arts

Celebrated artist Sliman Mansour, one of the founding figures of contemporary Palestinian art, has died at the age of 79 after a long illness, his family announced on Monday.

Born in Birzeit, near Ramallah, in 1947, Mansour rose to prominence in the 1970s as part of a generation of Palestinian artists, writers and poets seeking to rebuild a threatened identity through symbols rooted in land and memory. Over more than five decades, his paintings came to embody the story of Palestine: the farmer clinging to his soil, the stone house on a hill, the embroidered thobe and the smile of a young girl carrying the hope of return.

Mansour studied art in Beirut and Washington and went on to exhibit extensively, both in solo shows and group exhibitions across the Arab world and internationally. His works are held in museums and private collections worldwide, and he received numerous awards in recognition of his contribution to Arab and Palestinian culture.

His visual language drew deeply from the region’s ancient civilisations – Canaanite, Pharaonic and Assyrian – as well as Islamic and Arab art, particularly calligraphy and geometric motifs. At the same time, his upbringing in Birzeit anchored his work in the everyday life of Palestinian villages: the landscape, peasants, traditional homes and clothing. Mansour also absorbed influences from global art that carried messages of freedom and resistance, blending local forms with a universal appeal.

During the first Intifada, he helped found the New Vision group with fellow artists, turning to mud, straw, wood, leather, henna and natural dyes after Palestinian artists boycotted Israeli-made supplies. This shift, he later said, forged a vital link between post-Nakba art and the work of younger generations.

For many Palestinians, Mansour’s canvases were more than images; they were a visual archive of the cause itself. His brush, critics and admirers agree, carried the homeland.

Al Jazeera looks at some of his famous paintings.

Ahmed Krim spent 30 years teaching English in Algeria’s middle schools. Now retired, the 60-year-old watched the language he loved remain firmly behind French as the country’s second language.

English was less valued than French, which might have been the language of Algeria’s coloniser, but continues to be present in every dialogue, six decades after independence.

On July 25 , Algeria’s Education Minister, Mohamed Seghir Saadaoui, announced that English will become the sole foreign language taught in the third year of primary school in the new academic year for 2026-2027.

French would be pushed back to the fourth year, ending its domination of foreign language classes in Algerian schools.

From next month, eight-year-olds across Algeria will become the first to learn English before French.

“It is a very good decision. But it requires thinking, planning and resources,” Krim told Al Jazeera.

It is among the first steps in President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s linguistic overhaul for Algeria, which he first outlined in 2022 with English being introduced to primary schools.

Since then, medicine and science faculties have begun switching from French to English.

The French language has been erased from some utility bills and Air Algerie tickets. Road signs are beginning to feature English alongside Arabic, while government ministers’ websites will also have English as an option.

The shift from French to English as Algeria’s secondary language is both sweeping and structural.

It comes amid the most serious diplomatic crisis between the two countries since Algeria’s independence from France in 1962.

In July 2024, French President Emmanuel Macron publicly backed Morocco’s sovereignty claim over Western Sahara.

Algeria, which supports the Sahrawi Polisario Front and hosts over 170,000 Sahrawi refugees, viewed that as highly provocative.

That, and other issues, saw Algeria expel French diplomats, and vice versa.

Algeria’s replacement of French as the country’s second language accelerated after the diplomatic crisis grew.

A classroom without enough teachers

A rethink of the whole education system in Algeria may be needed.

“First and foremost, specialised training centres must be restored and candidates must not be forced into the teaching profession without wanting it – we need people who genuinely want to do this work,” Krim said.

He refers to dedicated institutes established after independence, where primary and middle school teachers, like himself, trained via a model that combined classroom instruction with direct school placements to meet the gap in Arabic instructors.

The centres operated until the late 1990s, when an economic crunch replaced them with the fewer and more selective Ecoles Normales Superieures.

Most teachers today are university graduates, but lack the practical, classroom-first grounding that the older model provided.

Krim said that school curricula must be designed and entrusted to “a qualified body that includes both linguistic and pedagogical expertise, free from all ideology”.

But journalist and analyst Noureddine Bessadi said the ideological dimension matters in Algeria, which overthrew colonialism following a bloody and bitter struggle against the French.

