It’s always wise to get off to a good start with the new boss, which is just what the director of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Jatta, did at the weekend.

Jatta was part of a delegation that showed Pope Leo XIV a painting of Saint Augustine in the museums' collection. The work by an unknown 18th-century Italian artist has been recently restored by conservators in Rome.

It was a savvy move as Robert Prevost is not only the first US-born pope, he is also the first Augustinian to wear the triple crown.

Pope Leo may not have his predecessor's strong interest in the visual arts, Francis I was the first pontiff to visit the Venice Biennale, but he has already made a telling statement of intent.

In June, images of art created by a disgraced cleric accused of rape disappeared from the Vatican Media websites, the Catholic Herald reports. The artist is Father Marko Rupnik, a former Jesuit accused of abusing dozens of victims.

The admission price you pay at the front desk of Hotel La Fonda de Taos to see D.H. Lawrence’s “forbidden collection” of nine paintings. The writer and former Taos resident's paintings were banned as “morally obscene” when first shown in the Warren Gallery in London in 1929.

Andy Goldsworthy, the English artist whose 2,278-foot-long dry stone wall snakes through the Storm King sculpture park in upstate New York, is getting rave reviews for his solo show at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, which coincides with the city's international festival.

"The artist has risen to the occasion exactly as you might expect," wrote Laura Cumming in The Observer. She singles out his staircase installation, "A carpet of sheep fleeces, stitched together with thorns... their scent redolent of a damp winter’s tramp."

“This is the Clarkson’s Farm of art retrospectives, plunging today’s urbanites into the raw sadness and beauty, the violence and slow natural cycles of the British countryside,” wrote Jonathan Jones in the Guardian, in his five-star review.

While Waldemar Januszczak wrote: “Like all great landscape artists—and he’s certainly one of those —he’s bringing the outdoors indoors.” Taking aim at the UK national museums that have overlooked Goldsworthy, the art critic of The Times of London added that achievement over the past five decades “deserves far greater recognition than it has hitherto received”.

“Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years” is on view at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, until November 2.

JR has taken his love of trains an extra, luxurious mile. The artist has designed a sleeper carriage for the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express like no other.

The carriage has been four years in the making and boasts marble, stained glass and wood marquetry. “The level of craftsmanship is mind blowing,” JR tells Forbes magazine.

Special features in the Art Deco-style carriage include an oculus, so passengers can see the sky and stars as they cross borders, hence its name, L’Observatoire

“It was something that I had dreamed of from the beginning as it has never been done on a train before,” JR says, paying tribute to Belmond, the luxury travel company that is part of the LVHM empire, for making it possible.

1 - Dread Scott has printed up black shirts mimicking the FBI logo with “DEI” in yellow and the words “recruitment officer” under the logo. He unveiled his wearable protest art via an Instagram post.

2 - Rio de Janeiro's inaugural Art and Culture Week is due to take place from September 7 to 14, coinciding with the 2025 edition of the ArtRio fair.

3 - Dozens of eggplants that form Suzann Victor’s National Gallery Singapore commission, Still Life, have been disappearing because visitors have been stealing them.