Following reports that the Golestan Palace in Tehran was been damaged in a US-Israeli airstrike last week, UNESCO has confirmed damage to other World Heritage-listed sites in Iran and Lebanon. On 7 March, the Lebanese ministry of culture shared in a social media post that an Israeli missile strike that killed one person had falled on the boundary of the archaeological site of the ancient city of Tyre. In its statement, UNESCO called for ‘maximum restraint’ and ‘all necessary measures to spare education, culture, media, sciences and the environment as the social foundations of societies.’ Other sites that have been damaged in the ongoing conflict include the 17th-century Chehel Sotoun palace and the Masjed-e Jāme mosque in Isfahan, reports the Associated Press.
The European Commission has threatened to withdraw its funding from the Venice Biennale if Russia participates in this year’s edition. On 10 March, executive vice-president of the commission Henna Virkkunen and commissioner Glenn Micalle condemned the decision to allow Russia to reopen its pavilion. On 12 March a commission spokesperson confirmed that if Russia is included, the EU would terminate or suspend its €2m grant. Twenty-two European culture ministers also issued an open letter to the president and board of the biennale, which said that ‘granting Russia a prestigious international cultural platform sends a deeply troubling signal’.
The Italian government has paid €30m for a painting by Caravaggio. The work, which dates to c. 1598, is a portrait of Maffeo Barberini, later Pope Urban VIII. It shows Barberini seated, pointing to his right and clutching a piece of paper in his left hand. It was first attributed to Caravaggio in 1963 by the art historian Roberto Longhi, who described the painting’s composition as ‘one of the founding moments of modern portraiture’. Previously in a private collection, it was first put on public display in 2024 at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, where the painting will now hang – joining four other works by the Old Master, including Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1598–1602). Italy’s culture minister, Alessandro Giuli, said in a statement that negotiations to acquire the painting had lasted more than a year. It is one of the largest sums the Italian government has ever spent on a work of art.
Umberto Allemandi, the Italian publisher and founder of Il Giornale dell’Arte – a publication that launched editions across Europe and the Middle East, including the Art Newspaper – has died at the age of 88. Born in Turin, Allemandi began his career as a copywriter at the advertising agency of Armando Testa. In 1970 he became director of the art magazine Bolaffi Arte, where he commissioned covers from artists including Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró and Andy Warhol. In 1983 Allemandi set up Il Giornale dell’Arte, a monthly newspaper devoted to art which later released an English edition, the Art Newspaper, as well as editions in Greece, France and Spain. He also founded publishing house Umberto Allemandi & Co., producing titles covering art history, architecture and more, as well as exhibition catalogues for institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Anna Somers Cocks, Allemandi’s wife and co-founder of the Art Newspaper – and a former editor of Apollo – said in a tribute that the ‘art world owes [Allemandi] a great debt’.
Alma Allen, the sculptor representing the United States at this year’s Venice Biennale, has joined Perrotin, the gallery announced on 10 March. When the US State Department chose Allen in November, the galleries that represented him at the time, Olney Gleason and Mendes Wood DM, dropped him. Speaking to the New York Times, Rowena Chiu, a director at Perrotin in London, said that Allen ‘feels that art is something that should be able to transcend current politics’. Perrotin will provide Allen with logistical and operational support at the Biennale. Read Jonathan Griffin on Alma Allen’s work here.
Smiljan Radić Clarke has won the 2026 Pritzker Architecture Prize. The Chilean architect’s projects include the Chile Antes de Chile – the extension of the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art – in 2013, the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in 2014 and an inflatable pavilion for the Chile Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism in 2023, a venue for the event’s meetings, debates and conferences. The prize announcement was delayed after Thomas Pritzker – director and vice president of the Hyatt Foundation, which funds the $100,000 prize – resigned as executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels over his ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.