Latest news with #Kunstmuseum
NDTV
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- NDTV
Eurovision 2025: Why Host City Basel, Switzerland Is The Heart Of European Culture
Basel was in the international spotlight for a week of festivities surrounding the Eurovision Song Contest but the Swiss city has been at the heart of European culture for centuries. With a population of 180,000, Switzerland's third-biggest city after Zurich and Geneva straddles the River Rhine and sits right on the northern border with both France and Germany. Basel's location played a major role in its growth and continental importance through the ages. From May 11 to 17, it was centre-stage in Europe again for hosting Eurovision 2025, the pop music extravaganza that has become one of the world's biggest annual live television events and a giant international party. The influence of the Rhine can be felt in Basel's historic centre, dominated by the twin towers of Basel Minster, where the Dutch thinker Erasmus is buried. But Basel's modern emblems are the two Roche Towers, Switzerland's tallest buildings. Completed in the last decade, standing 205 metres and 178 metres (673 and 584 feet) high, they are the headquarters of the eponymous giant pharmaceutical firm. The chemical and pharmaceutical industries now drive the city's economy. Basel is one of Europe's great centres of culture. The first edition of Sebastian Brant's "Ship of Fools", one of the bestsellers of the European Renaissance, was printed in the city. The Rhine spirit is vividly expressed every spring at the three-day Basel Carnival, which transforms the city streets into a river of painted lanterns, colourful masks and creative costumes, flowing to the sound of pipes and drums. The world's biggest Protestant carnival features on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list and attracts thousands of tourists. The city has world-renowned museums -- none more so than the Kunstmuseum, the oldest public art collection in the world dating back to 1661. In a referendum in 1967, citizens decided to buy two paintings by Pablo Picasso, who, moved by the vote, would later donate several more works to the city. Across the Rhine, the Museum Tinguely draws in thousands of visitors with its kinetic art sculptures, while just outside the city, the Beyeler Foundation hosts an outstanding collection of modern and contemporary artworks. And every year, art lovers and gallery owners from around the world flock to Art Basel, one of the world's top contemporary art fairs. In sports, Basel is home to tennis all-time great Roger Federer, while FC Basel are on the verge of winning their 21st Swiss football championship. Besides its culture, Basel is now synonymous with the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, home to globally important groups such as Roche, Novartis, Sandoz and Syngenta. The psychedelic drug LSD was created at the Sandoz laboratories there in 1938. Pharma and chemicals make Basel a major player in the Swiss economy, attracting researchers and students as well as cross-border workers. Around 35,000 people cross over from France and Germany, attracted by higher Swiss wages. Basel is the home of the Bank for International Settlements, considered the central bank of central banks. The city is left-leaning, perhaps due to the influence of its university, the oldest in Switzerland, founded in 1460. It has approximately 13,000 students from 100 countries, around a quarter of whom are studying for their doctorates. The city has also lived through major disasters: the great earthquake of 1356 and the Sandoz chemical spill 630 years later. The biggest quake in central Europe in recorded history, and the fires it caused, destroyed a city already ravaged by the Black Death. The 1986 fire at the Sandoz chemical plant on the outskirts of Basel also left its mark due to the ecological disaster caused by toxic chemicals leaking into the Rhine, killing wildlife as far downstream as the Netherlands.
