Staff, emergency workers, and shocked bystanders braved the towering flames that consumed Copenhagen’s iconic seventeenth-century former stock exchange on April 16 to carry historic paintings to safety. The fire, which was reported at about 7:30 a.m. local time, according to The Guardian, broke out as the 1625 building was undergoing restoration. The scaffolding surrounding the bourse ..read more

“THIS SHOW IS CHANGING PEOPLE’S LIVES,” an artist said to me on the windy evening following the Sixtieth Venice Biennale’s Tuesday pre-opening. She wasn’t kidding. Deftly telling a story about artistic self-invention by marginalized groups, curator Adriano Pedrosa’s “Foreigners Everywhere” is the rare mega-show that renders a deep picture with a deceptively light curatorial hand ..read more

ALWAYS START YOUR DAY with something you know you’re gonna like. For me, that usually entails a book and a quadruple espresso: a luxury I can’t afford when I’ve been tasked with seeing as much of the Venice Biennale—“Foreigners Everywhere,” curated by Adriano Pedrosa—and its multitudinous collateral exhibitions and events as possible within three days ..read more

Ruth Patir, the artist representing Israel at the forthcoming Venice Biennale, and curators Mira Lapidot and Tamar Margalit, who are organizing her exhibition, have said the country’s pavilion will not open to the public until Israel and Hamas reach “a cease-fire and hostage release agreement.” The trio’s announcement comes as the death toll in Gaza owing to Israel’s continued assault ..read more

Austria has named Swedish curator Fatima Hellberg, since 2019 the director of the Bonner Kunstverein in Bonn, Germany, as the next general director of Vienna’s Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (MUMOK). Hellberg will take up her new role in October 2025, succeeding Karola Kraus, who has helmed the institution for fifteen years. MUMOK is known for ..read more

Art Basel returns to a Hong Kong in flux ..read more

Trailblazing artist, activist, illustrator, and author Faith Ringgold, who was widely renowned for her elaborate pictorial quilts documenting Black life, died April 13 at her home in Englewood, New Jersey. She was ninety-three. Ringgold explored issues including race, class, gender, and community through a variety of media including doll-making, mask-making, sculpture, performance art, and paint ..read more

Archaeologists working in Pompeii have uncovered an ancient banquet hall decorated with stunning and well-preserved Roman frescoes depicting mythological characters from the Trojan War. The roughly fifty-by-twenty-foot dining room, which was buried in volcanic ash following the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius, “provided a refined setting for entertainment during convivial moments, whether banquets or conversations ..read more

The Guggenheim Foundation has announced the 188 recipients of its 2024 fellowships.  Those awarded the prestigious honor this year include artists, scholars, photographers, novelists, essayists, poets, historians, choreographers, environmentalists, and data scientists. Fifty-two disciplines are represented, with recipients ranging in age from twenty-eight to eighty-nine and scattered across thirty-eight states, the District of Columbia, and four Canadian ..read more

Shanghai-based fair operator Art021 has announced a new Hong Kong fair, set to take place this summer. The event will feature roughly eighty galleries from mainland China, the Middle East, and the rest of the Global South—including India, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, and Pakistan—as well as the Chinese diaspora, according to Art021 cofounder David Chau. The fair ..read more