The decorated floor covering depicts stylized dolphins and several species of fish. It was located in a home likely owned by a wealthy and powerful family, according to a press release by Vianova Archaeology & Heritage Services, one of the organizations involved in the excavation.

The home was later remodeled, likely in the 3rd or 4th century, which helped ensure the mosaic’s survival after the room was filled with building debris to raise up the home’s interior.

The mosaic was the first of such archeological treasures uncovered in 165 years at the Roman city of Wroxeter. Additional discoveries made by the archaeological team (some 30 people, 20 of which were students) in the unexplored area of Wroxeter during July and August included “a possible shrine or mausoleum, a monumental roadside civic building, and tantalizing hints of a nearby temple”.

The public building was located along one of the Roman city’s main streets facing the city’s forum-basilica (its marketplace and city hall). The building was 26 feet wide but at least 164 feet long. There were also “a number” of complete and broken pottery vessels found.

In addition to Vianova Archaeology & Heritage Services, the archaeological excavation involved the University of Birmingham and Albion Archaeology on behalf of the English Heritage Trust. It was directed by Vianova Archaeology’s Dr. Peter Guest, University of Birmingham archaeologist Dr. Roger White, and Albion Archaeology manager Mike Luke.

The news of the discovery was first reported by CNN.

The black stencil image on the security shutters at the zoo is the ninth animal-themed work claimed by the popular street artist in nine days (like prior murals, a picture of the gorilla was shared with his 13 million Instagram followers).

The menagerie of animals at the London Zoo follows a mountain goat perched precariously on a wall buttress, followed by a pair of elephants, three swinging monkeys, a howling wolf, two pelicans eating fish, a big cat mid-stretch, a school of fish, and a rhino mounting a car at various points around the city. The locations have included the sides of buildings, a fish and chip shop sign, a police box, and the bridge of a subway station.

Two of the nine artworks are no longer viewable by the public. Photographs show the image of the howling wolf, painted on a satellite dish, was allegedly stolen by three hooded men in broad daylight on August 8. The big cat mid-stretch spray-painted on a bare sheet of plywood for billboards was removed by a contractor to reduce the likelihood of theft.

Banksy’s murals and artworks have been posted on Instagram without captions, titles or other information, prompting online speculation about their significance. On August 10, The Guardian reported that the artist’s support organization, Pest Control Office, found all the theorizing about the meaning of each new image “way too involved” and that the artist’s simple vision was to cheer up the public during a bleak period.

“Banksy’s hope, it is understood, is that the uplifting works cheer ­people with a moment of unexpected ­amusement, as well as to ­gently underline the human capacity for ­creative play, rather than for destruction and negativity,” wrote Vanessa Thorpe, the Guardian‘s arts and media correspondent.

“We weren’t really sure what to expect,” Haus der Musik managing director Simon Posch told ARTnews.

The participating institutions were the Mozarthaus Vienna, House of Music, KunstHausWien and the Jewish Museum Vienna owned by the City of Vienna; MAK Vienna (Museum of Applied Arts) and MAK Geymüllerschlössel; the modern art museum Mumok, the art museum The Albertina, as well as the museum at the House of Strauss. The Museumquartier also offered Taylor Swift ticket holders free guided tours in English and German on August 10 and 11.

The initiative was publicized through the Vienna Tourist Board and statements by the city’s mayor, Michael Ludwig, especially on social media.

Several museum professionals in Vienna told ARTnews the slew of additional visitors were a pleasant surprise to their institutions. The demographics were mostly English-speaking young women, often between the ages of 18 to 25, traveling to the city from countries as far away as China, South Africa, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Many of them were also easily identifiable while wearing the singer’s concert merchandise, colorful outfits intended for the concert, and arms covered in friendship bracelets they intended to trade with other fans.

The Albertina fully embraced the moment, waiving its €19.90 regular entrance fee (€15.90 for visitors under 26 years) for more than 20,000 Swifties between Thursday, August 8 and Sunday, August 11. “On a normal and regular weekend, we would have, I would say 2,000 a day,” spokesperson Nina Eisterer told ARTnews, noting that these types of visitor numbers are usually for blockbuster exhibitions like the one for Claude Monet in 2018.

Eisterer said she and her colleagues in The Albertina’s marketing division were Swifties themselves, with several people planning to go to the concerts and personally devastated by the news of the cancellations. After the idea for waived entry fees was approved, the art museum’s security and ticketing teams were informed on August 6 that additional staff would be needed.

