At last - a victory, however small, for the beleaguered security team at the Louvre.

They detained two German visitors to the Paris museum after they were seen using sticky tape to attach two paintings to the walls of the gallery which houses Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

Reports in France said police arrested the pair on Saturday on suspicion of damaging the gallery's walls.

It comes with the first anniversary fast approaching of last year's $102 million jewelry heist that saw the Louvre's security department humiliated and its then director, Laurence des Cars, lose her job and be replaced by Christophe Leribault.

That brazen robbery in the middle of Paris in broad daylight appears to have inspired copycat raids with museums and galleries across Europe falling victim to thieves.

Like the Met Gala but "meaningful" was how one onlooker described this weekend's final of South Korea's Dress Like a Museum Exhibit competition.

It was certainly meaningful for 23-year-old student Jeon Eun-seul who won for her portrayal of a porcelain water dropper shaped like a fish from the collection of the National Museum of Korea.

She beat 24 other finalists and walked off with the $2,200 prize presented by museum director You Hong-june in front of a sell-out crowd in Seoul of 2,000 people.

The winner told the Korea Herald she was inspired by Patrick the star fish from the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon and said she thought the exhibit that inspired her had a similar "charm".

The competition attracted 643 entrants from across the country benefiting from the publicity generated by last year's winners who dressed up as a pair of ancient gold earrings becoming minor celebrities in the process.

The price paid for a Louis Vuitton x Yayoi Kusama pumpkin bag at auction in Singapore last night. It was part of a wider sale, that raised $862,433, of luxury bags and accessories seized in a $2.35 billion money laundering case.

New York prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos is not one to rest on his laurels.

Only last week he was named in Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in art and days later he announced the latest victory in his war on stolen art by returning $2.4 million worth of trafficked antiquities.

Among the 147 objects returned to Turkey, Pakistan, and Thailand were 52 seized from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art including a bronze statuette of the Greek god Hermes.

Valued at around $500,000, it was stolen from Turkey in the 1960s before being sold to the Met in 1971 with no provenance.

Bogdanos is chief of the Manhattan District Attorney's Antiquities Trafficking Unit which has convicted 18 people of cultural-property-related crimes, recovered more than 6,400 treasures worth more than $490 million and returned more than 6,150 of them to 39 countries.

Spare a thought for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz who is facing pressure to resign after leading his party to some of its worst-ever election results, while his predecessor or at least her portrait is more popular than ever.

Berlin's Bode Museum has announced it is extending its exhibition of Angela Merkel's official portrait by almost three months "due to its great success with the public".

The portrait, by Jeremie Queyras, will now stay on show until January 3 - potentially outlasting Merz's time in high office - and is so popular Merkel is even making "a personal appearance" at the museum on October 4 to sign postcards of the painting.

1 - A huge 22 feet long by 9.4 feet high work by Canadian artist Norval Morrisseau has gone on show for the first time after four decades in storage. The mural has been loaned to the Thunder Bay Art Gallery in northwestern Ontario, near where he grew up, from EA Studios Calgary as part of a conservation project.

2 - London-based Iraqi painter Mohammed Sami has been named artist in residence at the National Gallery for 2027. He is the sixth artist to take up the role at the gallery in the UK capital following in the footsteps of Rosalind Nashashibi, Katrina Palmer and Ming Wong among others.

3 - Christie's has made new appointments to its private sales team after they accounted for almost a quarter of its global sales last year. Nick Orchard has been appointed head of private sales, Impressionist and Modern art in EMEA with Cristian Albu now head of private sales in Asia Pacific.

4 - Tate Collective, the UK gallery’s free-to-join membership scheme for 16 to 25-year-olds, has reached a record 200,000 members and is celebrating by offering one of them the chance to show their work. The winner of the open call, chosen by a jury chaired by curator Rosalie Doubal, will see their work on display in Tate Modern next year alongside the likes of Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali and Marina Abramovic.