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The Getty has agreed to return dozens of antiquities in its collections to Italy. As part of the proposed deal, Italy will lend the Getty objects “of comparable visual beauty and historical importance,” according to a joint statement released late today. A final agreement, “which will include mutual collaboration, research and the exchange of important antiquities,” is expected to be concluded in early summer, the statement added.

“If ever a building deserved to be called sexy-ugly, it’s this one. Somehow sleek and ungainly at the same time, a brooding, preening pile of geometric forms that could hardly be less photogenic, particularly on the outside, the design manages to slide naturally into its industrial riverbank context and feel utterly up-to-date. Its completion caps off a mini-boom for the city’s cultural institutions, which began with a remarkable addition to the Walker Art Center by Herzog & de Meuron, which opened in April 2005, and has continued this spring with a pair of disappointing buildings: Cesar Pelli’s mall-like central library and an entirely forgettable new wing for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts by Michael Graves.”

The deal to buy a Klimt painting for $135 million this week took much negotiating between a motivated buyer and a shrewd seller. And what about the other four Klimts owned by Maria Altman? “Experts have speculated that the four Klimts, sold together or individually, could bring as much as $150 million collectively. Then again, after all the attention paid to the ‘gold portrait,’ they might be seen by some status-minded collectors as a consolation prize.”

Paris’ new museum for indigenous art has been mired in controversy for 11 years. “The Musée du Quai Branly – the biggest museum to be built in Paris since the Pompidou centre in 1977 – is Mr Chirac’s attempt to cast himself as the defender of art from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. A long-time fan of indigenous artefacts, he also wanted to leave Paris with an architectural imprint to rival François Mitterand’s legacies, such as the glass pyramid at the Louvre.”

“Why should it be Klimt – a modest, quiet man – who set this record and not Picasso or Matisse or Hirst? Forget the cliche of Klimt – the gilded Valentine cards, the Athena posters; in short, The Kiss, the one image by this artist that we all think we know. Klimt is so often undervalued, just because of this travestied masterpiece. So tear your mind’s eye away from it. The paintings by Klimt displayed on these pages are pieces of modern intellectual history to set beside a formula scrawled by Albert Einstein or a score by Arnold Schönberg.”

The Egon Schiele painting was missing for more than 60 years after it was stolen by the Nazis in 1938. “For decades it was feared that Wilted Sunflowers had been destroyed during World War II. The painting was last exhibited in Paris in 1937, when it was owned by Austrian art dealer Karl Grunwald. Mr Grunwald fled Vienna for Paris in 1938, but Wilted Sunflowers was among 50 paintings confiscated by the Nazis in Strasbourg. It disappeared after being sold at auction in 1942.”