Berlin inaugurated a new addition to its UNESCO-listed Museum Island on Thursday, after a construction delay lasting several years and at costs that were twice the budgeted sum. Keys to the James Simon Gallery were finally handed over to Berlin’s museum authorities, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Designed by British star architect David Chipperfield, the 4,600 square metres (49,500 square feet) building will be a one-stop entry to the group of five museums on the island. Besides housing a common ticketing point for the museums, the gallery also features a space for temporary exhibitions, a bookstore, an auditorium and a cafe. It will be opened to the public from July next year. Michael Eissenhauer, the director of Germany’s pu

A new acquisition for the National Gallery of Canada went on permanent display today. The Partie Carée (1870), by renowned French artist James Tissot (1836–1902) joins two other Tissot works in the collection, enriching the Gallery’s important holdings from the French Second Empire period (1852-70). Purchased privately from the Estate of David R. Graham, The Partie Carée has been exhibited publicly only twice—including its world premiere at the Paris Salon in 1870. “The Partie Carrée ranks among the most refined and ambitious works from Tissot’s first Paris period,” says Anabelle Kienle Poňka, Acting Senior Curator of European and American art. “A masterpiece of his Directoire series, it embodies references to history and art history with visual intelligence, wit and humour. Large in scale and exquisitely painted, it is also an important example of the era’s penchant for genre scenes that t

With almost seventy paintings, the first comprehensive monographic exhibition of the work of the Swiss-born artist Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) at the Kunstmuseum Basel turns the spotlight on two of his most important sources of inspiration: literature and the stage. Fuseli’s entire oeuvre is steeped in his engagement with the canon of great literature he began to explore during his student years in Zurich. He borrows motifs from ancient mythology, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, or Shakespeare’s dramas and stages them in “theatrical” tableaus: highly effective compositions in which hard lighting throws the strained and contorted bodies of his heroes and virgins into sharp relief, while visions of specters, fallen angels, fairies, and other supernatural apparitions make for spectacular and often lugubrious fantastic scenes. Spanning the shift from classicism to Romanticism, Fuseli’s art jettisons

An extraordinary show devoted to Anthony van Dyck (Antwerp, 1599– London, 1641) opened to the public, in the Sale Palatine of the Galleria Sabauda at the Musei Reali in Turin. Van Dyck was Rubens’ star pupil and one of the greatest exponents of 17th-century European art, revolutionizing the portraiture of the period. He was also an internationally famous personality, refined gentleman, charming conversationalist, brilliant artist and official painter to the most important European courts. The exhibition Van Dyck. Pittore di corte (“Van Dyck, Court Painter”) aims to reveal the exclusive relationship the artist enjoyed with Italian and European courts, through the four sections comprising it and 45 canvases and 21 engravings on display. The artist painted masterpieces whose formal development, quality of colour, elegance and painstaking detail were unique. This enabled him to satisfy the ruling classes’ need for status symbols and prestige, from the Genoese nobility