The Albertina’s line for Swifties was so long that some fans stood outside in the sun and 91°F heat for approximately 20 minutes. “But there was no fuss about it,” Eisterer said. “People were super nice.”

The museum also switched the soundtracks playing its in 20 historical staterooms from classical music to Taylor Swift albums, prompting several large singalongs that went viral on TikTok.

“I love classical music, I love Mozart, I love Beethoven, I love all these classical artists, but it was really nice to have a Taylor Swift singalong more or less in the state rooms that normally stand for something else,” Eisterer said, noting she had worked for The Albertina for eight years.

Other institutions also saw an unexpected bump in activity. For the Haus der Musik, 2,746 Swifties came to museum for its free entry between August 8 and August 11 instead of paying €17 for adults and €13 for students under the age of 27. This was almost half of the total number of visitors (5,862). The singer’s fans also increased gift shop sales by €4,500 ($4,918.88) over the weekend.

Mozarthaus Vienna said they had 2,663 Swifties between August 9 and August 11, with additional staff called in on Saturday and Sunday. “Due to the large number of Swifties, guided tours in English were spontaneously added,” spokesperson Jasmine Wolfram told ARTnews.

Mumok’s head of press, Katharina Murschetz said 884 Taylor Swift fans stopped by. Eva Grundschober, the spokesperson for Capuchin’s Crypt said “exactly 500 Swifties” used the option for the free ticket. And Josef Gaschnitz, the chief financial officer of the Jüdisches Museum der Stadt, said visitor numbers were “over 100% more” compared to normal days. “Our gift shop had around 50% more sales, same with our bistro.”

Several institutions also mentioned employees gifting and exchanging bracelets with the singer’s fans visiting the city.

Multiple people told ARTnews that social media played a major role in informing Swifties of the “super last-minute decision” for the city’s offers and attracting them to the various museums. “100%,” said Posch, a self-professed Taylor Swift fan. “I think social media is the only way to reach this target group, because it didn’t help if the Austrian National Broadcasting System showed it in the evening news and they put it on their web page. None of these kids is going to visit the ORF home page. Social media just reaches the audience in the fastest possible way. And then it goes viral.”

While the initiative may have been a temporary hit to museum revenues from entry fees, museum staff told ARTnews there were far more benefits, including merchandise sales, publicity, and greater accessibility to younger visitors.

“We didn’t think about the money or the losing the money at all,” Eisterer said, noting that its entry fees can be very expensive for young people. “It was, for us, important to set like a sign for this concert that had been canceled because of this horrible reason, and to give somehow a bit of hope and say to people, ‘Hey, we know it’s devastating. You can’t go to the concert, but hey, you can enjoy a bit of of art in Vienna, that’s what we can offer you’.”

“It’s helpful for our reputation,” Posch said. “it pays into the reputation of the city of Vienna, being friendly, being generous, being hospitable. And that is worth more, in the end, than not generating these few euros in ticket sales.”

Some museums, like the Haus of Musik and The Albertina, also planned on extending the free entry offer to Swifties for one or two days beyond the weekend. “We will definitely still give them free access if they come with the Taylor Swift ticket,” Posch said. “If they didn’t make it on the weekend and they’re still here, there’ll be no discussion, there’ll be our guests.”

On August 12, the Archaeological Park of Pompeii announced that the skeletons of a man and woman with a small cache of treasure had been found inside a temporary bedroom during the renovation of the home. “The woman was found on the bed and was carrying a small cache of treasure with gold, silver and bronze coins, and some jewellery including a pair of gold and pearl earrings,” a press statement said. The man was located at the foot of the bed.

According to an article published in the archaeological park’s electronic journal, the man and woman were trapped inside the small room after pumice filled the adjoining areas of the house, blocking their ability to open a door and escape the situation.

The man and woman died as a result of being buried by hot gas and volcanic matter, also known as pyroclastic flow. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE killed thousands of Romans after the city was completely covered in a thick layer of ash, which preserved many of Pompeii’s residents and its buildings.

The park also said the archaeologists were able to reconstruct the home’s furnishings and their exact positions at the time of the volcano’s eruption. The research team was able to do so by identifying the impressions of the objects left in the ash by decomposed organic matter and casting the voids. These items included a wooden bed, a stool, a chest, and a table with a marble top, which held bronze, glass and ceramic objects. The impressions also showed a large bronze branched candlestick holder had also fallen over in the room.

