Iraq celebrated on Wednesday the return of hundreds of historical artefacts, from an ancient Assyrian statue to a 20th century presidential tea set, which were looted, lost or loaned abroad over recent decades to universities and auction houses in the United States, Italy and Jordan. 

In Art Hats In Renaissance City, artists, arts managers and academics share their reflections on the development of the arts in essays and interviews. They include Esplanade chief executive Benson Puah, Asian Civilisations Museum director Alan Chong and Pangdemonium! co-artistic director Adrian Pang. [...] The hardcover book is divided into four sections: Leaders; Curators, Critics and Historians; Artists and Practitioners; and Academicians.

Exhibitions. Diplomatic Entanglements. Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck in collaboration with Media Farzin at Rochester Art Center (40 Civic Center Dr SE Rochester, MN 55904) 27 June – 13 September 2015. Diplomatic Entanglements represents Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck’s first institutional solo in the US, spanning works from the last 10 years. The artist’s mixed media installations explore the mingled effects of cultural diplomacy, government propaganda and corporate advertising strategies.

The Havana Biennial art exposition wrapping up Monday has been held 12 times since the 1980s. But this is the first since U.S. efforts to improve relations with Cuba began six months ago, allowing an unusually large contingent of American visitors. Here are some observations from U.S. art collectors and their representatives about how Havana's art scene has evolved and the impact of detente. Janda Wetherington, whose Pan American Art Projects gallery in Miami specializes in Cuban art, says prices have gone up since the last Biennial.

The correction was delivered with a smirk: “Trienal.” [...] When the Havana Biennial was founded in 1984, it was set up, like much of the Castro government’s internationalist initiatives up to that point, as a Latin American rejoinder to the Anglo-European — or imperialist — skew of global culture. The second biennial expanded its reach to Asia and Africa, and by the third, in 1989, this focus was articulated theoretically, with landmark texts on “Third World aesthetics” published in the official catalogue that have since become part of the art historical canon.

It is one of the great allegorical paintings celebrating the French revolution: Liberty Leading the People, by Eugène Delacroix, shows a barefoot, bare-breasted woman – representing Marianne, the female symbol of the republic – brandishing a tricolour in one hand and a bayonetted musket in the other, leading the people over the bodies of the fallen.