It has taken more than a week but finally the Smithsonian has stood up for itself after President Trump announced he had fired Kim Sajet from her role as Director of the National Portrait Gallery.

She is still at her desk and in a statement released yesterday, the US institution restated its position as "an independent entity", saying "all personnel decisions are made by and subject to the direction of the Secretary, with oversight by the Board".

It comes after President Trump announced on May 30 he was "terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National Portrait Gallery", describing her as "a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position".

The statement, issued after a meeting of its board, said secretary Lonnie Bunch had their support "in his authority and management of the Smithsonian".

It said the institution was "committed to ensuring" it was "free from political or partisan influence" but recognized it "can and must do more to further these foundational values".

It added that staff would be given "specific expectations... regarding content in Smithsonian museums" and have "reasonable time to make any needed changes to ensure unbiased content".

A monumental bronze sculpture of a "superhero" Australian Aboriginal woman has been commissioned for central Sydney.

Badjgama Ngunda Whuliwulawala (Black Women Rising) by Alison Page will sit in Circular Quay near the city's landmark opera house.

Page told the Sydney Morning Herald her work "bubbles at the base, as if she’s forming out of water, as if she is this superhero with her energy and essence living within the Aboriginal women of Sydney today".

The 5.5-metre-tall bronze will weigh 4.5 tonnes and is expected to be unveiled in 2027.

A South Korean museum has only just stopped selling souvenirs based on a fake Lee Jung-seob work ruled to be a forgery almost a decade ago.

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul admitted selling hundreds of souvenirs that include an image of the work, Children, long after it was declared a fake in 2017.

It only pulled the product after the late artist's family began legal proceedings against the firm that made it.

The painting was declared a fake after experts expressed doubts over the unnatural signature and lack of the artist's fingerprints on the work. In a similar case last year, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art removed a painting attributed to Lee that was revealed to be a forgery.

Two paintings stolen 40 years ago from a New Mexico museum have been returned after being spotted in the background of a documentary about a notorious pair of art thieves.

A Victor Higgins work, Aspens, and a painting by Joseph Henry Sharp, Oklahoma Cheyanne, were stolen from the walls of the University of New Mexico’s Harwood Museum of Art in Taos in 1985.

They are now back on show in the museum after private investigator Lou Schachter saw them in a documentary about married couple Rita and Jerry Alter who stole a $160 million Willem de Kooning from the University of Arizona in 1985.

That painting was only found when a house clearance firm turned it up after the couple's death - a story told in the 2022 documentary The Thief Collector which includes a still photograph of Jerry in his living room with both paintings hanging on the wall behind him.

They had been unwittingly sold on by an auction house in 2018 but were tracked down by FBI agents who returned them to the museum.

1 - IM Youngzoo has been named the recipient of the 2025 Frieze Seoul Artist Award. The Korean artist gets the opportunity to present a new commission at the art fair which runs from September 3 to 6.

2 - The former home of Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha has been transformed into an arts center. Vila 31 in Tirana has been taken over by French entrepreneur Frédéric Jousset's Art Explora Foundation and will offer residencies to around 30 artists a year.

3 - Works by Giovanni Fattori and Gino Severini are among 74 paintings being lent by the Uffizi Galleries in Florence for an exhibition in Riga. The show runs from July 5 to November 30 in the Latvian National Museum of Art.