Forbes
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Women Pushing Boundaries Of Art At ARKEN Museum in Denmark: Eva Helene Pade & Margeurite Humeau
Eva Helene Pade, Arken, 2024. Photography Petra Kleis © Petra Kleis Eva Helen Pade is only in her third decade on the planet, yet she possesses a prodigious artistic talent that has earned her a solo museum exhibition only a year after graduating from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Forårsofret (The Rite of Spring) is Pade's first museum show and her inaugural solo exhibition. The rise of Eva Helen Pade (b.1997) has been stratospheric, and Curator Rasmus Stenbakken describes the humanity and emotional depth of her new paintings at ARKEN Museum: 'The artworks featured in Forårsofret constitute a new development in Eva Helene Pade's ongoing exploration of human emotions and human narratives through painting.' Pade's inspiration for Forårsofret is Igor Stravinsky's 1913 ballet The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps), which centres around a pagan ceremony where a young virgin is chosen from the young women of her tribe to be sacrificed to the God of spring and is forced to dance herself to death in a desperate attempt to bring about the renewal of life. Eva Helene Pade, Arken, 2024. Foto Petra Kleis © Petra Kleis Pade saw a performance by German choreographer Pina Bausch in Paris last year, which led her to delve into Bausch's earlier work and discover her 1975 reinterpretation of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps, which was choreographed so that the dancer's bodies appear to morph into each other, with the body is used as an instrument of expression. It is Bausch's version that informs Pade's reimagining of Le Sacre du Printemps. Eva Helene Pade says in an interview with curator Rasmus Stenbaken: 'When I saw her (Bausch's) interpretation of Le Sacre du Printemps, the ballet opened me up in a completely new way. There is something about Bausch's modern, raw and feminine approach that strikes me deeply–her version, told from the victim's perspective, offers a nuanced reflection on the role of sacrifice, victimhood and the act of sacrificing in our society, in love and in power structures. Eva Helene Pade, Forårsofret, installation view, ARKEN. Photo: Anders Sune Berg © Anders Sune Berg Pade has a gift for telling a visual narrative, slight of hand and effortless ability to move paint around a canvas that is far beyond her years, and despite her youth she is already being hailed as a rising star in Denmark and internationally. The scale, skill and storytelling of her paintings deserves a place in a museum, and on her compelling canvases she creates visions of passion and violence that seem to have emerged from a fever dream. Echoes of Impressionists such as Manet and hints of the Symbolism of Munch are evident in Pade's paintings–yet while she borrows compositions and motifs from iconic paintings including Klimt's Der Kuss (The Kiss) and Van Gogh's Sunflowers–she has honed a unique signature style which subverts the male gaze. Eva Helene Pade, The sacrificial Dance (R), 2024 Photo: Anders Sune Berg Photo: Anders Sune Berg Pade's vast canvas The Rite of Spring has traces of 19th Century Danish artist Joakim Skovgard's Christ in the Realm of the Dead–found in the National Gallery of Denmark's collection–while Adoration of the Earth features a Golden-haired heroine with the face that could be plucked from Klimt's Judith and the Head of Holofernes. A diptych titled Tribute to the Chosen One demonstrate Pade's skill with chiaroscuro and depict groups of figures who seem to be performing on a stage–wearing clothes that don't pin them to any specific era–but evoking 1940s Berlin and the Weimar Republic. Rite of Spring is the Pièce de resistance of the exhibition and features a mass of writhing bodies morphing into each other, women giving birth, androgynous figures and figures with expressions of anguish. Rite of Spring could be a metaphor for the sacrificial woman at the centre of Vivaldi's opera, and equally it could be a Dantesque vision of women as weapons of war in many of the