[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2252580363.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
To receive\u00a0Morning Links\u00a0in your inbox every weekday,\u00a0sign\u00a0up\u00a0for our\u00a0<\/em>Breakfast with ARTnews\u00a0newsletter<\/em>.<\/p>\n DIARY OF ORPHAN ART<\/strong>. Nazi-looted artworks known as \u201corphaned\u201d or \u201cheirless,\u201d brought back to the Netherlands from Germany after World War II, should be managed by a new Jewish foundation rather than the Dutch government, a panel has announced, reports The New York Times<\/em>. The collection, worth millions, comprises some 1,500 oil paintings, including works by Rembrandt and Peter Paul Rubens, though their rightful owners remain unknown. The Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency currently oversees the collection, primarily storing the works or loaning them to museums and government buildings. A new government-commissioned report recommends that the Dutch Jewish community be entrusted with the collection, to be managed by a newly established foundation at Amsterdam\u2019s Jewish Museum. The panel also advised allocating a state-funded budget of $471,000 for exhibitions that would foreground provenance, with a \u201cvisible reference to this sorrowful history.\u201d However, some critics argue the proposal risks keeping the collection in the Netherlands rather than intensifying efforts to locate possible heirs\u2014or even selling works to benefit Holocaust survivors.<\/p>\n HELMET HEADS HOME<\/strong>. After being snatched from a Dutch museum in a shocking raid earlier this year, a 2,500-year-old golden helmet has been returned to Romania, reports The Associated Press. This time, it traveled under the close watch of heavily armed, masked guards. The Co\u021bofene\u0219ti helmet, associated with the Dacian civilization, is one of Romania\u2019s most prized treasures. It was stolen along with three gold bracelets from the Drents Museum in January 2025 while on loan. Two of the bracelets have since been recovered in perfect condition, and authorities are still searching for the third, as the trial of three suspects continues. Few expected this outcome, since the ornate helmet in particular would have been virtually unsellable without being melted down. The national treasures are seen \u201cnot as simple patrimony items, but as relics of our historical memory, as the legacy of a civilization that continues to define us,\u201d said Cornel Constantin Ilie, interim director of the National History Museum in Bucharest, which will conserve the objects. \u201cFor us, this is a moment of joy, but also of contemplation,\u201d he said. \u201cFor months, we have lived with the fear that part of our past could be lost forever.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTaiwan\u2019s National Culture and Arts Foundation<\/strong> has stripped its most prestigious National Award for Arts<\/strong> from Sakuliu Pavavaljung<\/strong>, following his conviction of sexual assault. [ArtAsiaPacific]<\/p>\n \n\tTop collector John Phelan<\/strong> was fired as Navy Secretary following months of infighting at the Department of Defense over the Navy\u2019s shipbuilding program, which Phelan had pitched as a \u201cGolden Fleet\u201d of \u201cTrump-class\u201d battleships. [ARTnews]<\/p>\n The Kent County Council in southeast England \u201cquietly\u201d removed a key sculpture from a public site by Antony Gormley<\/strong> and sold it back to the artist to reportedly lighten \u201cfinancial pressures.\u201d [The Art Newspaper]<\/p>\n \n\tMonumental Edvard Munch<\/strong> paintings known as the Freia Frieze, long hung in an Oslo chocolate factory, where they were exposed to cacao dust, are leaving for the first time and will be on view at the Munch Museum<\/strong> in an exhibition about art and industry. [Artnet News]<\/p>\n \n\tThe completion of a major Modern art museum near Berlin\u2019s Potsdamer Platz, designed by Herzog & de Meuron<\/strong>, has been postponed again due to moisture damage and is now due to open later in 2030. [dpa]<\/p>\n GET THEE TO A NUNNERY<\/strong>. The\u00a0Venice Biennale<\/strong>\u00a0is around the corner, but there are about 200 biennale-type festivals worldwide today. The\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u00a0takes us to a more unusual entry:\u00a0Anozero \u2013 Coimbra Biennal of Contemporary Art<\/strong>, in Portugal. Its organizers have been exploring today\u2019s so-called \u201cbiennale identity crisis,\u201d and ask what makes these events more meaningful both for visitors and the locals left behind after the well-heeled crowds have flown home. In response, they are calling for biennales as places of experimentation for communal living, as well as new uses for historical sites, rather than focusing on visual art production. This year, that has translated into a theme of anarchism through mutual cooperation, inspired by the Russian anarchist\u00a0Peter Kropotkin<\/strong>. The approach is also part of a battle to save the festival itself, which is threatened by a private developer\u2019s government-granted plans to turn the biennale\u2019s central exhibition space, a 17th<\/sup>-century convent, into a hotel. As the organizer\u2019s own manifesto pronounces, the biennale should produce art \u201cwhich can only happen here and nowhere else.\u201d And to these art workers, that inevitably includes the beloved hilltop convent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/trump-fires-top-collector-john-phelan-looted-helmet-heads-home-to-romania-morning-links-for-april-23-2026-1234782392\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2252580363.jpg?w=1024″] To receive\u00a0Morning Links\u00a0in your inbox every weekday,\u00a0sign\u00a0up\u00a0for our\u00a0Breakfast with ARTnews\u00a0newsletter. The Headlines DIARY OF ORPHAN ART. Nazi-looted artworks known as \u201corphaned\u201d or \u201cheirless,\u201d brought back to the Netherlands from Germany after World War II, should be managed by a new Jewish foundation rather than the Dutch government, a panel has announced, reports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1901784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1901784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1901784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1901784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1901784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Headlines<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Digest<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n\t\tThe Kicker\t<\/h2>\n