“Since independence in 1962, every shift in language policy has been fought as much on political as pedagogical grounds,” Bessadi told Al Jazeera.

After independence, Algeria’s Arabisation drive, when French was displaced from government and education, was “part of state building and enforcing Algeria’s identity, centring Arabic and Islam”, Bessadi added.

Tamazight, a non-Semitic language spoken by around a quarter of Algeria’s population, was marginalised until 1995, Bessadi said, shaped by an “ideological perception of unity that prioritised linguistic and cultural harmony”.

Critics argue that the transition from French to English is happening faster than the system can keep up with. For one, it is believed that there are not enough qualified English teachers to make the language reforms work.

But one source familiar with the matter told Al Jazeera that there are enough teachers to roll out this programme in primary schools and that any shortage could be filled through contractors.

In February, Algeria’s education ministry reportedly recruited about 15,000 English language teachers for primary schools.

Rafik Laceb, a lecturer in English at Mouloud Mammeri University in Tizi Ouzou, is cautiously optimistic about the primary school reform. But he considers the parallel push to teach university subjects in English to be rushed and poorly executed.

“Frankly, and beyond any chauvinism, I believe this decision is positive… I believe there is, today, sufficient supervision and evaluation work from the first experience,” Laceb said, in reference to the previous introduction of English in later primary school years.

The university experiment that began in 2023-2024 produced insufficient contact hours, a lack of genuine assessment of students’ English levels and no tracking of their progress.

Around 50 percent of teaching at Tizi Ouzou University’s English department is by younger contract staff, which brings other challenges.

“A young contract teacher must first master the basic principles of medicine before attempting to teach medical terminology in English,” he said.

Levelling the playing field

Currently, children only begin learning a foreign language in the third year of state primary schools, whereas multiple languages are taught at private schools from kindergarten.

Djamel Merah, whose daughter attended private schools before transferring to public secondary school, studied Arabic, French and English simultaneously from kindergarten level.

Merah welcomes the government’s language reforms at state primary schools, which will provide more children with the opportunity to learn English.

“It addresses a question about the gap in opportunities between children who get multilingual education from the start and those in public schools who don’t get the same chance,” he said.

Shakespeare’s rising shelf space

There also appears to be a more organic response among the public that precedes the government’s promotion of the English language.

Krimo Taleb, a bookseller at the Libre Pensee bookshop in Tizi Ouzou, has seen a growth in English-language book sales, particularly among female readers.

“In my opinion, it has nothing to do with government decisions. The majority of young readers today speak three languages fluently,” he said.

His own daughter, a middle school student, reads fluently in Arabic, English and French.

Colleen Hoover, Ana Huang and J. K. Rowling are some of the best-selling authors at his shop.

“Previously, our bookshops provided for English literature students the works of Shakespeare,” Taleb says. “Today, there is a diverse range of English-language titles aimed at the general public.”

However, French remains Algeria’s most influential foreign language. According to the International Organisation of La Francophonie (OIF), Algeria has approximately 15 million French speakers, nearly a third of its population.

There is not a single newspaper published in English and written English by Algerians remains in its infancy.

But there are signs that former colonies are turning their backs on France’s linguistic legacy, particularly in Africa, where Paris’s military and political presence made a resurgence in recent decades.

In March 2025, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso withdrew from the OIF, accusing it of being a political instrument of Paris.

“Mali made its national languages official in 2023, demoting French to a working language. Burkina Faso followed the same year and Niger in 2025,” Bessadi added. “Even Senegal, which has not removed French as an official language, has begun encouraging local languages at its expense.”

For Krim, Algeria’s linguistic ambitions are not far-fetched, but for it to work, the country needs the “necessary resources… and transparency”.

AVROTROS says escalating international conflicts are undermining the event’s neutrality and fuelling divisions.

The public broadcaster in the Netherlands has announced it will not participate in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest because the event can “no longer be considered neutral” due to ongoing divisions over the war in Gaza.

“It is undeniable that international conflicts are increasingly affecting the Contest, undermining its neutral character. The Eurovision Song Contest has therefore become a platform for division,” said Taco Zimmerman, Director-General of AVROTROS, in a statement on Monday.

