The BBC has put the kibosh on a plan to build a statue dedicated to George Orwell outside its new Broadcasting House on the grounds that the writer was “too liberal,” The Guardian reports. Read More

The New York Times reports that Britain has placed a ban on the export of a painting by Picasso, Child With a Dove until it has time to raise funds to keep it in the country. Read More

News broke last month that Unilever would withdraw its sponsorship of the Tate Modern’s annual Turbine Hall project in 2014 and now, The Art Newspaper reports, the museum is looking for other means of funding. Read More

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the U.K. government’s Art Fund are trying to raise $6.2 million to purchase a painting by Nicholas Poussin with the great title Extreme Unction (1639). If they raise the funds they’ll be able to avoid an inheritance tax on the work through a loophole that exempts works going to museums. Read More

Three men and a teenage boy have admitted that they were involved in a robbery this April at the University of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, the Cambridge News reports. The theft saw the disappearance of some $8 million to $23 million worth of Chinese artifacts, which have not yet been recovered. Read More

Just in time for the London Olympics, the architect Zaha Hadid leads the visual artists named to the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth today. She joins actors Kate Winslet and Kenneth Branagh in her nomination to the OBE, and hundreds of others in being honored by the queen today. Read More