Archaeologist Who May Have Found D’Artagnan’s Skeleton Was Arrested, Congress Nixes Museum Bill, and More: Morning Links for May 22, 2026

Good Morning!

The Headlines

ALL FOR ONE, AND ONE FOR ALL? The Dutch archaeologist involved in the recent discovery of what many hope are the remains of the 17th-century musketeer D’Artagnan—found beneath the floor of a church in Maastricht—was arrested and released after retaining some of the excavated skeletal remains, Le Figaro reports. The archaeologist, Wim Dijkman, remains the subject of a police investigation. When the Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul parish in Maastricht’s Wolder neighborhood announced that stones on its church floor had unexpectedly sunk and a skeleton had been found beneath them, hopes ran high that the remains were those of D’Artagnan—born Charles de Batz de Castelmore, the real-life inspiration for Alexandre Dumas’s 1844 novel The Three Musketeers—who died near the site in the Battle of Maastricht in 1673.But Dijkman told Le Figaro that no stones sank by accident. He and other researchers, he said, had been planning an archaeological excavation of the church for months. He now claims that the church, in coordination with the local municipality, fabricated that story as a “cover-up” to seize control of the findings and obscure their earlier attempts to stall the project and claim credit for it. He also contends that local authorities are mishandling the sensitive excavation — and that they had asked a Munich laboratory to return the skeletal remains by airmail following testing. To prevent what he considered a reckless transfer, Dijkman traveled to Germany, retrieved the bones, and placed them in a friend’s safe. That decision apparently led to his arrest on Wednesday. Local media report that he has since handed over the remains. “I am not going to make a fool of myself with D’Artagnan’s ‘wild dig.’ This is a matter of defamation, and I am personally discredited in this affair,” Dijkman said.

MUSEUM ON ICE. A bill to create a Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum on the National Mall was rejected by the US House of Representatives on Thursday, after it was amended to recognize only “biological” females, the New York Timesreports. The bill designated a location for the long-awaited museum, which has had bipartisan support. But after Republicans amended the bill, including its definition of women, Democrats sank it in a vote of 216 to 204. Some said that any provision specifying the achievements of “biological women” threatened to exclude transgender women and girls from the institution’s programming. Republicans had also added language intended to allow the president to potentially select an alternative site for the museum, while giving the Trump-controlled Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission approval power over its design.

The Digest

The US Commission of Fine Arts approved Trump’s plan to build a 250-foot triumphal arch in Washington, D.C. [Washington Post]

Adam Budak, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow (MOCAK), was fired by the local mayor, igniting a backlash from artists. [Artforum]

In October, a new art center backed by collector Laurent Dumas, called Large, will open on the Ile Seguin, an island on the Seine River west of Paris, with an exhibition curated by Cecilia Alemani. It will be joined by new movie theaters, a hotel, and a sculpture garden. [Le Figaro] 

White Stripes frontman Jack White talks about his debut solo exhibition of visual artworks titled “These Thoughts May Disappear” at Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery in London. [Financial Times]

The Kicker

ART THE DOCTOR ORDERED. When a hospital in Los Angeles shuttered ahead of major renovations that will transform the building into the St. Vincent Behavioral Health Campus, for treating addiction and providing services for mental health and interim housing, locals decided to activate the space with art. That is exactly what over 70 artists have done across the 45,000-square-foot building, and from May 27 to July 31, the (paying) public can experience this one-of-a-kind, immersive exhibition titled “Hospital of Emotions,” reports the Los Angeles Times. A portion of the proceeds from ticket sales will benefit the center’s nonprofit. Divided into themes of grief, fear, hope, joy, and sadness, contributing multimedia artists selected with the curator and artist Yaara Sachs from an open call, are presenting works about subjects ranging from epilepsy, PTSD, and homelessness. There’s Melan Allen’s The Eggsibition, where ceramic eggs cover the walls around a giant yolk laid atop a hospital bed; or Paal Anand’s piece about an IED explosion and veterans who commit suicide after returning from war. “There is no way you can walk out and look away,” Anand said.