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Hartwig Fischer Appointed Founding Director of Museum Specialized in World Cultures in Riyadh

The Saudi Museums Commission logo
The Saudi Museums Commission logo
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Hartwig Fischer Appointed Founding Director of Museum Specialized in World Cultures in Riyadh

The Saudi Museums Commission logo
The Saudi Museums Commission logo

The Saudi Museums Commission announced on Wednesday the appointment of Dr. Hartwig Fischer as the founding director of a museum focused on world cultures, set to open in 2026 in the Royal Arts Complex situated in King Salman Park, now under construction in Riyadh.

Fischer will set the foundations for the museum and lead it, based on his global expertise in leading international cultural institutions and museums, the Commission said in a statement.

Fischer, according to the statement, has extensive experience spanning decades of curating exhibitions, leading cultural institutions, and spearheading innovative initiatives aimed at promoting dialogue and appreciation across cultures.

Under his guidance, the museum will serve as a dynamic hub for cultural exchange, offering innovative programming, educational initiatives, and collaborative partnerships to inspire curiosity, appreciation, and admiration for the world's diverse cultural traditions.

With its striking 110-meter-high building designed by Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill, the museum will offer visitors a unique opportunity to explore world cultures through themes relevant to all humankind. It endeavors to relate 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. It will offer visitors an extraordinary opportunity to explore human universals and shared values, and the fascinating diversity of achievements across millennia and across the globe.

As Saudi Arabia embarks on an unprecedented journey of cultural transformation, the establishment of such a museum represents a pivotal moment in the Kingdom's cultural renaissance, added the statement.

The flagship museum, which will constitute an iconic landmark within the Royal Arts Complex and King Salman Park, will play an important role in enriching the Kingdom's burgeoning cultural landscape.

The museum also epitomizes the Saudi Museums Commission's commitment to establishing state-of-the-art museums that celebrate global heritage and foster cross-cultural dialogue and understanding.

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Hong Kong Museum Puts Picasso in Cross-cultural Dialogue

Artworks by Pablo Picasso are pictured during the media preview of 'Picasso for Asia: A Conversation' at M+ in Hong Kong. May JAMES / AFP
Artworks by Pablo Picasso are pictured during the media preview of 'Picasso for Asia: A Conversation' at M+ in Hong Kong. May JAMES / AFP
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Hong Kong Museum Puts Picasso in Cross-cultural Dialogue

Artworks by Pablo Picasso are pictured during the media preview of 'Picasso for Asia: A Conversation' at M+ in Hong Kong. May JAMES / AFP
Artworks by Pablo Picasso are pictured during the media preview of 'Picasso for Asia: A Conversation' at M+ in Hong Kong. May JAMES / AFP

More than a century ago, Pablo Picasso smashed the Sacre-Coeur Basilica in Paris into a web of tangled lines on his canvas, deconstructing reality with the brushstrokes of a master cubist.
At a Hong Kong exhibition opening Saturday, that painting will be shown alongside a more literal form of destruction -- a "gunpowder drawing" by Chinese-born artist Cai Guo-Qiang -- as part of a cross-cultural exchange, AFP said.
"Interest in (Picasso's) life and work hasn't subsided at all, including in Asia" in the half-century since his death, said Doryun Chong, artistic director and chief curator at the M+ museum.
The show will pair more than 60 masterpieces loaned from the Picasso Museum in Paris with around 130 works by Asian and Asian-diasporic artists.
Highlights include "Portrait of a Man" from Picasso's Blue Period, a 1937 horse head sketch for "Guernica" and "Massacre in Korea", a 1951 expressionist anti-war painting.
"Exhibitions on Picasso tend to be very monographic," said Chong, who co-curated the event.
"We felt that it's more productive for understanding Picasso... that we create these unexpected juxtapositions and dialogues."
Cecile Debray, president of the Picasso Museum in Paris, hailed the approach as being "decentered from the Western point of view".
The last major Picasso showcase in Hong Kong, a more straightforward affair, took place in 2012 and drew huge crowds.
In the intervening decade, Picasso's reputation has been dented by the #MeToo movement as critics decried his abusive treatment of wives and girlfriends.
"We are of course very open and honest about the rather disturbing aspects of his biography, but we also shouldn't let that determine the meanings of his whole career," Chong said.
Hong Kong officials have touted the four-month exhibition as part of "Art March", hoping that high-brow events at museums, fairs and auction houses can boost the city's international appeal.
Since opening in late 2021, M+ has seen more than eight million visitors -- a bright spot for Hong Kong's loss-making West Kowloon Cultural District.
Chong said the museum connects visual culture between Asia and the world, citing the example of how Picasso is placed next to self-taught local painter Luis Chan.
Chan, who drew ample inspiration from the Spanish master, was "of the older generation when formal training in art was not possible in Hong Kong".
"Still he felt connected to the center of the art world at the time in Paris, and the very important figure in that context (that is) Picasso."