stands over a text in cursive that reads “White privilege application: denied.”

The NFTs come with what the project termed “access to Anna” by way of “exclusive live streams and other online and metaverse events.” It also promised personal calls with Delvey, sketches by her, and more to “a select group of top holders.”

It’s not clear which platform the NFTs exist on, based on the “Reinventing Anna” website, but there is a link to a Delvey-run page where users can mint their own NFTs.

May 13 – June 18, 2022

May 14 – June 18, 2022

The story of long-forgotten 16th-Century musical genius Vicente Lusitano

April 26 – June 18, 2022

May 13 – June 18, 2022

Why the enigmatic star's mystical songs are being constantly re-purposed

The event that created a myth

April 28 – June 18, 2022

May 14 – June 18, 2022

Buzz Lightyear's origin film has a 'gloomy setting' and 'depressing storyline'

How Steven Spielberg's film about a loveable alien stands up, forty years on

How musicians are using hip-hop as a form of protest

How videogame music plays our emotions