The British and the French governments have agreed the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum in return for a loan of the Sutton Hoo treasures and the Lewis chessmen. The agreement was signed at a special ceremony at the British Museum on 9 July attended by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and President Emmanuel Macron. The prime minister described the loan as a ‘brilliant initiative’ that will be ‘felt across the entire country’. He framed the agreement as a symbol of the ‘kinship’ and ‘shared history’ between the two nations, while also acknowledging the occasional rivalry between the countries as seen at ‘the Euros on Saturday’. Macron said, ‘We found the best experts of the world to explain in perfect detail why it was totally impossible to make such a loan. And believe me, we found them, and believe me, we could have found them again. But we just decided a few years ago [to do it].’ Previous attempts to organise a loan of the embroidery had been ruled out due to the fragility of the textile. The Bayeux Tapestry – normally on display at the Bayeux Museum in Normandy, which is closing for renovations in September and is due to reopen in October 2027 – will be on show at the British Museum from September 2026 in what the chair of the museum, George Osborne, described as ‘the blockbuster show of our generation’. The agreement was signed by the UK culture secretary Lisa Nandy, the French minister of culture Rachida Dati and the director of the British Museum, Nicholas Cullinan.
Archaeologists in Peru have discovered a 3,500-year-old city in the province of Barranca, the BBC reports. Named ‘Peñico’, the ancient city, some 200km north of Lima, is believed to have been an important trading hub, connecting communities along the country’s coast to those in the Andes and the Amazon. Archaeologists working on the site for the past eight years have unearthed 18 structures so far, including ceremonial temples. In a statement issued by the country’s Ministry for Culture, researchers said they believe that the city was constructed by descendants of the ancient Caral civilisation, which is regarded as the oldest known civilisation in the Americas.
The National Trust is planning to cut six per cent of its workforce, amounting to some 550 employees. In a statement issued on 11 July, the Trust, which is attempting to save £26m, said that ‘sustained cost pressures beyond our control’, such as increases to the national living wage and to employers’ national insurance contributions that went into effect in April, have necessitated the cuts. Steve Thomas, deputy general secretary of the union Prospect, which is representing affected staff in a 45-day consultation period with the Trust, said that ‘management decisions’ were also to blame for the cuts, adding that ‘once again it is our members who will have to pay the price.’ The BBC reports that the Trust is running a voluntary redundancy scheme in order to reduce compulsory redundancies.
The Dutch art detective Arthur Brand has recovered historic documents that had been stolen from the Netherlands’ National Archives, the Art Newspaper reports. Twenty-five items, which include UNESCO-listed documents records relating to the Dutch East India Company, were found in an attic by an individual who contacted Brand to confirm their authenticity. After an investigation with the Dutch police, Brand concluded that the documents were stolen from the National Archives in The Hague in 2015. The institution was reportedly unaware that the documents were missing, and the suspect – a former employee – has since died. Brand, who has worked on a number of high-profile recoveries, including that of a stolen Picasso in 2019, said the discovery of the archival documents was ‘one of the highlights of [his] career’.
Wael Shawky will be the artistic director of the inaugural edition of Art Basel Qatar, Art News reports. Shawky, who represented Egypt at the Venice Biennale in 2024, is the first artist to lead on the curation of an Art Basel fair, and will work with chief artistic officer and global director of fairs Vincenzo de Bellis on its curation. He will also lead the gallery selection process with de Bellis. On his appointment, Shawky said that he ‘[looks] forward to collaborating with galleries and artists to help shape a platform that speaks to the complexity and richness of the region while remaining globally relevant’. Art Basel Qatar is scheduled to open in Doha in February 2026.
Shamim M. Momin will be the next director and chief curator of the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the New York Times reports. Momin was director of curatorial affairs at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle from 2018 to 2024. Before joining the Henry, Momin was an associate curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she also worked on the 2004 and 2008 editions of the Whitney Biennale. During her tenure at the Whitney Momin co-founded the Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), a non-profit organisation focused on public art commissions; she served as director and chief curator until 2018. She will begin her new role at the Bronx Museum in September.