“The opportunity to analyse the invaluable anthropological data relating to the two victims found within the archaeological context that marked their tragic end, allows us to recover a considerable amount of information about the daily life of the ancient Pompeiians and the micro-histories of some of them, with precise and timely documentation, confirming the uniqueness of the Vesuvian territory,” park director Gabriel Zuchtriegel said in a statement.

Zuchtriegel also said he expected “significant developments” through archaeological excavations in the coming years due to investments recently announced by Gennaro Sangiuliano, the country’s culture minister.

“Vienna is doing everything it can to ensure that the thousands of Swifties who have traveled to our city still have an unforgettable weekend. Vienna would like to thank all the fans for their understanding and solidarity, whose reactions show that nothing and nobody can destroy the cohesion in our society,” Vienna Tourist Board CEO Norbert Kettner said in a press statement.

Ticket holders to the three cancelled Taylor Swift concerts will be granted free entry this weekend to the Mozarthaus Vienna, House of Music, KunstHausWien and the Jewish Museum Vienna; MAK Vienna (Museum of Applied Arts) and MAK Geymüllerschlössel; the modern art museum Mumok, the print specialist museum The Albertina, as well as the museum at the House of Strauss. The Museumquartier is also offering Taylor Swift ticket holders free guided tours in English and German on August 10 and 11.

Brooklyn-based independent film producer and director Waverly Colville told ARTnews she had purchased her concert tickets over a year ago, and found out about the cancellations due to security threats the night before she was scheduled to fly from Stockholm, Sweden. After Colville and her group decided to continue their trip to Vienna, Colville saw posts on social media of other fans gathering to sing songs, as well as the offers from museums and businesses posted on Instagram by the Vienna Tourist Board.

“It felt like everyone was going above and beyond to make sure that all the concertgoers that were there in the city had a good time in Vienna, even though this unfortunate event happened,” she said.

Colville didn’t have set plans in the city aside from attending the concert, and ended up checking out Mozarthaus. “Honestly, if the Mozart museum wasn’t free, and did this big promotion to let the concertgoers come for free, I don’t know if I would have went,” she said, noting she had grown up playing violin. “It was really cool getting to experience something that maybe I normally wouldn’t have done otherwise.”

According to Colville, who used to work at the New Yorker, CNBC and HBO, Mozarthaus was filled with easily identifiable fans of Taylor Swift. “The Mozart Museum was filled with a lot of young women who were her prime demographic, [wearing] friendship bracelets, T-shirts, the whole thing,” she said. “I don’t think that would have been the case had the concert not been canceled and the museum gave us free admission. I did feel like it brought in a lot of people that wouldn’t probably have normally went under normal circumstances.”

“The streets, the museum, every restaurant filled with people with a Taylor Swift t-shirt or friendship bracelets, or accessories, or sparkly outfits that you could see they were planning on wearing to the concert,” Colville said.

In addition to free entry to museums, offers for Taylor Swift fans include complimentary meals at burger restaurants, gifts from the crystal company Swarovski at its retail stores, and free entry to the outdoor pool facility Stadiobad.

Hundreds of fans wearing Taylor Swift merchandise have frequently gathered at Stephansplatz, a public square in the city’s center also near several museums, to sing Taylor Swift songs and exchange friendship bracelets. A couple even proposed there, surrounded by fans.

In addition to seeing Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss at the Belvedere Palace, Colville said there was a strong likelihood she would check out other museums offering free entry in the city before the end of her trip. “It’s like there’s nothing to lose,” she said. “I think it would be a waste not to take advantage of it and see as much as we can.”

The newest mural from the popular street artist shows two pelicans eating fish above the yellow sign of a fish and chips takeaway shop in the northeastern London neighborhood of Walthamstow. Banksy’s Instagram account also posted an image of the black stenciled mural early on August 9.

All of the new Banksy artworks depict animals. The first was a black mountain goat perched on a wall support structure that faces a surveillance camera near London’s Kew Bridge. The second shows two elephants facing each other, and was painted on two blocked-out windows in Chelsea. The third was of three monkeys swinging on the bridge of a subway station in the eastern part of the city.

The fourth artwork was a howling wolf on a white satellite dish in the Peckham borough of South London. It was allegedly stolen less than two hours after an image had been posted online to the artist’s Instagram account by two people with a ladder, according to BBC News. The Metropolitan Police said it had been called, but no arrests had been made.

