Vittorio Sgarbi, Italy’s controversial junior culture minister, resigned as he continued to face mounting scrutiny over an array of matters, including a possible connection to a stolen painting and an ongoing investigation by the country’s antitrust body.

It was the latter inquiry that Sgarbi cited when he announced his resignation at a conference held late in the day in Milan on Friday. That investigation centered around the money that Sgarbi allegedly pocketed when he made public appearances at culture events.

Last year, the Italian daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano reported that Sgarbi had made about €300,000 over the course of nearly nine months from conducting such appearances, spurring the antitrust body to investigate. Sgarbi previously defended himself, claiming that he had merely taken “a fee for what I’ve done all my life, what any writer or lecturer does: I talk about art.” But the antitrust body said that in fact, these fees were “activities incompatible with a government office.”

On Friday, as he resigned form his post, Sgarbi said, “According to the Antitrust notice, I could not talk about art to avoid conflict of interest. And therefore I would like to announce here my resignation as Undersecretary of State for Culture.”

Meanwhile, last month, Sgarbi had faced an investigation over his alleged connections to a Rutilio Manetti painting that was stolen in 2013. Il Fatto Quotidiano claimed that a similar-looking Manetti painting that went on view in 2021 in the Tuscan city of Lucca was the heisted one. The one in the Lucca show had reportedly come from the Villa Maidalchina, which Sgarbi owns.

The British Museum will display a small grouping of items it has recently recovered in a new exhibition. Those objects represent just 10 of the 351 that have been recovered amid ongoing investigations into a vast array of that were damaged or stolen, or went missing.

The majority of those 2,000 items were classical gems and gold jewelry. None of the objects had been on public display recently.

An unnamed staff member, later revealed to be senior curator Peter Higgs, was fired in connection with the stolen items. He had listed some of those items on eBay for as little as $51, and is thought to have conducted the thefts over a period of around 25 years. In the wake of Higgs’s firing, director Hartwig Fischer and deputy director Jonathan Williams resigned.

The museum has been working to rebuild after destructive reports in the British press about how it handled the missing items. After the British Museum was urged to strengthen its records for its collection to prevent future thefts, board chair George Osborne promised a £10 million digitization project.

The British Museum said the incident “sparked a renewed public interest in these objects,” and prompted a display exploring the significance of classical gems and their impression left throughout history. In addition to being worn as jewelry, classical gems were used as seals or simply collected as beauty objects, especially by royalty, aristocrats and artists.

A GoFundMe campaign to replace a statue of Jackie Robinson stolen last week from a baseball complex in McAdams Park in Wichita, Kansas has raised over $185,000 in just five days.

The amount is more than double the $75,000 the statue was estimated to have originally cost when it was first erected in 2021 by the League 42 Foundation, a nonprofit introducing baseball to youths in Wichita.

The largest donations are reported to have come from Major League Baseball, according to foundation executive director Bob Lutz, and from an anonymous former MLB player, according to Wichita police chief Joe Sullivan.

The statue was discovered to be stolen last week with only the statue’s feet remaining. Then, on Tuesday, remnants of the statue were found burned when the local fire department responded to a trash can fire in a park seven miles away, the Associated Press reported. Police said the theft was caught on surveillance, but they have yet to apprehend a suspect.

In a statement, Lutz, said, “As law enforcement searches for the culprits of this crime, we remain devoted to our mission of providing low-cost baseball and education opportunities for our 600 kids, ages 5-14. They are as heartbroken over this theft as any of us and we are determined to replace the statue.”

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

The Headlines

CRIMINAL EVIDENCE ON VIEW. As promised, the British Museum will exhibit some of the small Roman gems stolen and recently recovered, among the nearly 2000 objects missing, damaged, and allegedly pocketed by a former senior curator at the museum. Some 350 items have been recovered to date, in the ongoing investigation that continues to shake the institution. Among the pieces to be displayed later this month, is a bust of Cupid from the 1st or 2nd Century BCE. “We promised we’d show the world the gems that were stolen and recovered – rather than hide them away,” George Osborne, chair of the museum Board of Trustees, told the BBC.

FRANKENTHALER FEUD. An amended legal complaint was filed against the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, by Frederick Iseman, the artist’s nephew. He has expanded on earlier allegations against members of the artist’s family, including his cousin, the artist Clifford Ross, whom he says was using foundation funds to bolster his own artistic career in a “pay-to-display machine.” [ARTnews]

The Digest

Judy Chicago became the most famous feminist artist of her generation when, for her monumental Dinner Party (1974–79), she enlisted hundreds of women volunteers to contribute craftwork to her giant triangular table. On that table, Chicago set plates dedicated to notable women from history, from the goddess Ishtar to the artist Georgia O’Keeffe. But in lieu of food, she served each woman a unique ceramic vulva, decorated as a tribute to her work.

This iconic installation toured 16 venues in 6 countries, with a message to women everywhere: you are never alone, even if you find yourself isolated in the domestic sphere. And in 2001, The Dinner Party became the centerpiece of the Brooklyn Museum’s feminist art center.

Though clearly popular, The Dinner Party, like much of Chicago’s work, has also received plenty of criticism—for both its TERF-y equation of womanhood with vulvas, and for its whiteness. In 1984 critic Hortense J. Spillers pointed out that Chicago had included only one Black woman, Sojourner Truth, and represented her unlike the others, with faces instead of a vulva. Spiller calls the result “symbolic castration.”

Even though Chicago enjoys the status of feminist icon, and of being a household name, her retrospective at the New Museum in New York, titled “Herstory,” hasn’t exactly been a buzzy blockbuster. That’s probably because Chicago is not quite the artist we need right now: in 2024 she is known for a version of feminism that is popular and palatable, but also pretty narrow.

While many are tempted to write off Chicago completely, I find myself a nervous witness to a trend afflicting a younger generation that seems to feel that history—say, that of second-wave feminism—is bad, since people were more racist, sexist, and imperialist back then. They’re not wrong, but the attitude misses the importance of learning from history and from elders like Chicago: you can grow from others’ mistakes, and you would be wise to honor the trailblazers who made sacrifices to carve imperfect but important paths for change.

November 26, 2023 – February 3, 2024

December 8, 2023 – February 3, 2024

December 16, 2023 – February 4, 2024

January 5 – February 3, 2024

January 5 – February 3, 2024

November 24, 2023 – February 10, 2024

December 1, 2023 – February 11, 2024

December 2, 2023 – March 3, 2024

December 17, 2023 – February 4, 2024

October 21, 2023 – February 8, 2024

How the elusive figure William Onyeabor became a cult icon

An unprecedented three non-English language films are nominated for best picture

How Truman Capote exposed the secrets of America's elite women

Maestro's make-up wins Oscar nom despite earlier controversy

The writer of Amazing Grace was also a slave ship captain