Day: October 17, 2025

The museum has declined to answer key questions about the decision to return the artwork, prompting the New York-based researcher who uncovered the story to challenge the NGV’s handling of the case

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The National Gallery of Victoria has quietly returned a 17th-century painting to the descendants of a Jewish family who lost it during the Nazi era, without public announcement or explanation.

The painting, Lady with a Fan by Gerard ter Borch, was removed from the NGV’s website in early September. The only public trace of its return appeared weeks later, in an update to the Lost Art Database in Germany.

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With no law, order or any alternative administration under the ceasefire, the group is using violence to deter rivals

Throughout Israel’s two-year war in Gaza, aid officials working in the territory avoided naming Hamas in conversations they suspected might be intercepted, instead referring to the militant Islamist group as the “de facto authority”.

This careful euphemism for Hamas, which violently seized power in 2007, captured an important truth. Though the group was a less obvious presence in the last months of the conflict, in the absence of any alternative, it remained the closest the increasingly devastated territory had to a ruler.

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