The widely-watched show has recently faced a series of boycotts over Israel’s participation. Organisers announced earlier this month that they would exclude any country involved in an armed conflict from hosting the competition.

“However, the recently announced changes… do not provide sufficient confidence that the independent and neutral character of the Eurovision Song Contest has been restored,” the AVROTROS statement added.

Israel finished second in the competition – the world’s largest live televised music event – in both 2025 and 2026.

Next year’s Eurovision is due to be held in Bulgaria’s Black Sea city of Burgas, after Bulgarian singer Darina Yotova, known as Dara, won this year’s contest in Vienna, Austria, with her catchy floor-filler ‘Bangaranga’. The contest on May 15 will be the first time the Balkan nation has hosted.

Since its launch in 1955, Eurovision has become the ultimate pop platform, catapulting Swedish icons ABBA to worldwide fame, while also boosting the careers of artists such as Celine Dion, Cliff Richard and Olivia Newton-John.

However, this year’s competition pulled in 131 million viewers, 35 million fewer than last year, after five countries boycotted over Israel’s participation. The Netherlands, Iceland, Spain, Ireland, and Slovenia all pulled out, with the latter three refusing to broadcast the show at all.

I’d like to pen an ode to the once-L.A.-based artist Mel Kadel on the occasion of the release of her first coloring book for women and girls, published by Secret Headquarters in Atwater Village. Titled “Dream Drops,” the detailed hand drawings allow blossoming artists to participate in Kadel’s elaborate, imaginative world of fragile, brave, timid, hopeful, brash, adventurous women — characters she’s drawn for decades now.

I first met Kadel more than 25 years ago when I moved to L.A. from Boston with my then-up-and-coming indie rock band called the Movies. The band moved into a two-bedroom triplex in Silver Lake that cost $845 per month and immediately fell in with a ragtag group of iconoclastic and wildly talented artists including Kadel, photographer Alex Prager, painter America Martin, artist Mercedes Helnwein and bands and musicians such as the Silversun Pickups, Jimmy Tamborello, the Jealous Sound, Earlimart, Radar Bros. and Irving.

Kadel and her then-partner Travis Millard — another prolific and accomplished artist — lived in a cabin near the wild mountainy edges of Echo Park, and friends would gather there to draw, drink and make music. Kadel always had her head bent over her work, page after page of detailed line drawings that later appeared on friends’ bedroom and living room walls and sometimes on fliers for shows at Spaceland or the Silverlake Lounge.

It was Kadel who encouraged many of us to try our hand at creating art, and she once staged a group show at an Echo Park record shop called Sea Level that was owned by a friend of ours. I painted a self-portrait on a piece of wood for the show that still hangs on my wall today.

Kadel created the album cover for the Silversun Pickups’ debut EP, “Pikul,” which was released on Dangerbird Records in 2005, and later, after the band and the label soared to new heights, she covered Dangerbird headquarters near Sunset Junction in Silver Lake with a building-sized mural featuring her otherworldly woman clad in blue stripes with forever flowing flowered hair.

In many ways it is Kadel whom I credit with opening a young me up to the magical world of art and the ideas that flow from it — Kadel and those early L.A. friends, many of whom I no longer see regularly, but whose accomplishments I relish in when they come to my attention. Which is just what I did when I saw that Kadel had released her coloring book — a project that she has worked on (no doubt in the same intentional, intense way that she always has) for the past year.

I’m arts editor Jessica Gelt, glad for what was and looking forward to what will be. This is your arts and culture news for the week.

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

Eleanora Owen in “Being Piaf.”

