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“The problem with the Biennale is that it takes place in Venice, the city in whose Frari church you can see Titian’s altarpiece of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, one of the world’s supreme works of art. It is the consummation of Venetian art, mysterious, modest and, as you find if you visit near the feast of the Ascension, still serving a community of worshippers. It seems a futile thing, championing the new in a city that is such a great advert for the old, but in recent years the Biennale has been so atrociously curated and so pathetically managed that it would disgrace a far lesser city.”

The poor Acropolis is in great disrepair, and preserving it has been problematic. “Thirty years after Greek conservationists launched the biggest restoration project in modern history, the works have become dogged by controversy, and the government in Athens has now revealed that at least 20 more years – and up to €70m (£47m) – will be needed to finish the project. The restoration is causing political ructions in Greece, not least because nobody knows where the money will come from.”

Nelson Mandela is suing his former lawyer over sales of Mandela’s artwork. “Mr Mandela’s side now claims that unauthorised prints are being marketed which bear false signatures. It is argued that these sales are worth millions of dollars. Mr Mandela’s prints typically sold for over $10,000 each until last month.”

With the increasing popularity of digital cameras, more and more retailers are offering top-quality printing services for those who want a hard copy of their photos. But your snapshots better not look too professional, or many retailers might refuse to print them. “There are a growing number of stories of amateur photographers being turned away by photofinishers for having photos that looked, at least in the eyes of a store clerk, too good to have been taken by anyone other than a professional. Their photos have become collateral damage in the war on digital copyright infringement.”

A site in Cyrene in Libya that has been under excavation for 150 years has recently yielded 76 intact Roman statues. “One morning, a collapsed wall in the Roman temple, which was discovered in the 1930s, revealed a marble serpent wrapped around a stone. We could not have known that this was only the first in a series of statues of every kind and size that we would pull from the ground. We just kept discovering them every day, for a month and a half, and found 76 in total.”