contemporary conflicts where women are the victims of rape or murder during conflict. Eva Helene Pade, Forårsofret, installation view, ARKEN. Photo: Anders Sune Berg © Anders Sune Berg Ritual of the Ancestors depicts a group of figures wielding guns aimed and ready to fire, with a similar composition to Edouard Manet's Execution of the Emperor Maximilian (1867). Yet Pade puts her own distinctive spin on Manet's image by replacing the clothed soldiers with naked anonymous figures shooting at an unclothed figure as a woman stands on the right, lost in thought. Perhaps the woman is the sacrificial virgin of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and Pade is reclaiming the male narrative by having the woman triumph. At the opposite spectrum of the sombre tone and palette of Ritual of the Ancestors and Rites of Passage are a pair of sensual canvases titled Adoration of the Earth which depict a naked woman languishing in a field of dancing sunflowers. Pade uses a sun-drenched Mediterranean palette of yellow, gold and blue–and while her sunflowers recall Van Gogh, the dreamy visage of the woman has a Klimt-like quality, combining to create a vision of unapologetic female sensuality and fecundity. Eva Helene Pade, Adoration of the Earth (L), 2024. Photo: Anders Sune Berg © Anders Sune Berg Pade paints directly onto the canvas without a preparatory drawing, often smudging areas of the canvas with a cloth at the end of a day in her Paris studio. This freedom of expression lends every canvas with a luminosity and energy that leaves a lasting impression. Pade makes sure her women fight back, and she inverts the original tale by making her sacrificial virgin turn the tables on her attackers. Yet perhaps this isn't simply a story of retribution, this could be Pade's way of giving women the power and reacting to centuries of women being portrayed as victims or muses by male artists. Whatever the message Pade is conveying with this exhibition, I'm here for it and I can't wait to see what spellbinding alchemy she creates on canvas next. Expect big things from Pade, for her star is in the ascendant and she seems destined to become a household name of Danish art on a level with Munch. Pade will have an exhibition at Thaddeus Ropac-who represent her in London in October. In Denmark, Helene Pade is represented by Galleri Nicolai Wallner. Another imaginative and unique woman artist is exhibiting at ARKEN Museum–French artist Margeurite Humeau. At first glance it would appear that Humeau doesn't have much in common with Pade, for Humeau's art is conceptual, multi-sensory and of another realm. Yet both women were inspired by opera and both women are distinct and original talents who are pushing the boundaries of art and creating new visual languages. Margeuritue Humeau Torches is the artist's inaugural museum show in Scandinavia, and takes over several galleries at ARKEN Museum, inviting visitors on a journey into a parallel universe inhabited by Humeau's sculptural hybrid beings. Marguerite Humeau, 2024. Photography by Eoin Greally. Image courtesy of the artist. © Eoin Greally Torches is no ordinary opera—it is a living dream, where sound and light awaken the silent breath of Marguerite Humeau's sculptures and visions. Across five unfolding acts, it weaves a tapestry of fable and form, opening portals to possible futures, and reimagined pasts, where life hums in harmony, not hierarchy. What if we moved as one with every being—dancing like ants in collective rhythm, or echoing the long memory of elephants, wise rulers of a world not ours? What if life thrived not on land, but in the skies—suspended in cloud and wind? Here, in Humeau's imagined opera, human dominance is a fading myth, and in its place, a symphony of shared existence. There is no single path through this illuminated maze. Each work—a torch in the dark—guides us, casting light on kinships unthought,revealing the art of becoming with the Earth. The opera speaks in loops and echoes without entry or end. We are asked not to follow, but to wander, to listen,to let the song of speculation carry us. Marguerite Humeau, 'Torches' at ARKEN