(Doug Engalla )

Being Piaf
Written and performed by Eleanora Owen, this solo theatrical piece explores the life and songs of French singer and lyricist Edith Piaf. Directed by Tim Byron Owen.
8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 4 p.m. Sundays; through Aug. 30. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. odysseytheatre.com

Green Corridors
The West Coast premiere of Natalka Vorozhbyt’s darkly humorous drama about the plight of four Ukrainian women — refugees from the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. Translated by John Freedman with Natalia Bratus. Directed by Frédérique Michel and produced by Charles A. Duncombe.
8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 4 p.m. Sundays; through Sept. 27. City Garage Theater, Bergamot Station Arts Center, 2525 Michigan Ave T1, Santa Monica. citygarage.org

Tercera Raíz
The contributions of the African diaspora to Mexican culture are celebrated with dance and mariachi music. Produced in partnership with Grandeza Mexicana Folk Ballet Company.
8 p.m. The Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East. theford.com

SATURDAY

New–Music Game Night!
Brightwork Ensemble and People Inside Electronics present an evening of game-inspired works by Cristina Lord, Isaac Schankler, Siobhán Dougall and Richard An, and audience participation.
8 p.m. Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd. sierramadreplayhouse.org

SUNDAY

Eileen Cowin: Between Panic and Paradise
The Los Angeles–based photographer and artist’s 50-year career has produced visual narratives that incorporate cinema, literature, poetry and painting, erasing the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction.
Through Jan 3, 2027. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. lacma.org

Jamar Gilbert and Amber Liekhus in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” at a Noise Within.

(Daniel Reichert)

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
A Noise Within opens its season with the seventh of the 10 plays in August Wilson’s Century Cycle to be produced by the company. Amber Liekhus stars as an iconic blues singer during a tempestuous recording session in 1927 Chicago. Directed by Gregg T. Daniel.
Previews, 2 p.m. Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Aug. 28; Aug. 29-Sept. 20. A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. https://www.anoisewithin.org/play/ma-raineys-black-bottom/

TUESDAY

Beethoven’s Fifth with Anna Handler

Da-da-da-DUM. The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s incoming conductor-in-residence leads the orchestra in one of classical music’s most iconic pieces, along with the composer’s rarely heard Triple Concerto and the U.S. premiere of Grace-Evangeline Mason’s “Ablaze the Moon.”
8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

Jeff Goldblum and the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra will play Blue Note LA on Tuesday and Wednesday.

(Blue Note LA)

Jeff Goldblum & the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra
As they’ve been doing for three decades, the actor-musician and his band perform contemporary arrangements of classic jazz and American Songbook standards.
7 and 9:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. Blue Note Los Angeles, 6372 Sunset Blvd. bluenotejazz.com

Looking West: How the Myth of the Western Frontier Got Its Start
Muse/ique takes a deep dive into the legends and reality of the American West through classic Hollywood film scores, folk songs and contemporary compositions that reclaim the era’s diversity. Led by artistic and music director Rachael Worby with Damon Daunno, Raye Zaragoza, Glynn Turman and Muse/ique Orchestra.
7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino; 3 pm. (premium RSVPs only) and 7:30 p.m. Aug. 30. Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd. muse-ique.com

WEDNESDAY

California African American Museum
The museum augments two of its ongoing shows with special events. On Wednesday, Justen LeRoy of Art + Practice offers a curatorial walkthrough of “The Sound of Gordon Parks,” an immersive exhibition highlighting the sonic dimension of the photographer, composer, author, poet and filmmaker’s work. Thursday night, poets Pam Ward, Luis Rodriguez and Lynne Thompson share original work inspired by “A New Song: Langston Hughes in the West.”
Gordon Parks, 2 p.m. Wednesday; Langston Hughes, 7 p.m. Thursday. CAAM, 600 State Drive, Exposition Park. caamuseum.org

“Conscience” by playwright Joe DiPietro will have its L.A. premiere at International City Theatre in Long Beach.

(Justin Patterson)

Conscience
The Los Angeles premiere of Tony Award-winning playwright Joe DiPietro’s drama about pioneering politician Margaret Chase Smith, who famously challenged Joseph McCarthy’s tactics and was the first woman to serve in both houses of the U.S. Congress. Directed by Caryn Desai.
Previews, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday; 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays; through Sept. 13. International City Theatre the Beverly O’Neill Theater, 330 E. Seaside Way, Long Beach. ictlongbeach.org

THURSDAY

Rachmaninoff & Adams
Gemma New conducts John Adams’ “Short Ride in a Fast Machine,” ahead of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto (with Jeneba Kanneh-Mason in her L.A. Phil debut) and Symphonic Dances.
8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

— Kevin Crust

Retrospective

L.A. Times arts coverage from the past …

Eisa Davis, playwright and actor, who appeared in Melissa Jane Gibson’s play “This” at the Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City in 2011.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

A double life as actor, playwright

Aug. 14, 2011

“I’m in a play called ‘This.’ ”

“OK, what is it called?”

