There was no formal opening or personal interaction with fans. Instead, Gabriel Orozco, the Mexican artist with a continents-spanning perspective, promoted his new collage watercolors with a dramatic, screen-friendly teaser.

The Royal Ballet, Britain's largest ballet company, leaps back into action on Friday after seven months of COVID-19 gloom with an extravaganza that mixes classics such as Romeo and Juliet and Don Quixote with playful modern dance.

Modern art rebel Jean-Michel Basquiat turned out scores of drawings in his short career, but more than a few eyebrows are being raised over a French gallery show of 35 unknown -- and virtually priceless -- works from the artist.

Armenia said Thursday that Azerbaijani forces had shelled a historic cathedral in Nagorno-Karabakh's city of Shusha, where AFP journalists saw the church had suffered serious damage.

Gluck, 77, was honored "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal," the Academy said.

After several years of scandals and wildcard picks, the Swedish Academy will on Thursday crown the 2020 Nobel Literature Prize laureate, with literary experts hedging their bets due to the unpredictability of the exercise.

A stolen poetry scroll written by Mao Zedong and valued at hundreds of millions of dollars has been recovered, Hong Kong police said Wednesday -- but not before it was cut in half.

Gagosian is collaborating with celebrities like Malcolm Gladwell and Thurston Moore on a new digital venture.

With the debris cleared, the halls of a heritage building are now open to visitors to view more than 100 works of art by mostly Lebanese and Arab artists, reflecting on the explosion itself and also the turmoil and wars of past decade.

Turner prize-winner Damien Hirst looks back on his time as one of the most notorious "Young British Artists" in a new solo retrospective show opening in London on Wednesday.

For some people, home is a place where you can kick back and relax, finding peace by leaving your worries outside the door.

The World Health Organization is the bookies' favorite to win the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, though experts say Greta Thunberg or press freedom groups are also strong contenders. 

French lawmakers unanimously voted to return prized artefacts to Benin and Senegal more than a century after they were looted by colonial forces and hauled back to Paris to be displayed in museums.

The Paris Opera is looking at banning "blackface" in its ballets and operas after nearly a quarter of its staff called for a major shake-up of how it deals with race.

Iranian Marjane Satrapi is famous for her films and graphic novels, but it is her painting which keeps her sane, she told AFP.

The pandemic has forced museums to shift to digital platforms to survive.  

A Congolese who has lived in France for 20 years, Mwazulu Diyabanza belongs to a pan-African movement that is pressing France to return those artifacts and make reparations for acts of slavery.

Lebanese stained glass artist Maya Husseini had hoped to retire after decades spent designing colorful windows, but she has been flooded with work since the blast that ripped through Beirut.

Marie Curie, Mother Teresa and Malala are among the just five percent of women Nobel laureates. But women are also heavily underrepresented in the institutions that select the prizewinners each year.

London's Royal Opera House is to sell a 1970s painting by David Hockney as it seeks to raise cash to get through the COVID-19 pandemic, the worst crisis in its history.

Archaeologists in Egypt said they had found 59 well-preserved and sealed wooden coffins over recent weeks that were buried more than 2,500 years ago.

Breakthroughs in the field of health will be honored Monday when the 2020 Nobel season kicks off with the medicine prize, as the world battles the worst pandemic in a century.

The monument on Buzludzha Peak was dedicated to the glory of communism but since the collapse of that regime, it has fallen into disrepair.

After the spectacular announcement of a Botticelli portrait auction last week, art collectors are sure to be excited by Sotheby's latest masterpiece up for grabs -- a rare Rembrandt painting. 

Polish divers say they have found the wreck of a German World War Two ship which may help solve a decades-old mystery - the whereabouts of the Amber Room, an ornate chamber from a tsarist palace in Russia that was looted by the Nazis.

The French government agreed Thursday to hand back three looted paintings to the heirs of a Jewish collector who died in a German concentration camp.

Thailand's annual water buffalo racing festival ploughed ahead on Thursday despite coronavirus travel restrictions leaving the event with a fraction of its usual tourist crowds.

A South Korean institution decided to launch an exhibition called "A Museum for All, A Museum for Dogs".

Four of Britain's distinctive red postboxes have been painted black and gold and adorned with images by or of illustrious Black Britons, in a novel way of celebrating Black History Month.

Like many events and celebrations this year, the annual Batik Day is likely to be overshadowed by the pandemic.