Former British Museum director to head new museum in Saudi Arabia

Hartwig Fischer, former director of the British Museum, has been named the founding director of a museum of world cultures in Saudi Arabia. The museum, designed by the late Ricardo Bofill, is due to open in the Royal Arts Complex, Riyadh, in 2026. In a press release, the Saudi Museums Commission said that the institution will endeavour to ‘exhibit Saudi and Arabian Peninsula heritage and highlight the cultures that have emerged and expanded over time from Africa across Asia, Europe, Oceania, and the Americas’. The museum is one of a number of initiatives in the Kingdom to diversify the country’s economy, which remains heavily reliant on oil reserves. Fischer served as director of the British Museum from 2016 until he resigned in August 2023 after the theft of approximately 1,500 items from the museum’s collection came to light. He was previously the director of the Dresden State Art Collections.

Archaeologists have discovered a 4,000-year-old temple and theatre in northern Peru. In 2023, local government officials alerted a team of experts led by Luis Muro Ynoñán of the Field Museum in Chicago to looting that was taking place near the town of Zaña. The team began studying the site in June 2024 and soon unearthed the remnants of the buildings. ‘It was so surprising that these very ancient structures were so close to the modern surface,’ said Ynoñán in a statement. ‘This discovery tells us about the early origins of religion in Peru. We still know very little about how and under which circumstances complex belief systems emerged in the Andes […] We don’t know what these people called themselves, or how other people referred to them.’ Among the discoveries of note was a theatre ‘with a backstage area and a staircase that led to a stage-like platform’. The temple and theatre pre-date the region’s best known archaeological site, the Inca city of Machu Picchu, by approximately 3,500 years.

Marion Ackermann has been appointed president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK). SPK administers the 17 state museums of Berlin – including the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Pergamon Museum, the Gemäldegalerie and the Hamburger Bahnhof – as well as the Berlin State Library and several research institutes. The museum collections contain around 4.7 million items altogether. Since 2016 Ackermann has served as the general director of the Dresden State Art Collections (a job she took over from Hartwig Fischer). In 2020, a report commissioned by then German culture minister Monika Grütters concluded that the SPK is ‘dysfunctional’, ‘structurally overwhelmed’ and ‘too large to function effectively’, and suggested that it be scrapped entirely. Ackermann has been tasked with a ‘major overhaul’ of the foundation. The German culture minister, Claudia Roth, said in a statement, ‘I am sure that she will bring the comprehensive reform of the SPK to an excellent conclusion.’ Ackermann succeeds Hermann Parzinger, who has been president of the SPK for 18 years, and will take up her post on 1 June 2025.

The spire of the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Rouen caught flame on Thursday. The origins of the blaze are unknown, reports Le Monde, but firefighters managed to bring it under control within a few hours. Parts of Notre-Dame de Rouen date back to the 12th century, but the 151m-high spire topped the cathedral only in 1876 – making it, for a short time, the world’s tallest structure. Claude Monet painted the cathedral more than 30 times in the 1890s, from different viewpoints and at different times of day. The building has been undergoing extensive renovation since 2015, leading to fears of a repeat of the devastating fire that broke out during repairs at Notre-Dame in Paris in 2019. Visiting the cathedral, the French culture minister, Rachida Dati, said: ‘The interior was saved, above all the works of art. We have narrowly avoided a catastrophe.’

Young V&A is the Art Fund Museum of the Year. The east London institution, formerly the Museum of Childhood, reopened in July 2023 with a new name, design and approach, after a three-year, £13m capital project to reshape the museum. Jenny Waldman, director of Art Fund and chair of the judging panel, described Young V&A as ‘the world’s most joyful museum’. The other finalists for the £120,000 prize were Craven Museum in Skipton, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Manchester Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London; each will receive £15,000. Read Isabel Stevens’s feature from 2023 on Young V&A and other museums for children.

The Armory Show has appointed Kyla McMillan as its new director. McMillan takes up her post immediately; the previous director, Nicole Berry, left in March. ArtNews reports that McMillan is the founder of Saint George Projects, a gallery and consultancy company that has staged exhibitions around the world. McMillan is a former director of David Zwirner gallery, where she worked for a year, and of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, where she worked for four years. Frieze acquired the Armory Show in September 2023 and McMillan is the first major hire since the change of ownership.