“No, no, it’s called ‘This.’ ”

“Yes? What? It’s called what?”

With a lighthearted laugh, Eisa Davis says she often encounters this response when revealing that she is in a new production of “This,” which recently opened at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. The perplexity may be fitting for the universe playwright Melissa James Gibson has created: a world of confusion in which close friends enter a vulnerable time of unforeseen circumstances testing their expectations — a time also known as middle age.

Davis’ work as an actor and a playwright has contributed to a textured career. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 2007 for her play “Bulrusher,” about a biracial orphan infant found in a basket and raised by a quiet schoolteacher. She went on to write and star in the autobiographical “Angela’s Mixtape,” which was among the New Yorker’s best plays of 2009. Other plays she has written include “Ramp,” as well as “The History of Light,” which is returning to the stage this fall in New Jersey. READ MORE

– Jasmine Elist

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Conservators examine “Portrait of Mai” by Joshua Reynolds at the Getty museum.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

A 250-year-old portrait by painter Joshua Reynolds recently arrived at the Getty and is being examined by conservators before going on view in its West Coast debut later next month. “The Portrait of Mai” was acquired by the Getty for $61 million in a rare joint purchase with the National Portrait Gallery in London and depicts a young, regal-looking Tahitian man who arrived in London with Capt. James Cook in 1774.

If you’ve seen the recent national tour of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, you may have wondered how on earth the actor playing the living chandelier Lumiere sings and dances for more than two hours while wearing lighted candles on both of his hands. The answer has arrived via this fun story written by Times contributor Jenelle Riley, who headed backstage during a recent performance to trail Danny Gardner as he donned the 7-pound props and went about the business of performing in the rigorous show.

The group show “To Share a Stomach” recently opened at the Brick in East Hollywood. Times contributor Sharon Mizota wrote a review that included her take on the unique and difficult-to-execute concept. The show was made manifest when 25 Iranian artists, working under challenging wartime conditions, sent instructions to artists counterparts in L.A. for how to create artworks using various levels of collaboration. Mizota found the results understandably uneven, but deeply touching and impactful.

The Kennedy Center’s National Symphony Orchestra performs at the Hollywood Bowl under musical director Gianandrea Noseda on Aug. 18.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

The newly homeless National Symphony Orchestra, whose fate has become uncertain as a court battle wages over whether or not the Kennedy Center will close down for two years, performed at the Hollywood Bowl earlier this week. Times classical music critic Mark Swed was there to watch, along with many effusive supporters of music director Gianandrea Noseda’s now wandering orchestra. Swed found the program lacking in imagination, but noted, “with its smooth strings, creamy brass, pungent winds and friendly percussion, Noseda’s NSO came across as a gracious orchestra meant to please, and, consequently, a seemingly marvelous anomaly in an otherwise divisive present-day D.C.”

Speaking of the Kennedy Center, last week proved a pivotal one for its fate. The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees voted late in the week to move forward with President Trump’s plan to close the building for renovations for two years. According to multiple news reports, the board also voted to inscribe Trump’s name on the building using the language “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”

Brett Littman has been named the new director and chief executive of the the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

(Don Stahl)

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego announced earlier this week that it has appointed Brett Littman as its new director and chief executive. Littman is replacing Kathryn Kanjo, who left to become the new director of the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art. Littman has previously served in a variety of leadership roles in the arts in New York City, including as director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum; executive director of the Drawing Center; and deputy director of MoMA PS1. He was also co-director of Dieu Donné Papermill and associate director of UrbanGlass. He will start at MCASD in early October as the fifth director and chief executive in the museum’s history.

The Perenchio Foundation has awarded a $2,040,000 grant to the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, representing the largest grant in the Grammy-winning organization’s history. The 2026 General Operating Support grant, which aids many aspects of the organization’s programming and community offerings, will be distributed over three years, and arrives at LACC celebrates its 40th anniversary.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Here are 16 burger and drink deals for when you need an “adult happy meal,” from The Times food section. Who doesn’t?

