UNESCO puts off placing Stonehenge on at-risk list

Unesco’s World Heritage Committee has dashed the hopes of campaigners hoping to stop the construction of a road tunnel next to the Stonehenge monument in Wiltshire. Last month the committee published a draft decision to add the ancient site to its list of endangered sites. However, at the annual meeting of the World Heritage Committee, which began this week, an amendment to the resolution removed Stonehenge from the list to be voted on. In a statement to the Art Newspaper, the committee said that it ‘considered the development proposed by the United Kingdom to be the best option’. The plans to build a tunnel rerouting the A303 motorway has been the subject of controversy and a long legal battle. In the latest legal development, a decision is pending from the Court of Appeal as to whether UK ministers were ‘inadequately briefed’ about alternatives to the scheme. Unesco has asked the UK for a new report by the end of 2025, so that the matter can be raised again at the World Heritage Committee’s annual session in July 2026. Updated 28 July: In the meantime: the Guardian reports that the A303 tunnel may be among the capital projects delayed by the new Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The US government has recovered a drawing by Picasso that was bought with allegedly embezzled funds. Trois femmes nues et buste d’homme (1969) had been purchased in 2014 at Christie’s New York for nearly $1.3m by the sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). However, over the last decade, 1MDB has been at the centre of an extensive investigation into corruption, bribery and money laundering, the chief allegation being that a group of Malaysian officials, including the-then prime minister Najib Razak and a financier and art collector named Jho Low, embezzled more than $4.5bn from the fund. Now the US Department of Justice has announced that it has struck a deal with the former general counsel for the 1MDB fund, Jasmine Loo Ai Swan, for the return of the Picasso drawing to the United States, although she remains liable for criminal claims. The Picasso drawing isn’t the first drawing to be turned over to authorities in the course of this investigation. In 2017 Leonardo DiCaprio voluntarily turned over works by Picasso and Basquiat that were given to him as gifts by people allegedly involved in the 1MDB scandal. The Justice Department is still looking for works by artists including Van Gogh, Monet and Basquiat in this case.

The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia has laid off 12 full-time employees over the past six months, reports Artnews. Founded in 1922 by the tycoon Albert C Barnes, the Foundation holds more than 4,000 objects from all over the world in its collection, including Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and early modern paintings. Among the staff whose contracts have been terminated are the Foundation’s director of finance and a specialist in 19th-century art. The foundation has a staff of 206, so the firings constitute six per cent of the total workforce. A spokesperson for the institution, Deirdre Maher, said that the cuts were down to ‘a variety of factors. We make regular adjustments to our operations based on current needs and to ensure our ongoing financial well-being.’ T.K. Smith, who lost his job as assistant curator for art of the African diaspora at the start of this year, has alleged that he was fired after requesting a contract from the Barnes Foundation and the Hayward Gallery in London to publish the research he undertook for an upcoming exhibition of work by Mickalene Thomas. Smith also said that the Foundation was unprepared for his arrival in the job: ‘It was clear almost from the moment I entered [that they] had no intentions to fulfil the promises of the position.’

On Wednesday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it had attracted more than 5.5m visitors in the financial year ending 30 June 2024. It had good news regarding attendance from both outside and inside the New York State area. With 3.3m local visitors and 1.3m visitors from elsewhere in the United States, domestic attendance was back at pre-pandemic levels. But, at 900,000, the number of international tourists was roughly half of what it was in 2019. This follows the pattern across New York City. In May, the New York State comptroller reported that the number of international visitors to the city was down 14 per cent from 2019. Residents of New York State and students from Connecticut and New Jersey can pay what they wish, while the museum now charges other visitors $30 (barring concessions). The Met also announced that BIPOC attendees accounted for a record 56 per cent of the domestic total. The museum’s director and CEO Max Hollein said, ‘The Met is committed to presenting a wide array of exhibitions, collection displays, activities, and events, and we’re thrilled to see our programming resonating so strongly with increasingly diverse audiences.’

Venice’s tourist tax has brought in more than three times the expected revenue, city officials announced at a news conference last Friday. In April the city began testing a €5 levy on tourists in an attempt to reduce overall tourist presence at peak times; the tax applied on 29 dates from mid April to mid July, between 8:30am and 4pm. The levy was expected to raise around €700,000, but ended up raising €2.43m, having been charged 485,000 times, reports the New York Times. Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor of Venice, declared the experiment ‘a great success’, but critics have stated that the windfall itself is a sign of failure, as the point of the tax is not to raise money, but deter tourists from visiting Venice at peak times. Some city officials have suggested that there is insufficient data to compare this year’s visitor numbers with those in previous years. A more detailed report is expected in the autumn, at which point officials will decide how or whether to reconfigure the tax.

The Egyptian archaeologist and former minister of antiquities Zahi Hawass has offered Italy his help in securing the return of the Mona Lisa. Giving an interview at a literature festival in Orvieto, Hawass said that his own priorities for getting Egyptian artefacts back from European museums include the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, the bust of Nefertiti in Berlin and the Dendera zodiac at the Louvre. When an Italian journalist asked Hawass if he would advise the Italian culture minister to ask for the return of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, Hawass said, ‘Italy and I can join together to return Italy’s stolen artefacts. La Gioconda [Mona Lisa] is the most important thing. It has to come back to Italy.’ Leonardo’s patron Francis I of France bought the painting after the death of the artist. However, when Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911, he did so believing that it had been seized by Napoleon. Hawass, who is known for making bold statements also suggested that when he met the Italian culture minister on Wednesday (24 July), he might be asked to run the Egyptian Museum in Turin.