It is fair to say the former chairman of the Kennedy Center's board, David Rubenstein, did not approve of the decision to remove Joel Shapiro's monumental sculpture from its grounds last week.

The billionaire philanthropist has just bought the 24-foot-tall stick figure, Blue, for a reported $2 million and is expected to put it on show at the National Gallery in Washington DC where he chairs the board.

The work was removed, reportedly at the behest of the White House, from the Washington DC arts venue and returned to the foundation set up to promote the late sculptor's work which sold it to Rubenstein.

Rubenstein was among the figures removed from the center's board last year and replaced with people more supportive of President Trump's administration.

Europe's endless summer of museum thefts goes on.

This time it is the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, between Nice and Cannes, that has been hit with thieves making off with two paintings in the early hours of this morning.

Their haul would have been greater except they seem to have dropped another two Renoir paintings in the museum's grounds as they escaped.

The two stolen paintings, worth millions of dollars, have been identified as Young woman at the well and a portrait of Madame Colonna Romano on loan from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

It comes less than a month after thieves stole works by Antonello da Messina from a museum in Sicily.

Visitors to London's Courtauld Institute will have the chance to see dozens of Georgia O'Keeffe works normally held in museums across the United States.

The show, due to open in October 2027, is devoted to a series of landscapes she made in and around her home at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, and includes loans from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the Whitney in New York and Santa Fe's Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Other 2027 shows at the gallery include a presentation of Paula Rego’s Dog Woman series more than three decades after its first showing and an exhibition dedicated to the masters of British landscape watercolor including JMW Turner and John Constable.

Artists Jenny Holzer and Andy Goldsworthy have won this year's $95,000 Praemium Imperiale Awards.

The awards, given annually by the Japan Art Association under the patronage of the Japanese royal family, recognize achievement in five different fields.

The other recipients this year include actress Cate Blanchett and architect Daniel Libeskind. Previous winners include David Hockney, Peter Doig, Mona Hatoum and Bridget Riley.

1 - The National Museum of Korea has apologized to the family of artist Park Won-geun after it wrongly attributed a work to him. The Seoul institution said it would strengthen its "verification procedures to ensure such an incident does not recur" after it confirmed the work it said was by the independence activist was actually by a "pro-Japanese, anti-national collaborator". Japanese rule in Korea from 1910 to 1945 remains a controversial period in both countries' history.

2 - Greek collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos is donating 51 works to four different museums in Greece and Scotland. More than half are going to the National Gallery of Greece in Athens as part of what he described as "a commitment to promoting contemporary Greek creativity and increasing its visibility on the global cultural stage".

3 - Works by 20 young artists shortlisted for this year's Cairo Prize go on show in Milan's La Permanente between October 13 and 18. The winner of the prize becomes part of its permanent collection which includes works by artists such as Paolo Bini and Laura Pugno.