The Bauhaus design school, which transformed the way people around the world live, work and dream of the future, marks its centenary this week with the launch of a politically charged German museum. Founded on April 1, 1919, during the rocky period between the world wars and finally driven out by the Nazis, Bauhaus still has the power to inspire and divide in today’s own turbulent era. The sprawling museum in Bauhaus’s birthplace of Weimar, a small city 250 kilometres (150 miles) southwest of Berlin, will open to the public Saturday and display the classics of its less-is-more, form-follows-function aesthetic. The inauguration of the minimalist temple housing the world’s oldest Bauhaus collection comes just weeks ahead of European elections and six months before a key poll in Weimar’s state of Thuringia. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) looks poised to make strong gains in each vote and is polling at about 20 percent here.

A sparkling new addition to New York’s cultural offerings will open Friday, a highly anticipated interdisciplinary complex aiming to be an everyman’s art space in the upscale Hudson Yards real estate development. The futuristic Shed institution, constructed on a 20,000-square-foot, city-owned lot, is intended as the “cultural beating heart” of the controversial Hudson Yards, whose sea of corporate offices, high-end stores and pricey restaurants has been criticized as a playground for the rich. The much-hyped arts complex — which resembles something of a giant box nestled in a shimmering silver puffer jacket — will debut this week with a celebration of African American music directed by British Oscar winner Steve McQueen, and a set of theatrical concerts from the eclectic Icelandic performer Bjork next month. “We’re not retro-fitting,” said Alex Poots, the Shed’s founding artistic director. “We’re trying to purposely create a program that really represents a wide spectrum of artists

Among the most striking aspects of the two hundred years of the Prado Museum’s life since it first opened has been its progressive transformation into a place of pilgrimage for avant-garde artists. From Courbet to Bacon and including Manet, Degas, Whistler and Picasso, these artists’ visits to the Prado represented a turning point in their careers. There have also, however, been some notable absences, none perhaps better known than that of Giacometti, to whom this unique exhibition is now dedicated. Giacometti saw art as a single and simultaneous place in which time past and present converged, and his works now offer a testament to the timelessness of the human figure as a representational model for art of all periods. Alberto Giacometti (Borgonovo, 1901 – Chur, 1966) was the son of a leading Swiss, Postimpressionist artist. He began to draw avidly as a child and to produce copies, the majority based on repro

A lost sketch by Flemish Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens was sold at auction on Sunday for $1.46 million (1.3 million euros) after being rediscovered due to an inheritance, French auctioneers said. The work which depicts Saint Margaret dressed in a red and white dress holding a cross in her hand and crushing a dragon dates from 1620, according to the Mercier auction house in Lille in northern France. “This is the sketch that served as a model for one of the very large panels destined for the ceiling of the Jesuit Church in Antwerp,” auctioneer Patrick Deguines told AFP. In 1620, 39 panels were commissioned from Rubens for the church which was to become one of the largest in Flanders and “by its magnificence the spearhead of the Catholic Church in its fight with its Protestant rival”, according to Mercier. “These big panels were done by the whole workshop with the help of Rubens’ students but the sketches were entirely painted by the master who refused to sell them,” Deguines added. Th