There is good news and bad news for Max Hollein, the director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

On one hand the museum is celebrating its most successful show in almost a decade, but on the other it has just returned yet more stolen artifacts - this time to Italy.

A museum spokesperson said the objects, which included a bronze relief and two marble dishes, were returned after "new information" emerged about their history.

It comes after a report this month found artifacts worth an estimated $95 million have been seized from the museum in the last decade by teams investigating cultural trafficking.

There was better news though with the announcement its show Raphael: Sublime Poetry had more than 562,000 visitors during its three-month run – making it the museum's most highly attended show since 2018.

Its average daily visitor count of 6,800 people also made it the third most visited show of the past 10 years.

The museum's Costume Institute exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty attracted 661,509 visitors during its run from May 4 to August 7, 2011.

The amount of money raised by the Singapore-based Artery’s Artist Accelerator Program which launches today and pays a monthly stipend of up to $1,546 to six early-career artists in the country.

A "queeristocracy" of gay rights pioneers will be celebrated in a new show by photographer Tim Walker at London's National Portrait Gallery.

Among the 250 images on show is one of Andrew Lumsden who founded London's first gay pride march and who was photographed by Walker in a style inspired by 16th-century court portrait painter Nicholas Hilliard.

The show, called Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends, also includes portraits of people with objects that mean something to them including fellow photographer Sunil Gupta who holds his camera.

The show runs from October 9 to February 7.

1 - A rarely seen Nancy Spero work is at the heart of the group show opening tonight at Galerie Lelong in New York. The four banners that make up her piece This Womb... were conceived for a 1985 show in the vaults at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge and have rarely been seen since.

2 - A group show inspired by tennis opens tonight at Adams and Ollman in Portland, Oregon, just as the Wimbledon championships approach their climax thousands of miles away in London. A documentary about Robert Rauschenberg's performance piece, Open Score, which began with Frank Stella playing tennis will be shown along with contemporary work by artists including Dan Attoe and Katherine Bradford.

3 - Gagosian's Gstaad gallery is showing a series of studio paintings by Simon Hantai which were never exhibited during his lifetime. The works, which are on show until September 27, were first seen in the 2022 retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.

1 - Hoor Al Qasimi has been appointed president of Sharjah Museums Authority. A member of the emirate's ruling family and head of its art foundation, she will oversee its network of more than 20 institutions including its Museum of Art and Museum of Islamic Civilization.

2 - Fresh from his successful installation on the Pont Neuf in Paris, JR is launching his latest work on Saturday in L'Aquila, Italy. More than 2,000 photographic portraits of local residents will go on show in the city forming a giant mosaic.

3 - Tschabalala Self's Lady in Blue will be unveiled on London’s Fourth Plinth on September 10. The sculpture by the New York-based artist will be the 16th Fourth Plinth commission since the project began in 1998.

4 - Ai Weiwei has been named the second of three artists creating a monumental work for the Sydney Harbor foreshore near the city's Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. The project is funded by The Balnaves Foundation named after the late philanthropist Neil Balnaves who gave millions of dollars to arts organizations.