Why thefts at the British Museum are nothing new

Plus: Van Gogh's favourite colour ͏‌

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Barnaby Phillips reveals thefts at the British Museum, back in the 1990s

Maybe, to be charitable, we forget how unconnected we all were before the internet. Catalogues that today we scan with the click of a button were not so easy to access. My research uncovered more thefts from the British Museum in the 1980s and '90s. The most eyebrow-raising of these involved a former employee, who stole hundreds of mostly 18th-century prints, apparently over several years.

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From rebirth to danger, Rod Mengham reflects on the colour yellow

On his deathbed, J.M.W. Turner is said to have exclaimed: 'The Sun is God.' His painting Going to the Ball (1846) captures both the radiance of the sun and its associations with endings: it shows the sun, having burned its way down through the sky, about to set on a Venetian lagoon. It's an intense example of sun-worship, and it shows the sun not as an orb but as a great glowing track of light spilling over the water, with the buildings on every side appearing to dissolve in a magical suspension of land and sea.

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Allison C. Meier on the successes of the Asia Society in New York at 70

Although not comparable in size to institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, its neighbour on the Upper East Side, the collection is recognised for the exceptional quality of its pieces. It also reflects the Rockefellers' tastes, as they preferred works that were not just refined but that were at a modest enough scale to be displayed in their home.

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Hettie Judah is captivated by Catherine Opie's portraits of adolescents

While her compositions are often formally simple – perhaps a single figure positioned against a black backdrop – her subjects are never reduced. They are not there to represent an idea or illustrate a point of view. They are not symbolic. Instead, she gives her sitters the space to expand and become mysterious.

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In the studio with… Gelitin

The Vienna-based art collective describes itself as 'four bodies that are actually one artist'. While they do have a physical studio, it's the one that exists in their imagination that really matters.

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In the current issue…

Michael Delgado pays court to the Princely Collections of Liechtenstein

Compared with other major private art collections around the world, the princes' hoard is almost unrivalled. Numbering some 30,000 objects, it is particularly strong in bronzes ('on a par with major public collections', its director, Stephan Koja, says proudly), Flemish and Dutch paintings, and art from the Biedermeier period – though you could name just about any period of art from the Renaissance to the end of the 19th century and find an example of it here.

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Why thefts at the British Museum are nothing new

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