As Messina celebrated the Sicilian holiday of Ferragosto, thieves struck the MuMe museum to steal the masterworks by Antonello da Messina.

Thieves have stolen four Renaissance masterworks by Antonello da Messina valued at up to 80 million euros ($93m) from the MuMe Regional Interdisciplinary Museum in the Sicilian city of Messina in Italy.

Cultural officials and Italian media reported the theft on Sunday, saying the heist occurred at about 9:50pm (19:50 GMT) the day before, during Sicily’s major Ferragosto holiday.

Italian news outlet Il Giornale dell’Arte said that the perpetrators had exploited the citywide distraction of the traditional Vara procession, which drew police and large crowds to central Messina.

Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported that the thieves cut through metal perimeter fencing along Viale Annunziata to gain access to the grounds. They then forced open a side door to enter the gallery halls. Once inside, the group breached an armoured glass display case to extract a small, double-sided tempera panel dating back to 1465-1474.

The portable devotional piece features the Virgin and Child with a Franciscan Monk on its front and Christ in Pieta on its reverse. Originally part of the Wilhelm Soldan collection from 1930, it was acquired by the Sicilian region at a Christie’s auction in 2003 following its formal attribution to Antonello.

The perpetrators also dismantled all five remaining tempera-on-wood panels of the historic San Gregorio Polyptych. Commissioned in 1473 by Abbess Fabria Cirino for the monastery of Santa Maria, which was subsequently destroyed in Messina’s 1908 earthquake, the altarpiece stands as the only surviving masterpiece by Antonello that remained in his hometown. The thieves made off with three key sections of the piece.

Italian outlet Repubblica reported that the thieves abandoned the remaining two panels depicting Saint Benedict and Saint Gregory resting against a wall near the museum grounds.

‘A real movie-style heist like at the Louvre’

“We are devastated by what happened. They were two of Antonello da Messina’s most important and best-known works,” museum director Marisa Mercurio told Italian news agency ANSA.

Local Culture Councillor Enzo Caruso told outlet Il Tirreno: “Nobody in Messina could have imagined a real movie-style heist like at the Louvre.”

Caruso said that international interest in Antonello’s oeuvre had expanded after Italy’s Culture Ministry purchased his Ecce Homo painting for $14.9m earlier in the year.

Lynda Albertson, CEO of the ARCA art crimes research association, told La Repubblica that “stealing an Antonello may be far easier than selling one” given the high visibility and historic footprint of the stolen panels.

She explained that high-profile art of this kind rarely gets sold, often spending years traded within the criminal underworld as leverage for other illegal activities.

Born in Sicily around the year 1430, Antonello da Messina stands as one of the defining masters of the early Italian Renaissance. Because few of his works survive today, his surviving paintings are considered irreplaceable cultural treasures.

The theft follows a separate case days earlier in Parma, northern Italy, where police recovered three stolen works by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse valued at roughly $11.5m.

Graffiti has marked the walls of Rome for millennia. Now, as one content creator builds a following cleaning spray-painted walls, his videos are fuelling a wider debate over heritage, street art and where the line between the two should be drawn.

Facing Holloway at UFC 329, Irishman McGregor seemed to injure his right knee in the first round when jumping in with a kick.

Conor McGregor’s much-hyped ‌return to the octagon lasted just over a minute on ⁠Saturday after the ⁠Irishman blew out his knee and retired injured in his UFC 329 fight with Max Holloway in Las Vegas.

Former two-weight ⁠world champion McGregor, who had not fought since breaking his leg against Dustin Poirier in July 2021, attempted a flying kick to start ⁠the opening round but landed awkwardly and immediately looked in trouble.

He tried to fight on for a few seconds but looked towards the referee to signal he could not continue.

Former featherweight champ Holloway said he would discuss ‌the possibility of staging another fight with McGregor when the Irishman recovers.

“It is what it is, I’m going to sit down with the UFC,” Holloway added. “(There was) so much hype for that right there. We’ve got to run it back one more time. One more time for the boys.”

Saturday’s bout was the second between the ⁠pair, with McGregor winning by unanimous decision in 2013.

