A group of indigenous American artists used digital technology to leave their mark on New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in an unsanctioned augmented reality campaign.

They digitally superimposed their own images without touching the 19th-century works in the museum's American wing saying they wanted to transform it into "a space where Indigenous presence, creativity, and stories take center stage".

Visitors to the museum are invited to scan a QR code to let them see the digital exhibition of historic paintings and sculptures complete with their new digital additions by artists including Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Cannupa Hanska Luger and Jeremy Dennis.

They said the project was "not a protest, or a spectacle" but a "celebration and a reassertion of Indigenous presence in one of the grandest stages of American art and history".

Talk about mixed signals - in the space of eight months Creative Australia appointed Khaled Sabsabi as its Venice Biennale representative, dropped him, reinstated him and now they have given him a grant of $64,400 to create a new work.

It will pay for a major new piece to go on show at the Samstag Museum of Art in Adelaide at some point before June 2027.

The Lebanese-Australian artist was chosen in February along with curator Michael Dagostino to represent the country at next year's Biennale only to be dropped six days later after politicians raised concerns about some of his early work featuring images of a Hezbollah leader and the September 11 attacks.

He always denied the charge and was subsequently reinstated along with Dagostino.

The value of 29 antiquities recently returned to Greece by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. Several of the objects were seized from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and came to notice during an ongoing investigation into disgraced antiquities dealer Robin Symes.

The rivalry between London and Paris even extends to anthropomorphic art with a floating frog and a talking mouse battling it out for the attention of collectors.

Among the work going on show next week for Art Basel Paris is Alex Da Corte's huge inflatable of Kermit the Frog which will take pride of place in Place Vendome.

The sculpture, complete with deflated head, is inspired by the 1991 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York when a giant version of the green muppet crashed into a tree causing its head to slump.

Meanwhile in London, a new show opening tomorrow at Camden Arts Project to coincide with the first day of Frieze includes Ryan Gander's animatronic harvest mouse emerging from a hole in the wall to deliver a philosophical monologue in his daughter's voice.

It is part of a wave of shows opening in the UK capital as the art world descends on the city for Frieze.

Among those opening tonight are Sagarika Sundaram’s textile paintings at Alison Jacques in Cork Street, Ed Ruscha’s show, Says I, to Myself, Says I, at Gagosian in Davies Street and solo shows for Eva Helene Pade, at Thaddaeus Ropac and Nicholas Party at Hauser & Wirth.

London's Courtauld, home to a gallery and academic institute, is celebrating its largest ever donation - $39.8 million from the Reuben Foundation.

The foundation, set up by British billionaire businessmen brothers Simon and David Reuben, will also share works from the family art collection with the Courtauld.

Some of the money, announced today by Lisa Reuben, will be spent on its new campus on the Strand which is due to open in 2029.

The Courtauld's gallery, home to works including Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, re-opened in 2021 after a three-year transformation project.

1 - Hong Kong's M+ museum is hosting the first major retrospective of Chinese French artist Zao Wou-Ki 12 years after his death. The show, which runs from December 13 to May 3, focuses on his printmaking.

2 - Lithuanian artist Emilija Škarnulytė has opened her first Brazilian exhibition at MASP in Sao Paulo. The show includes a video installation where she swims at the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon River accompanied by pink dolphins and runs to November 23.

3 - There has been a (French) revolution at the Louvre which has acquired its first video work in its 232-year history. The 4 temps, by Algerian-born and Paris-based photographer Mohamed Bourouissa, is inspired by the nearby Tuileries Gardens and goes on show on October 22.

4 - India will be represented at the upcoming Venice Biennale - only the third time in its history the nation has had a pavilion there. The 2026 entry will feature work by emerging artists from the country's indigenous tribes. Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa included work by 12 Indian artists in his 2024 exhibition but they have not had a pavilion since 2019.

5 - Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon claims to have uncovered the identity of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring. In his new book, Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found, he says she is Magdalena van Ruijven who was the daughter of his patrons Maria de Knuijt and Pieter Claesz van Ruijven and not the artist's daughter or an anonymous servant as long thought.