The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to revisit a case that sought to grant copyright protection to artwork created by artificial intelligence. The decision leaves in place the ruling that A.I.-generated works, created without human authorship, are not eligible for copyright protection. Computer scientist Stephen Thaler suffered another setback Monday when the Supreme Court of the United Statesdeclined to review his attempt to secure copyright for an AI-generated artwork. The case centers on A Recent Entrance to Paradise, created in 2012 by Thaler’s AI system DABUS. The United States Copyright Office first rejected the application in 2022, ruling that works...
World And Local Art News
Fabergé Egg Cracks Record With $30.2 Million Haul at Auction
A rare Fabergé masterpiece has made auction history. The Winter Egg, a stunning creation once linked to Russian royalty, sold for £22.8 million ($30.2 million) at Christie’s London on December 2, setting a new record as the most valuable Fabergé egg ever auctioned. When the later Romanov emperors sought to honour the cherished women in their lives, they turned to the artistry of Fabergé eggs. From 1885 until just before the Russian Revolution in 1916, Alexander III and his son, Nicholas II, commissioned a total of 50 of these exquisite creations from the House of Fabergé. Each Imperial egg was...
Pope Leo formally returns Indigenous objects held by the Vatican Museums to Canada
Pope Leo XIV has formally transferred custody of a historic collection of Indigenous objects—held by the Vatican Museums for the past century—to representatives of the Catholic Church in Canada, who will in turn return them to Indigenous communities across the country. Among the items is a rare Western Arctic sealskin kayak, the most prominent of several hundred objects originally displayed at a Vatican missionary exhibition in 1925. For years, the Métis National Council, the Assembly of First Nations, and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami have urged the Vatican to repatriate the collection as part of ongoing efforts toward reconciliation related to residential...
Public Television Forced to Sell Off Bob Ross Paintings After Congress Slashes Funds
American Public Television (APT) is set to auction around 30 paintings by the iconic artist Bob Ross through Bonhams beginning in November. Proceeds from the sale will support programming for both APT and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), following significant federal funding cuts enacted by the Republican-led Congress. Ross’s beloved series, The Joy of Painting, first aired on public television in 1983 and has remained a staple on public broadcasting ever since. The paintings headed to auction were created live on air by Bob Ross and haven’t been publicly seen since their original broadcasts. The first three works will be...
Italian Police Seize 21 Suspected Salvador Dalí Fakes During Museum Raid
Italian police have seized 21 works from an exhibition on Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí, claiming they are fakes. “Dalí, Between Art and Myth” had only recently opened at Palazzo Tarasconi in Parma and had previously been on view in Rome, at the Museo Storico della Fanteria. “Tapestries, drawings, engravings, and objects attributed to Salvador Dalí, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, displayed months ago in an exhibition in Rome, had attracted the attention of the Carabinieri Cultural Heritage Protection Unit, who questioned their authenticity,” said the Italian police in a Facebook post. “When the same works arrived...
“This is not me.”
The sketch, first reported by The Wall Street Journal in July, depicts handwritten text inside a marker outline of a nude woman, with what appears to be Donald Trump’s signature placed where her pubic hair would be. Trump has denied creating the drawing, stating he has never drawn anything. “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” Trump said. “I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women.” He has since filed a libel lawsuit against the paper and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, seeking $10 billion in...
Museums Under Pressure: A Crisis of Funding, Relevance, and Resilience
Deep cuts to public funding and growing political instability are placing unprecedented pressure on museums throughout the Western world. Across the U.S., U.K., and Europe, museums are facing unprecedented financial and political pressures. Public funding—already in decline—is being slashed further, while cultural institutions scramble to maintain operations, independence, and public trust in a climate of uncertainty. In the U.S., museums have long relied on a patchwork of support—corporate donors, private philanthropy, foundations, and ticket sales—as federal support from bodies like the NEA and NEH has steadily declined. Under President Trump’s 2025 budget, deep cuts to the NEA, NEH, and IMLS...
Paris Museum Heist
Thieves have broken into Paris’s Natural History Museum, making off with gold samples worth 600,000 EUR in the latest of a worrying series of robberies from cultural institutions, according to the museum. Famed for its dinosaur skeletons and stuffed animals, the National Natural History Museum in the chic 5th district of the French capital also houses a geology and mineralogy gallery. A break-in was detected on Tuesday morning, with the intruders reportedly using an angle grinder and a blow torch to force their way into the riverside complex that is popular with Parisians and tourists. “The theft concerns several specimens...
