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- Police in Italy and Brazil have recovered nearly a dozen paintings stolen over the last year.
- London’s cultural sector is facing growing scrutiny over salaries that fall short of the expertise demanded.
- A new museum in Slovenia is turning Balkan humor into an unlikely cultural attraction.
The Headlines
BACK IN THE FRAME. 2025 was the year of the museum robbery. Perhaps 2026 will shape up to be the year of recovery. On Friday, Italian police announced that they had recovered paintings by Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri Matisse that were stolen from the Fondazione Magnani Rocca museum near Parma in March. Meanwhile, on Thursday, Brazilian police announced that they had recovered eight works by Matisse that were stolen from a library in São Paulo last year. Lastly, the Guggenheim Museum sued a Massachusetts couple in New York State Supreme Court this week for the recovery of a Picasso work stolen in 1961 while on loan to the University of Pittsburgh. (The couple, to be clear, isn’t accused of stealing the 1918 painting, Femme dans un fauteuil, but of purchasing it from a Manhattan gallery in 1999.)
WEALTH GAP. London’s cultural sector is facing growing scrutiny over salaries that fall short of the expertise and experience demanded, Art Plugged wrote. Recent museum and gallery job listings—at Tate, for example—have highlighted roles paying in the low £30,000s, raising questions about who can realistically afford to build a career in the capital. Across the Atlantic, however, salaries tend to be considerably higher, at least at the top end. New Tate director Jessica Morgan earned roughly $814,000 annually as the director of New York’s Dia Art Foundation (she’s set to earn around $300,000 at Tate), and her former job is now up for grabs. So too a load of other museum leadership roles in the US. While several high-profile director positions have recently been filled, others remain open. As ARTnews‘s Sarah Douglas reported in January, there are easily two dozen director openings at museums across the country.
The Digest
Martin Clark, director of Camden Art Centre, has been appointed director and chief executive of Towner Eastbourne. He will replace Joe Hill and take up the role in January 2027. [FAD]
Dresden’s newly restored Correggio altarpiece will anchor a major exhibition after nearly four years of painstaking conservation. [The Art Newspaper]
Figurative painter Jack Crabtree has died at 87. [The Guardian]
Critic Carlos Valladares explains why Michael Fried’s attacks on liberalism have never been more significant. [Art in America]
The Kicker
YEBIGA! A new museum in Ljubljana, Slovenia, is turning Balkan humor into an unlikely cultural attraction. The Bullshit Museum, which opened in May, explores the jokes and absurdities of the former Yugoslavia through mannequins, AI-generated images, and satirical displays. As the Guardian reported, its guiding word, “yebiga”—roughly “f*ck it”—captures a regional attitude of finding humor amid economic hardship, political upheaval, and everyday chaos. Founder Borut Kokelj has collected around 25,000 jokes, carefully avoiding material targeting specific ethnic or religious groups. Instead, the museum focuses on language, relationships, self-mockery, and life’s absurdities, with rakija served to visitors as the ultimate symbol of Balkan resilience.
