Missing piece of Stonehenge returned after 60 years

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Missing piece of Stonehenge returned after 60 years | English Heritage announced today that in May 2018 a missing piece of Stonehenge was returned to the site by Robert Phillips. The piece in question was extracted from the core of one of the vertical stones when Phillips’ employer Van Moppes, the diamond-cutting business, reinforced it with metal rods in 1958. Phillips kept the 108cm-long piece for 60 years before deciding to return it on the eve of his 90th birthday. English Heritage plans to study the chemical composition of the stone in order to establish where the Sarsen stones originally came from.

Director of Brazil’s National Museum pleads for funding | Alexander Kellner, the director of Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, pleaded for additional funding at a press conference yesterday. The National Museum was gutted by a fire on 2 September last year, which destroyed most of the anthropological collection. The ministry of education donated US$2.5m towards emergency works soon after the blaze, but Kellner has said the museum can’t afford to store the artefacts that were recovered.

Ancient Egyptian burial ground discovered near pyramids of Giza | An ancient Egyptian burial ground has been discovered by archaeologists near the pyramids of Giza. The Egyptian ministry of antiquities released a statement on Facebook claiming that the oldest tomb found is from the fifth dynasty and likely dates to the 25th or 24th century BC. The limestone family tomb is believed to contain the mummies of the judge and priest Behnui-Ka and of Nwi, ‘chief of the great state’.

Canadian Artists in Venice Endowment receives $1m from the Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation of Toronto | The Canadian Artists in Venice Endowment has received CAD $1m from the Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation of Toronto, it was announced by the National Gallery of Canada Foundation yesterday. The donation will go towards the production of future exhibitions at the newly restored Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The National Gallery of Canada has renamed one of its contemporary art spaces the Galerie Weinbaum.