The best I've found for you this week

Inspo and aha!-moments from the farthest corners of the Internet 😎

September 25, 2025

Fall is sneaking in — pumpkins, lattes, sweaters, the whole mood. Next week it’s October… who else has secretly missed this season? 🍂☕🧣 Here’s what this week brought us (maybe a bit more history than usual?). Let’s dig in. 🙂 

TOP 3 ART STORIES THIS WEEK

1. New Discovery: Rembrandt’s Night Watch Has… a Copy-Paste Dog 🐕🎨 

Nearly 400 years later, Rembrandt’s most famous painting — The Night Watch — is still spilling secrets.

Art historians just discovered that the dog in the bottom of the painting wasn’t purely Rembrandt’s imagination. Turns out, he borrowed it from an earlier sketch by fellow Dutch artist Adriaen van de Venne. Same head, same collar, same pose. Copy-paste, 17th-century style.

X-rays revealed that Rembrandt even sketched the dog more closely to Van de Venne’s version before painting over it with slight changes.

Isn’t it special that almost 400 years later, we still discover something new in one of the world’s most studied paintings. 🙃 

Source: Rijksmuseum / dpa

Take a look at the pics here.

(Turns out even Rembrandt needed a little ‘reference image.’ So if you’ve ever peeked at Pinterest before painting — congrats, you’re in good company.” 🎨😉)

2. In China: Billionaire Museums in Crisis🏛️💸

This week, Artnet reveals that China’s private museums — once the flashy toys of real estate tycoons — are getting crushed by the country’s slowing economy.

For years, wealthy business moguls built mega-museums as prestige projects, often tied to luxury housing developments. But here’s the problem: no tax breaks, no steady public funding, and heavy dependence on real estate money. When China’s property market tanked, so did the art dreams.

  • TAG Art Museum (Qingdao): Launched in 2022 with a $220M budget and bold design. Shut down in under 4 years.

  • UCCA (Beijing): China’s top private art museum. Hosted world-famous artists, expanded across the country… but now struggling to pay staff and keep lights on.

  • Times Museum (Guangdong): Once near death, but reborn in 2024 thanks to small donations and community backing.

  • The Jupiter Museum of Art, in Shenzhen, announced its shutdown in June. Others, such as Ennova Art Museum in Langfang, have also been dormant for months.

Key takeaway from China: a “slow model” — built on community support and steady growth — might be the only way forward, compared to the flashy, real-estate-fueled boom. Even in 2025, flashy, billionaire-funded art palaces look good on opening day, but without roots, they crumble fast. 🌱🤝

3. The Titanic’s Twin Just Gave Up Its Secrets 🚢

Divers just pulled up artifacts from the Britannic — the Titanic’s lesser-known twin — for the first time ever.

Quick history: Britannic was built as a luxury cruise ship, but WWI turned it into a hospital ship. In 1916, it hit a mine near Greece and sank. Over 1,000 people survived, but 30 lives were lost.

Fast forward 100+ years: Now a team of divers went 120 meters down (that’s like a 40-story building underwater) to grab treasures from the wreck. They found:

  • the ship’s bell (big Titanic vibes),

  • silver serving trays,

  • Turkish bath tiles,

  • and even porcelain sinks.

These items are now being cleaned up in Athens and will become the centerpiece of a new underwater museum. See the pics here.

(Next time you’re stuck digging through old boxes in your studio, just remember — at least you’re not 120 meters underwater trying to rescue a porcelain sink. 🛠️)

Inspiration: Chagall’s Secret Mosaic Life ✨🪞 

Most people know Marc Chagall for his dreamy paintings … But did you know that he also fell in love with mosaic?

It all started in 1954, when Chagall visited Ravenna and was struck by the shimmering Byzantine mosaics. Imagine him standing there, eyes wide, realizing that painting with stone and glass could be just as poetic as oils on canvas.

Detail of Four Seasons Mosaic by Marc Chagall in Chicago. Source: Peterfitzgerald, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons

From that spark came decades of experiments: birds in blue glass, lovers pieced together in marble, suns built from tiny stones. He worked with master mosaicists in Ravenna and France for more than 20 years.

One of the most moving works, Le Grand Soleil, was created as a love gift for his wife. For years it stayed tucked away in their home — private, intimate, glowing quietly in their daily life. Now, for the first time, it’s on display in Ravenna, Italy.

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p.s. Maybe this is your call to study something new (old)… why not Byzantine artworks, too? There’s something eternal in these mosaics. Notice how Byzantine art glows from within — gold backgrounds, tiny glass tesserae, and faces that feel both human and divine, creating a window into the eternal.

Take a look here:

Byzantine Mosaics - 268 artworks

Byzantine Mosaics, an eye-catching collection of artworks from Byzantine Art.

www.wikiart.org/en/byzantine-mosaics

(And if you dig too deep into the Byzantine art, you'll discover that one of the world's most sacred places — on Mount Sinai — where the early Byzantine treasures are being held... is currently caught in power struggles that threaten its peace and seclusion. The site around St Catherine’s Monastery is being transformed into a luxury mega-resort.) 😳

Japan’s Leading Art Fair - in Photos 🌸🎌

Ever wonder what someone on the other side of the world is seeing right now? 🌏👀

If you’re like me and always curious about what’s happening on far-away places, you’ll enjoy this. Ocula just shared a nice gallery from the Tokio Gendai 2025 art fair.

👉 Take a look.

Music for Your Studio 🌆

I can’t help it - today it’s “Autumn in New York” by Sarah Vaughan ft Hal Mooney & His Studio Orchestra. 🙂 There are so many beautiful versions of this song — which one do you love the most?

Bye! See you again next week, with even more hygge and art inspiration! 🍂🍁🎃

xx, Helen

🙂