Museo Picasso Málaga presents Bruce Nauman. Rooms, Bodies, Words, an exhibition on an artist whose innovative work centers on his understanding of art as an activity or process, rather than as the production of objects. This is his first major exhibition in Spain for 25 years. With abundant references to music, dance, literature and philosophy, Bruce Nauman’s work generates in viewers the kind of responses that are associated with provocation, conflict, tension, disorientation, and anxiety, via a relentless repetition of language and form. Bruce Nauman. Rooms, Bodies, Words, brings together almost one hundred works that highlight the range of mediums with which this U.S. artist works: from architectural installations, sculptures and neons, to videos, drawings, silk-screening and photography, amongst others. Bruce Nauman (Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1941) has spent more than 50 years inventing ways to convey both the

Conservator Ruth Hoppe got the surprise of her life when she looked at the x-ray of Wisteria. This masterpiece, one of three paintings by Claude Monet (1840-1926) in Gemeentemuseum Den Haag’s collection, was removed from the museum for the first time several months ago and taken to the conservation studio. To investigate the damage to the canvas Hoppe had it x-rayed and had several other tests carried out on it. She never imagined that, besides learning more about the damage the painting had sustained, she would also discover a group of water lilies. ‘Wisteria was already a very special painting, actually’, explains curator Frouke van Dijke. ‘There are only seven paintings by Monet with this subject. But of course the water lilies are the iconic Monet image. The fact that there are also water lilies under Wisteria makes the painting all the more special, and it also adds a number of pieces to the puzzle in

Ancient bones excavated in Israel and analysed in Germany may have cracked the puzzle of the Philistines’ provenance and provided for the first time evidence of the biblical people’s European origins, researchers say. The findings related to the Old Testament nemesis of the ancient Israelites were published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances and dubbed “extraordinary” by one of the archaeologists involved. Many are familiar with the Philistines through the biblical story of Goliath, the giant Philistine warrior killed by the underdog David and his sling in the Valley of Ella, as told in the Book of Samuel. The Philistines are believed to have arrived in the region in the 12th century BC, but researchers have had no proof that they hailed from elsewhere. Biblical and ancient Egyptian texts indicated their origin to be from “the sea”, while their building styles and pottery suggested Aegean influences. “The idea that the Philistines were immigrants was something we could never dem

Germany on Wednesday returned a painting looted by the Nazis which ended up in the spectacular art hoard of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Third Reich-era art dealer. “Quai de Clichy. Temps gris” by Paul Signac was handed back to the family of French real estate broker Gaston Prosper Levy, in the sixth such return from Gurlitt’s trove. Investigators looking into the provenance of paintings in the stash left behind by Gurlitt found eyewitness accounts of German soldiers seizing the Signac work from Levy’s property in France in 1940. “A countless number of the mostly Jewish collectors of art and cultural goods like Gaston Prosper Levy were persecuted, robbed or expropriated by Nazis,” said Germany’s Culture Minister Monika Gruetters. “Others have had to sell their property far below its value or leave it behind while fleeing or emigrating. We can never make good on the suffering and injustice.” Such returns are important, the minister said, as they offer “at least a little bit of histo