New directors announced for 20 of Italy’s top museums

This episode explores an ancient funeral stele, Marie Antoinette’s breast bowl, and how digital technologies are helping to preserve Egyptian heritage sites

A chance to see how artists from Southern California and elsewhere are engaging with the climate emergency and ecological imbalance

Knowledge can be toxic, as this selection of killer manuscripts from the collection of the Walters Art Museum demonstrates

James Tissot’s gimlet-eyed depictions of women’s lives and fashions in 19th-century Paris and London are celebrated in Toronto

The Hammer Museum honours the artists who have poured blood, sweat, tears or other unusual substances into their work

An Austrian museum is hosting a show by an unnamed artist – but perhaps this act of secrecy will help us see the work more clearly

Preparations for this 700-year-old tradition, which ushers in a special year of forgiveness for Catholics, are nearing completion. Will it all be worth it?

A show of surgical paintings by Celia Hempton raises questions about how far the artist’s eye can penetrate beneath the surface of things