Museum, 2025 © Marguerite Humeau. Photography by Mathilde Agius. Courtesy of the artist. © Marguerite Humeau. Photography by Mathilde Agius. Courtesy of the artist. Torches gathers new wonders made for this very moment, alongside relics from Humeau's past imaginings. It marks her first solo unveiling in Scandinavia, the third and final fire in ARKEN's Nature Future trilogy, born in collaboration with Helsinki Art Museum—where these flames will soon find a new home. Marguerite Humeau (b. 1986) crafts her worlds from the seams between science and story. Her art is a chorus of deep time and distant life, where biology and myth speak in unison. She collaborates with those who read the world—biologists, clairvoyants, foragers, zoologists—each adding a note to her resonant future. Humeau's materials defy the mundane: hand-blown glass, beeswax, alabaster,cyanobacteria, even venom—living elements that breathe, grow, and decay. Some works contain whole ecosystems, where art does not just depict life, but lives it. Humeau's exhibition at ARKEN Museum features 'guardians' and 'brewer' characters who tell stories of complex life forms as caregivers and collaborators. Humeau is inspired by insects such as bees, wasps, ants and termites–species capable of constructing enormous structures and creating micro-societies. A sculpture titled The Guardian of Ancient Yeast resembles a termite mound and protects a glass vessel containing 4,500-year-old yeast. Humans share a form of symbiosis with Yeast–microorganism that has been used for thousands of years to brew beer and bake bread. Marguerite Humeau, 'Torches' at ARKEN Museum, 2025 © Marguerite Humeau. Photography by Mathilde Agius. Courtesy of the artist. © Marguerite Humeau. Photography by Mathilde Agius. Courtesy of the artist. Humeau suggests we should take better care of our microscopic allies and presents insect-like sentinel's such as The Holder of Wasp Venom, which resembles an underground ant colony with small glass bubbles resting on top of beeswax formations–each containing a drop of wasp venom–a substance capable of killing and healing. Humeau's magical, mystical exhibition looks to other forms of life that have existed on this planet far longer than humans and will probably outlive humanity. The Guardian of the Fungus Garden and The Guardian of Termitomyces guard the termite mushroom which termitesgrow and depend on for survival. The Brewer mixes the guardians' yeast, wasp venom and fungi with honey as an elixir of collectivity. With this exhibition Humeau creates another world with her sculptural sentinels and human-insect-animal hybrids, inviting us into her imagined future where we inhabit a more interconnected ecosystem in order to survive. In 2023, Humeau's work stood among the surreal at the Venice Biennale, within The Milk of Dreams—a dream within a dream, echoing the visions of Leonora Carrington. And now, with Torches at ARKEN Museum, she lights the way for us to imagine the world anew. Eva Helen Pade: Forårsofret runs until 31st August and Margeurite Humeau: Torches runs until 19th October, 2025 at ARKEN Museum. Audo Residence Copenhagen © Lee Sharrock After discovering the breathtaking art of Danish artist Eva Helene Pade at ARKEN Museum, I stayed at the Audo Residence in Copenhagen–a temple of Danish design and style housed in a a Neo-Baroque building in the docklands district, combining a café, restaurant and studio rooms. Audo House opened in 2019 in Copenhagen's Nordhavn district as the flagship home of luxury Danish brand Audo Copenhagen, and the rooms are furnished in a classic Scandinavian style with the brand's furniture, lighting, and accessories. Audo Copenhagen have created a beautiful space to eat, work, relax and sleep, realising the brand's vision of 'Ab Uno Disce Omnes' (from one, learn all). Audo Residence. Photo © Lee Sharrock © Lee Sharrock Audo Residence was recommended by Visit Copenhagen who also recommended the brilliant Copenhagen Card which enable visitors to use the easy to navigate Copenhagen public transport system and visit museums including the National History Museum and National Museum of Denmark.