Photos of all five of the black stenciled images were confirmed through posts on Banksy’s Instagram account.

The artist’s posts about the five artworks have not included captions or titles, prompting speculation online about what the artist is intending to convey.

In addition to immediate attention from fans, the remaining new works in London will likely require additional protection. A Banksy painting in the northern part of the city depicting a life-size woman holding a pressure washer was defaced with white paint shortly after its debut in March. The owner of the residential building later installed plastic sheets and wooden boards.

Two suspects were also taken into custody by London police last December in connection with the rapid theft of a Banksy artwork of a stop sign decorated with what appears to be a trio of military drones.

The work was installed on a street sign in the South London neighborhood of Peckham. It was stolen by two individuals with bolt cutters just one hour after the street artist posted an image of the work to Instagram on December 22.

Recommendations in a recent report concluded an extended campaign by student activists aimed at distancing the Ivy League college from the family which owned Purdue Pharma.

In October 2022, the group Harvard College Overdose Prevention and Education Students submitted a 23-page proposal requesting the removal of Sackler’s name. A committee comprised primarily of university administrators were not persuaded by the included arguments, according to The Harvard Crimson, which first reported the news.

“The committee was not persuaded by the proposal’s arguments that denaming is appropriate because Arthur Sackler’s name is tainted by association with other members of the Sackler family or because Arthur Sackler shares responsibility for the opioid crisis due to his having developed aggressive pharmaceutical marketing techniques that others misused after his death,” the committee’s report said.

Last month, the Harvard Corporation, the college’s highest governing body, accepted the committee’s finding that it did not recommend the removal of Arthur M. Sackler’s name.

Arthur M. Sackler donated $10.7 million to Harvard University in 1985, which enabled the opening of the namesake museum dedicated to works from Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean on the college campus. The building was designed by British architect James Sterling.

Sackler died in 1987, nine years before the family’s pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma started selling OxyContin, a prescription painkiller with addictive properties. Some activists have considered the company and the drug to be synonymous with the opioid epidemic, prompting protests at museums and cultural institutions bearing the Sackler name from significant donations.

The name removal proposal from Harvard College Overdose Prevention and Education Students also said that while Arthur died before the production and sale of OxyContin, he advanced marketing practices that contributed to the drug’s rise.

In 2023, photographer Nan Goldin and the anti-Sackler protest group PAIN led a die-in protest in the atrium of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard.

The committee’s 15-page report concluded that Sackler’s personal connection to the opioid epidemic was too weak to warrant the removal of his name from the namesake art museum and the other building on Harvard’s campus.

“Arthur Sackler’s legacy is complex, ambiguous, and debatable,” the report stated. “The denaming decision should be based only on the actions, inactions or words of Arthur Sackler. Respect for one’s individual identity is a fundamental tenet and part of the ethos of our society.”

The committee also wrote in the report that it wanted to emphasize its recommendation shouldn’t be interpreted as an exoneration or an endorsement of Sackler’s actions, noting his alleged roles in medical scandals. It also recommend the university make efforts to communicate Arthur Sackler’s “complex life and legacy”, suggesting explanatory text on the art museum’s website and posted in prominent locations within the buildings named after him.

“Through such contextualization, people will be allowed to form their own judgments about Arthur Sackler and the naming,” the report stated.

Even if the committee had agreed with the 2022 proposal, the university is tied to specific conditions laid out in a gift agreement when it accepted Sackler’s donation of funds in 1982, which the Harvard Crimson noted is not publicly available.

Harvard University’s decision to retain Arthur M. Sackler’s name on one of its three art museums and a campus building is notable for how Tufts University decided to remove the family’s name from its programs and facilities in 2019.

Among art institutions, the Smithsonian Institution rebranded the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art to the National Museum of Asian Art in 2019 but said the name change was not related to protests against the Sackler family. In 2021, the Serpentine Galleries took the Sackler name off one of its venues, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art also announced it would remove the family’s name from its galleries, including massive space housing the Temple of Dendur.

The artwork depicts three monkeys swinging on the bridge of a subway station in the eastern part of the city. According to BBC News, the latest work is on a bridge over Brick Lane, not far from Shoreditch High Street. It was confirmed through a post on Banksy’s Instagram account on August 7.

