Michelangelo’s Secret to Vibrant Colors of the Sistine Chapel Revealed, Sydney’s New Powerhouse Museum to Open Amid Controversy, and More: Morning Links for November 4, 2026

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Good Morning!

• Researchers believe they’ve uncovered the secret to Michelangelo’s intense colors in the Sistine Chapel fresco The Last Judgement.
• Powerhouse, Sydney’s new $641 million arts, design, science and technology museum, is opening on November 7, but controversy continues to rock the institution.
• Despite the Democratic blue wave sweeping Congress, beleaguered President Donald Trump still can’t get the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as blue as he continues to promise, with reporters spotting new areas of discoloration and cracks.

The Headlines

STROKES OF GENIUS. Researchers believe they’ve uncovered the secret to Michelangelo‘s intense colors in The Last Judgement fresco in the Sistine Chapel, reports The Times of London. A recent cleaning and close inspection revealed he made his own paintbrushes of multiple individual brushes attached to individual sticks, allowing him to not only work faster, but to employ a cross-hatching method similar to how he sculpted with a multi-pointed chisel. The result of these parallel crisscrosses creates a “vibration of light” both in the fresco, as well as in the artist’s stone sculptures, said Vatican restorer Paolo Violini. While cleaning the Renaissance masterpiece, he saw that Michelangelo painted with parallel strokes that were often perpendicular to each other. “Then I saw that when a stroke wobbled slightly, other strokes parallel to it had an identical wobble. That meant one thing: Michelangelo was using special brushes with multiple heads,” Violini said.

POWER VACUUM AT POWERHOUSE. Powerhouse, Sydney’s new $641 million arts, design, science and technology museum, is opening on Saturday, but controversy continues to rock the institution, which has been described as the New South Wales government’s largest investment in years, reports The Art Newspaper. Senior executives, including the museum’s chief executive and figurehead, Lisa Havilah, have had to step down amid ongoing investigations into misconduct related to “governance and procurement.” A new petition signed by 776 people so far, is calling for her immediate reinstatement. Signatories include artist Ben Quilty, architect Penelope Seidler, and dealer Anna Schwartz. Plus, another petition has been launched to save part of the Powerhouse Museum’s former site, which is closed and reportedly may be sold off to raise money for the museum’s new Parramatta site in Sydney’s western suburbs.

The Digest

American voters may be riding a blue wave after Democrats seized control of Congress, but beleaguered President Donald Trump still can’t seem to get the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as blue as he continues to promise, with reporters spotting new areas of discoloration, cracks, and early peeling. [The Washington Post]

British lawmaker warns that London’s UNESCO-listed Palace of Westminster is at risk of “Notre Dame-like flames” due to outdated electrics, or other forms of serious damage. [The Guardian]

Guillaume Cerutti, former president of the Pinault Collection and Christie’s CEO from 2016 to 2025, is expected to be named the next president of the Château de Versailles. [Politico]

Workers at Marseille’s Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (Mucem) said they are pausing a strike that will resume if the former president, Pierre-Olivier Costa, returns to his post after he was suspended amid investigations into misconduct. [Le Figaro]

On November 20 and 21, Saudi Arabia’s national pavilion in Venice is closing with two performances, one by artist and writer Mohammad Alfaraj, and the second by researcher and writer Nouf AlHarthi, accompanied by sound artist Nadine Lingawi, which will respond to the exhibition by Dana Awartani of an imagined archeological site comprised of 29,221 clay bricks. [press release]

The Kicker

BLOOMSBURY BLOOM. A £15 million ($20.25 million) endowment campaign for Charleston, the beloved Bloomsbury Group home in Sussex, where Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant lived, has launched, reports The Financial Times. The first £1 million ($1.35 million) has already come from writer Virginia Nicholson, Bell’s granddaughter and president of the cash-strapped Charleston Trust, plus her husband, writer William Nicholson. Now, they hope others will be encouraged to donate, and they have already been joined by people from around the world. Despite being a national treasure, Charleston is not regularly publicly funded. The campaign coincides with the opening of “Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury” at Tate Britain next week.