Observer
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Observer
Basel: a city at the heart of European culture
Basel will be in the international spotlight for a week of festivities surrounding the Eurovision Song Contest but the Swiss city has been at the heart of European culture for centuries. With a population of 180,000, Switzerland's third-biggest city after Zurich and Geneva straddles the River Rhine and sits right on the northern border with both France and Germany. Basel's location played a major role in its growth and continental importance through the ages. From May 11 to 17, it will be centre-stage in Europe again as it hosts Eurovision 2025, the pop music extravaganza that has become one of the world's biggest annual live television events and a giant international party. The influence of the Rhine can be felt in Basel's historic centre, dominated by the twin towers of Basel Minster, where the Dutch thinker Erasmus is buried. But Basel's modern emblems are the two Roche Towers, Switzerland's tallest buildings. Completed in the last decade, standing 205 metres and 178 metres (673 and 584 feet) high, they are the headquarters of the eponymous giant pharmaceutical firm. The chemical and pharmaceutical industries now drive the city's economy. Swiss singer Zoe Me representing Switzerland with the song "Voyage" arrives on the turquoise carpet next to the Basel Town Hall during the opening ceremony of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Basel on May 11, 2025. - Carnival and the arts - Basel is one of Europe's great centres of culture. The first edition of Sebastian Brant's "Ship of Fools", one of the bestsellers of the European Renaissance, was printed in the city. The Rhine spirit is vividly expressed every spring at the three-day Basel Carnival, which transforms the city streets into a river of painted lanterns, colourful masks and creative costumes, flowing to the sound of pipes and drums. The world's biggest Protestant carnival features on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list and attracts thousands of tourists. The city has world-renowned museums -- none more so than the Kunstmuseum, the oldest public art collection in the world dating back to 1661. In a referendum in 1967, citizens decided to buy two paintings by Pablo Picasso, who, moved by the vote, would later donate several more works to the city. Across the Rhine, the Museum Tinguely draws in thousands of visitors with its kinetic art sculptures, while just outside the city, the Beyeler Foundation hosts an outstanding collection of modern and contemporary artworks. And every year, art lovers and gallery owners from around the world flock to Art Basel, one of the world's top contemporary art fairs. In sports, Basel is home to tennis all-time great Roger Federer, while FC Basel are on the verge of winning their 21st Swiss football championship. Belgian singer Red Sebastian representing Belgium with the song "Strobe Lights' arrives on the turquoise carpet next to the Basel Town Hall during the opening ceremony of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Basel on May 11, 2025. - Chemicals and quakes - Besides its culture, Basel is now synonymous with the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, home to globally important groups such as Roche, Novartis, Sandoz and Syngenta. The psychedelic drug LSD was created at the Sandoz laboratories there in 1938. Pharma and chemicals make Basel a major player in the Swiss economy, attracting researchers and students as well as cross-border workers. Around 35,000 people cross over from France and Germany, attracted by higher Swiss wages. Basel is the home of the Bank for International Settlements, considered the central bank of central banks. The city is left-leaning, perhaps due to the influence of its university, the oldest in Switzerland, founded in 1460. It has approximately 13,000 students from 100 countries, around a quarter of whom are studying for their doctorates. The city has also lived through major disasters: the great earthquake of 1356 and the Sandoz chemical spill 630 years later. The biggest quake in central Europe in recorded history, and the fires it caused, destroyed a city already ravaged by the Black Death. The 1986 fire at the Sandoz chemical plant on the outskirts of Basel also left its mark due to the ecological disaster caused by toxic chemicals leaking into the Rhine, killing wildlife as far downstream as the Netherlands. —AFP
Kuwait Times
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Kuwait Times
Basel: A city at the heart of European culture
