A federal judge has ruled that the construction on the White House ballroom must cease until the Trump administration has gained congressional approval. In his opinion published on 31 March ruling on the lawsuit brought against President Trump by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, district judge Richard Leon wrote: ‘Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!’, adding that, although Trump is ‘steward of the White House’, he is ‘not the owner!’ The Trump administration has appealed the decision and in a post on Truth Social the president lambasted the judge’s decision. The planned 8,400 square-metre ballroom has been the subject of much controversy since it was announced in July last year. In October, the East Wing was suddenly torn down to make room for it, while the estimated cost has already doubled and the project’s lead architect was replaced in December. In other Trump administration news, a render of the planned 50-storey Trump Presidential Library in Miami were released on Tuesday.
Thieves have stolen three works by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation outside Parma. The heist, which happened on the night of 22 March but was made public this week, lasted just three minutes, according to Italian police, during which time the thieves were able to steal Renoir’s painting Les Poissons (1917), a watercolour by Cezanne titled Still Life with Cherries (1890) and Matisse’s aquatint Odalisque on the Terrace from 1922. The works are together estimated to be worth around €9m. La Repubblica reports that a fourth work was seized by the thieves but abandoned as they made their exit. The foundation’s home at the Villa dei Capolavori also hold works by Dürer, Titian, Rubens, Canova, Monet and Morandi. The theft is being investigated by the Parma Carabinieri and the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit of Bologna. The museum currently remains open.
Germany has announced the establishment of a council to oversee the restitution of cultural property that was acquired through colonialism. The agreement to found the Coordination Council for Returns of Cultural Property and Human Remains from Colonial Contexts was signed on 27 March by representatives from the federal foreign office and the 16 states of Germany. A statement said that the council will support and coordinate the process of returns between Germany and the countries of origin and will be made up of representatives from the German government, the Länder and various municipal organisations. It marks the latest development in Germany’s efforts to address its colonial past, following the landmark agreement in 2019 to repatriate artefacts in public collections that were taken from former colonies ‘in ways that are legally or morally unjustifiable today’. Serap Güler, minister of state at the federal foreign office, said that the council will ‘serve as the central point of contact for our partner governments and as a forum for coordinated dialogue based on trust,’ adding that ‘we are serious about addressing our colonial past’.
The sculptor Melvin Edwards has died at the age of 88. Born in Houston in 1937, Edwards had his first solo exhibition in 1965 at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and in 1970 became the first Black sculptor to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. After moving to New York in 1967, Edwards taught at several institutions, including Orange County Community College and Rutgers University, where he worked for 30 years until his retirement from teaching in 2002. The artist is best known for his formally inventive, abstract metal sculptures, particularly his long-term series Lynch Fragments, which consists of small, mostly wall-mounted assemblages of scrap metal and household objects welded together. Edwards began making these in the 1960s, around the time, he once said in an interview, that he began his ‘real strong interest’ in ‘the politics of race and colonialism’.
The collector, conservator and designer Alec Cobbe has died. Born in Dublin in 1945 into the landed Cobbe family, he moved to Newbridge House near Dublin at the age of four. Cobbe’s primary residence was Hatchlands, a Robert Adam-designed which was leased to Cobbe by the National Trust, which he furnished with the Old Master paintings, sculptures and tapestries that he collected, as well as his exquisite collection of antique musical instruments, which include a bronze-mounted pianoforte owned by Marie Antoinette. In her profile of Cobbe for the September 2025 issue of Apollo, Ruth Guilding wrote of the ‘extraordinary energy’ of this ‘highly individual, creative man’.
The French-Lebanese artist Ali Cherri has filed a civil complaint with the French war crimes unit about the Israeli bombing of a residential building in Beirut that killed his parents and five other civilians. The complaint has been filed jointly with the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), which released a statement on Thursday. Cherri’s parents lived in an apartment owned by the artist in the Noueiri neighbourhood, which was targeted on 26 November 2024 by Israeli strikes, just hours before the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah came into effect. Although French courts have no jurisdiction over these killings, Cherri’s French citizenship gives judicial authorities the right to investigate the bombing. ‘It is my duty to ensure that this war crime committed by the Israeli army is recognised for what it is, so that it may be brought to justice,’ Cherri said in a statement.
A 2,500-year-old Romanian helmet and two gold bracelets that were stolen from a Dutch museum last year have been recovered, the Dutch authorities have confirmed. The Helmet of Coțofenești and three Dacian gold bracelets were taken from the Drents Museum in January 2025, where they were on loan from the National History Museum of Romania in Bucharest. Three suspects have been arrested and are currently on trial.