The work is the third featuring animals to show up in London this week. One depicts a black mountain goat perched on a wall support structure that faces a surveillance camera near London’s Kew Bridge; the other shows two elephants facing each other, and was painted on two blocked-out windows in Chelsea.

The artist’s posts about the three murals have not included captions or titles, prompting speculation online about what the artist is intending to convey.

In addition to immediate attention from fans, the three new works in London will likely require additional protection. A Banksy painting in the northern part of the city depicting a life-size woman holding a pressure washer was defaced with white paint shortly after its debut in March. The owner of the residential building later installed plastic sheets and wooden boards.

Infinite Accumulation (2024) is a site-specific work of linked, reflective silver spheres more than 32 feet high, 39 feet wide and more than 328 feet in length. On August 7, the sinewy, shiny artwork was unveiled at Liverpool station by Transport for London, the real estate investment trust company British Land and the City of London Corporation.

“London is a massive metropolis with people of all cultures moving constantly. The spheres symbolize unique personalities while the supporting curvilinear lines allow us to imagine an underpinning social structure,” Kusama said in a press release.

Infinite Accumulation was commissioned in 2017 as part of The Crossrail Art Foundation’s public art program. The highly-polished, reflective mirrored surfaces are also similar to Kusama’s immersive installation Narcissus Garden.

Infinite Accumulation was co-funded by British Land and the City of London Corporation. The Kusama sculpture is the final artwork to be installed and commissioned by the Crossrail Art Programme for the Elizabeth line, the east-west railway in London which opened in May 2022.

Other artworks that were commissioned and installed were Douglas Gordon’s looped video undergroundoverheard at Tottenham Court Road station, Chantal Joffe’s paper collage and aluminum work A Sunday Afternoon in Whitechapel at Whitechapel station, and the large bronze sculpture Manifold (Major Third) 5:4 by Conrad Shawcross, which was unveiled at Moorgate station in 2023.

The unveiling of Infinite Accumulation occured about a month after London’s Serpentine Galleries showcased its public bronze sculpture by Kusama next to the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. Pumpkin is 19.5 feet tall, has a diameter of 18 feet and is painted yellow with black polka dots in the Japanese artist’s signature style.

Samuel Seligson, an independent videographer, was charged with two counts of criminal mischief with a hate crime advancement. Criminal mischief with a hate crime advancement is a felony.

He was not involved in the vandalism of director Anne Pasternak’s home in Brooklyn Heights, where red paint was splashed across the front door and windows. A banner was hung between two columns that read: “Anne Pasternak / Brooklyn Museum / White Supremacist Zionist.” Beneath that statement, in smaller, red letters, were the words “Funds Genocide.”

The vandalism also targeted the residences of several Brooklyn Museum board trustees, generating allegations of antisemitism, including from New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Pasternak is Jewish, though the other three board members who were targeted are not, according to the New York Times.

The vandalism occurred around two weeks after a large pro-Palestine march ended in front of the museum. At that demonstration, cultural workers, artists, and New York City community inside the institution also brandished banners, beat drums, and blew whistles. The protestors inside the Brooklyn Museum called for the institution to condemn the killing of Palestinians in Gaza and to divest from its financial ties to Israel. 

More than 30 people were arrested during the protest at the Brooklyn Museum, leading some, including the institution itself, to accuse the New York Police Department of brutality.

Seligson’s attorney, Leena Widdi, told the Associated Press that NYPD officers raided Seligson’s Brooklyn apartment on two occasions in the past week. Widdi also described Seligson’s arrest and the use of a hate crime statute as an “appalling” overreach by NYPD against her client, who holds a city-issued press credential.

The Associated Press reported that Seligson has licensed and sold footage of protests in New York City to mainstream outlets, including Reuters and ABC News. However, police sources told amNewYork Metro that Seligson allegedly served as the lookout in the series of vandalism incidents and claimed that he was not seen in possession of any camera equipment. 

Seligson turned himself into the 7th Precinct station on the Lower East Side at around 7:30 a.m. on August 6, according to amNY.

He also told the US Press Freedom Tracker that he was arrested by NYPD in May and charged with three counts of obstruction while livestreaming a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Brooklyn on the video platform Twitch. Seligson said he identified himself as a journalist and filmed the police making arrests.

A spokesperson for the office of Brooklyn district attorney Eric Gonzalez told the Associated Press that the case had been closed and sealed.