Injuries ⁠and issues away from the sport have derailed McGregor’s career.

After breaking his leg against Poirier five years ago, the 37-year-old was slated to meet Michael Chandler in June 2024, but that was cancelled after McGregor suffered a broken toe in training.

Later that year, a jury in ⁠an Irish civil court found him liable ⁠for the rape of Nikita Hand in 2018.

In October 2025, he accepted an 18-month ban for “whereabouts failures” after he missed three attempts by Combat Sports Anti-Doping to collect biological samples ‌from him in 2024. The ban was backdated and expired in March.

In the co-main event at the T-Mobile Arena on Saturday, Britain’s Paddy ‌Pimblett ‌also needed less than a minute to secure victory, choking out Frenchman Benoit Saint-Denis in their lightweight bout.

In many ways, Saturday was a typical July 4 holiday in the United States.

The country marked the anniversary of its Declaration of Independence with hotdog-eating contests, parades, fireworks and baseball games.

But this Independence Day was different, not least because it marked the country’s semiquincentennial: the 250th year since the US’s founding.

It also was one of the most politically charged Independence Day celebrations in recent memory.

President Donald Trump is expected to speak this evening from the National Mall in Washington, DC, right before what has been billed as the “world’s largest fireworks display”.

More than 850,000 fireworks are expected to launch from barges in the Potomac River, lighting up the sky above the capital.

But while Independence Day festivities have long been billed as non-partisan events, Trump has pledged to make the night’s celebration “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all”.

The event comes as Trump’s Republican Party seeks to defend its control of Congress in November’s midterm elections, with a heated primary season already under way.

Trump’s involvement in the semiquincentennial has long been controversial.

On January 29, 2025 — just nine days into his second term as president — Trump issued an executive order establishing a White House task force to oversee celebrations for the 250th anniversary. Trump named himself its chair.

That task force would eventually set the groundwork for Freedom 250, a public-private partnership that organised some of the biggest events of the semiquincentennial, including the Great American State Fair on the National Mall.

But Freedom 250 was accused of funnelling resources away from America250, a congressionally approved panel that had likewise been charged with planning semiquincentennial celebrations since its founding in 2016.

The existence of the two groups has also spurred confusion. In late May, for instance, a suite of performers dropped out of the Great American State Fair, alleging they had been misled about its affiliation with Trump.

Before Saturday’s events, Democrats in the House of Representatives released a report (PDF) accusing Trump of using Freedom 250 for political purposes, including by awarding contracts to Trump allies.

It also alleges that Freedom 250 has been “operating outside the transparency and accountability requirements” Congress imposes on such celebrations — and that it may even have committed wire fraud by redirecting “unsuspecting donors” away from America250 and towards its own programmes.

“Under President Donald Trump, this anniversary has been hijacked and perverted into a hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment,” the report reads.

But speaking at a naval parade in New York City on Saturday, Vice President JD Vance brushed aside the criticisms. He called on revellers to reject the “small but loud voices” that “speak obsessively” of the US’s “imperfections”.

“What I’d ask you to do, my fellow Americans, on our 250th birthday, is to reject the two-dimensional view of your fellow citizens and reject the two-dimensional view of your country,” he said.

“Reject that America is a place for zero-sum thinking because it is not. Our history is one of people carving a great civilisation out of the wilderness. Reject the view of your nation that sees only its sins but not its grace and its greatness.”

The Benin Bronzes are a broad term used for the carved ivory, wooden works, metal sculptures and plaques looted by British troops during the Punitive Expedition in 1897.

Scholars estimate that more than 5,000 artefacts were stolen, some of which were gifted to Queen Victoria, others sold in auctions, held in private galleries or donated to museums across Europe and elsewhere.

The call to return the art, which began in the 1930s, intensified in the recent decade, inspired by growing pressure, repatriation activism and the relentless effort of the Benin Dialogue Group, a multilateral stakeholders’ group.

As momentum built at the peak of the homecoming of these arts, Igun Street unexpectedly found itself in the global spotlight. Diplomats, state officials, museum curators and researchers began arriving in numbers local artisans say they had never witnessed before.

