Neolithic tombs cause setback for Stonehenge tunnel

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Ancient tombs disrupt plans for Stonehenge tunnel | Plans to construct a road tunnel beneath the site of Stonehenge have suffered a setback, reports the Guardian. English Heritage, the National Trust and Historic England all largely welcomed the idea of a tunnel for the busy A303 road, but have nonetheless voiced concern that the project might come too close to Normanton Down Barrows, a collection of Neolithic and early Bronze Age tombs. The three bodies do not say that the construction plans should be abandoned, but are pressing for ‘careful and sensitive revision’ of existing plans.

The Met adds 375,000 images to Creative Commons website | New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has added 375,000 public domain images to its Creative Commons website, allowing private individuals to take advantage of them without copyright restrictions. Under an initiative known as Open Access, the museum will collaborate with image platforms including Pinterest, simultaneously running several editing programmes to ensure that information relating to the images is kept up to date.

Sotheby’s files second lawsuit over fake Hals | Sotheby’s has filed a second lawsuit over works sold as Old Master paintings but subsequently declared fake. According to the New York Times, the auction house is to initiate legal proceedings against London dealer Mark Weiss and collector David Kowitz in order to recover the profits from a 2011 sale of a Frans Hals painting that researchers later identified as a fake. The action follows a similar lawsuit Sotheby’s filed against a Luxembourg collector over a counterfeit painting of St Jerome last month.

Right-wing protesters disrupt Syrian artist’s installation unveiling in Dresden | The inauguration of a work of public art in Dresden by a Syrian-German artist on Tuesday was disrupted by around 150 protesters reportedly belonging to far-right groups. According to The Art Newspaper, artist Manaf Halbouni’s installation Monument, a work that references Syria’s ongoing civil war, caused outrage among right wing populist movements in Germany, moving supporters of these groups to shout anti-immigration slogans when Dresden mayor Dirk Hilbert gave a speech at its unveiling. ‘It shows how important it is to focus on this subject, said Dresden Kunsthaus artistic director Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz. ‘We have to be open to the suffering of others.’