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- The UK government has promised to help the country’s struggling local museums.
- A forgotten still life in Norway’s National Museum has been reattributed to Flemish master Clara Peeters.
- Meet the masterminds behind the painstaking transport of the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum.
The Headlines
MUSEUMS IN CRISIS. The temporary closure of the UK’s Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft has become a symbol of the financial pressures facing the country’s independent museums, the Art Newspaper reported. Forced to close amid worsening finances, the museum has since secured emergency funding to explore a sustainable future, but its plight reflects a wider crisis. While the government has pledged support through the £127.8 million Arts Everywhere Fund—including £3.5 million for urgent repairs to Bristol Museum and Art Gallery and £2.4 million to upgrade the Museum of Hartlepool—experts warn that these one-off grants do not address the long-term revenue funding needed to keep local museums open and financially resilient.
RESURRECTION. A forgotten still life in the storage of Norway’s National Museum has been reattributed to Clara Peeters, one of the earliest female masters of Flemish still-life painting, the Guardian reported. Curator Cynthia Osiecki identified similarities between the unsigned work and Peeters’s known paintings, including her distinctive compositions, materials, and hidden self-portraits. Once dismissed as “anonymous,” the 1620 painting will now feature in the museum’s major exhibition “Painter,” celebrating women artists from 1550 to 1650.
The Digest
Marri Ngarr artist Ryan Presley has won the $100,000 NATSIAA 2026 prize for his monumental, Renaissance-inspired painting. [Arts Hub]
New research published in Nature has revealed evidence of a vast pre-colonial civilization in southwestern Amazonia, with Lidar surveys uncovering more than 20,000 earthworks hidden beneath the rainforest canopy. [Nature]
More than 500 paintings, books, and collectibles from the home of Bagpuss creator Peter Firmin have sold at auction for over £400,000. [BBC]
An 18th-century wooden Cossack church in southern Ukraine, described as the country’s last surviving example of its kind, has been destroyed by a Russian drone strike. [Art Newspaper]
The Kicker
BEHIND THE CURTAIN. The Bayeux Tapestry‘s journey to the British Museum was made possible by a remarkable team of conservators, registrars, engineers, and specialist art handlers whose work is rarely seen by the public—and the Times of London has given them their due. Among them are British Museum curator Michael Lewis—the only non-French member of the Bayeux Tapestry committee—and co-curator Millie Horton-Insch, who spent years helping to shape the landmark exhibition. The piece highlights the painstaking planning behind the tapestry’s return, including bespoke supports, climate-controlled transport, repeated rehearsals, and meticulous conservation checks. The tapestry goes on view at the British Museum on September 10.
