Germany

The former royal family of Germany and the government have reached a settlement over ownership of thousands of artworks. On Tuesday, Wolfram Weimer, Germany’s newly-appointed Minister of State for Culture, announced that a settlement had…

Two climate protestors who glued their hands to the frame of ‘Sistine Madonna’ in Germany received pardoned from court. On August 23, 2022, the two protestors – a man and a woman – entered the Dresden Old Masters Picture Gallery in…

Latest in a string of controversies, the Bavaria State Painting Collection has been alleged to harbour racist and sexist work culture. The Bavaria State Painting Collection in Munich is home to a host of famed artworks that have been…

The German federal court made a ruling recently that Birkenstocks do not qualify to be called ‘art’ and hence not protected by the same laws. The case around the status of whether Birkenstocks qualify to be classified as ‘art’, which has…

The new EU tax rules came into effect on January 1st, bringing some crucial impact for art markets in European nations. Titled “Directive 2022/542”, the new set of rules was first introduced in 2022 and member nations were given a…

Government spending remains the single biggest spender on arts & culture almost everywhere. Naturally, the art scene in any country depends heavily on government support and sustenance. However, 2024 saw several governments – both…

A museum in Münster, Germany returned the head of an ancient marble statue to Greece. The stone head belonged to a complete marble statue of a man, dated around 150 CE. Research conducted by the Archaeological Museum of the University of…

The art collection of German curator Kasper König brought €6 million ($6.5 million) at an auction in Cologne. Rudolf Hans König, better known as Kasper König, was a prominent name in the German art scene. Born in 1943, König started…

A former worker at the Deutsches Museum has been sentenced to prison for stealing 4 paintings from the museum and selling three of them. The unnamed 30-year-old worker worked at the Deutsches Museum between 2016 and 2018. A provenance…

A painting by Pierre-August Renoir, restituted to the heirs of a Jewish banker, has now been bought by the city of Hagen in Germany. The work in question is ‘View of the Sea from Haut Cagnes’, made by Renoir around 1910. The painting was…