This noon, Double Chief’s voice brims with pride as he points to a recently completed sculpture resting on a wooden bench. The bronze figure, a man in a suit and tie, had received its final polish only that morning after months of work.

Yet for many bronze casters, the attention has done little to solve underlying concerns.

“We are struggling to keep the industry alive,” says Oriakhi Osazee, who sits on a wooden stool at the entrance of a store in Igun. A sculptor whose mediums are clay, fibre, brass and bronze, Osazee has been in the craft for more than 35 years. He speaks with depth and conviction, drawing from vivid dates and past events to reinforce his ideas.

Efforts to recruit apprentices have stalled, he says. Young people, on whom the future of the craft depends, are increasingly leaving in search of what he calls “quick money” in other professions, cities and countries.

When their ancestors began, he recalls, their craft extended beyond bronze casting. There were, among the Iguns, men who had a gift in ivory carving. Long before the global ban on ivory trade was made official, that layer of art, without heirs and hope of continuity, had died.

For Agbonmwenre Alex, the subject of heirship within the craft is a matter of personal pain.

Alex, who was taking a tour of his workshop, began learning the craft at the age of eight under the guidance of his father. He started with errands and light tasks before progressing to kneading clay pottery. Over time, he learned every stage of the casting process, from preparing moulds to the final polishing of finished works.

Today, he is the only one of his father’s seven sons who remains in the profession. But uncertainty now hangs over the next generation.

“I would like my sons to take after me,” Alex says. “Unfortunately, I started exposing them to this craft so late. They literally see this work as outdated, archaic, and dying. The zeal, the love for the job, is dead.”

I would like my sons to take after me. They see this work as outdates, archaic, and dying. The zeal, the love for the job, is dead.

by AGNONMWENRE ALEX, BRONZE CRAFTSMAN

His first son chose to study law. His second is pursuing a degree in healthcare. Despite repeated efforts to pique their interest, including offering workshop space, raw materials and financial support to start a business of their own, neither accepted.

“The number of youths is declining drastically. It [the craft] is at risk of going into extinction. Apprentices are so scarce,” says Osazee. “We used to have a lot of apprentices in the past.”

A massive 850-square-meter street mural of football star Neymar da Silva, created by six artists over two days in Brazil’s Novo Hamburgo, is turning heads ahead of the highly anticipated FIFA World Cup.

INTERLOCHEN, Mich. — A Michigan summer arts camp and boarding school where Jeffrey Epstein has been accused of meeting at least two of his victims will tear down a lodge that once bore his name.

The Interlochen Center for the Arts said this week that its board of trustees has approved a plan to demolish the Green Lake Lodge, which had been known as Jeffrey E. Epstein Scholarship Lodge until the school cut ties and scrubbed references to the late millionaire sex offender after his first conviction in 2008.

Epstein attended the Interlochen Arts Camp in 1967 as a teenager, and donated more than $400,000 to the school between 1990 to 2003, including $200,000 for the construction of the lodge.

“The lodge has, over time, come to carry associations that are not reflective of who we are as an institution or the values we strive to uphold,” Interlochen said in a statement. “After careful consideration, the Board determined that removing this structure in a safe and timely manner is the right step for Interlochen at this time.”

A world-renowned destination for young artists, actors and musicians, Interlochen’s alumni include Grammy winners Chappell Roan and Norah Jones and Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

At least two of Epstein’s accusers have said they met him at Interlochen in the 1990s.

The school said it was aware of news reports about the women’s claims and said it has invited them to speak with an independent investigator as part of an external investigation into reports of historical misconduct at Interlochen.

A pair of internal reviews, most recently after Epstein’s sex trafficking arrest in 2019, found no reports of misconduct at Interlochen involving Epstein in its records, the school said.

Epstein visited Interlochen periodically, often with his confidante and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, and stayed in the lodge now marked for demolition.

According to correspondence included in the Justice Department’s recent release of Epstein-related records, he directed that tuition for at least one student be paid out of his donations and once flew violinist Itzhak Perlman to the school on his private jet.

Epstein killed himself in a federal jail in Manhattan in August 2019, a month after being indicted on federal sex trafficking charges. In 2008 and 2009, he served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18.

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking for helping to recruit some of Epstein’s underage victims, and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.