Basel will be in the international spotlight for a week of festivities surrounding the Eurovision Song Contest but the Swiss city has been at the heart of European culture for centuries. With a population of 180,000, Switzerland's third-biggest city after Zurich and Geneva straddles the River Rhine and sits right on the northern border with both France and Germany. Basel's location played a major role in its growth and continental importance through the ages. From May 11 to 17, it will be center-stage in Europe again as it hosts Eurovision 2025, the pop music extravaganza that has become one of the world's biggest annual live television events and a giant international party. The influence of the Rhine can be felt in Basel's historic center, dominated by the twin towers of Basel Minster, where the Dutch thinker Erasmus is buried. But Basel's modern emblems are the two Roche Towers, Switzerland's tallest buildings. Completed in the last decade, standing 205 meters and 178 meters (673 and 584 feet) high, they are the headquarters of the eponymous giant pharmaceutical firm. The chemical and pharmaceutical industries now drive the city's economy. Carnival and the arts Basel is one of Europe's great centers of culture. The first edition of Sebastian Brant's 'Ship of Fools', one of the bestsellers of the European Renaissance, was printed in the city. The Rhine spirit is vividly expressed every spring at the three-day Basel Carnival, which transforms the city streets into a river of painted lanterns, colorful masks and creative costumes, flowing to the sound of pipes and drums. The world's biggest Protestant carnival features on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list and attracts thousands of tourists. This photograph shows the Mittlere Brucke (Middle Bridge) on the Rhine river in Basel. A tram arriving to the St. Jakobshalle arena that will host the 2025 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. A woman and her dogs walks past the St. Jakobshalle arena that will host the 2025 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. This aerial photograph taken in Basel shows a barge sailing on river Rhine with the towers (LEFT) housing the headquarters of Swiss pharma giant Roche and the cathedral (right), ahead of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest. A graffiti reading "Boykott (Boycott) Eurovision, no art for apartheid" is seen on May 3, 2025 in the in the old town of Basel ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025. Visitors take photographs with The Eurovision Song Contest 2025 mascot called "Lumo" ahead of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest. The city has world-renowned museums -- none more so than the Kunstmuseum, the oldest public art collection in the world dating back to 1661. In a referendum in 1967, citizens decided to buy two paintings by Pablo Picasso, who, moved by the vote, would later donate several more works to the city. Across the Rhine, the Museum Tinguely draws in thousands of visitors with its kinetic art sculptures, while just outside the city, the Beyeler Foundation hosts an outstanding collection of modern and contemporary artworks. And every year, art lovers and gallery owners from around the world flock to Art Basel, one of the world's top contemporary art fairs. In sports, Basel is home to tennis all-time great Roger Federer, while FC Basel are on the verge of winning their 21st Swiss football championship. Besides its culture, Basel is now synonymous with the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, home to globally important groups such as Roche, Novartis, Sandoz and Syngenta. The psychedelic drug LSD was created at the Sandoz laboratories there in 1938. Pharma and chemicals make Basel a major player in the Swiss economy, attracting researchers and students as well as cross-border workers. Around 35,000 people cross over from France and Germany, attracted by higher Swiss wages. Basel is the home of the Bank for International Settlements, considered the central bank of central banks. The city is left-leaning, perhaps due to the influence of its university, the oldest in Switzerland, founded in 1460. It has approximately 13,000 students from 100 countries, around a quarter of whom are studying for their doctorates. The city has also lived through major disasters: the great earthquake of 1356 and the Sandoz chemical spill 630 years later. The biggest quake in central Europe in recorded history, and the fires it caused, destroyed a city already ravaged by the Black Death. The 1986 fire at the Sandoz chemical plant on the outskirts of Basel also left its mark due to the ecological disaster caused by toxic chemicals leaking into the Rhine, killing wildlife as far downstream as the Netherlands. — AFP
New Indian Express
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Rap like a girl
Draped in blue saris and sneakers, five women spit verses that tell powerful tales of womanhood, rebellion, and self-liberation. They are Wild Wild Women—India's pioneering all-women hip-hop collective. Based in Mumbai, the group has been a fierce presence in Indian hip-hop since late 2020. Recently, they lit up Delhi's Travancore Palace during 'Empowerment — Art and Feminism', a showcase by Kunstmuseum and Goethe-Institut. The collective is led by five fiery rappers: Ashwini Hiremath (Krantinaari), Preeti Sutar (HashtagPreeti), Shruti Raut (MC Mahila), Jacquilin Lucas (JQueen), and Pratika Prabhune (Pratika). Alongside them are breakdancers FlowRaw (Deepa Singh) and MGK (Mugdha Mangaonkar), skateboarder Shruti Bhosle, and graffiti artist Gauri Dabholkar. It all began in Marol in 2020 when Krantinaari and HashtagPreeti, frustrated by the lack of women in India's hip-hop scene, decided to create the space they couldn't find. 'Wild Wild Women was meant to be an open community, but as we started jamming and sharing, it became personal and brought us closer,' says Krantinaari. Their discography is a fearless critique of patriarchy, tackling everything from PCOS and mental health to gender violence and everyday womanhood. 'Music is like breathing for us. It's how we release anger and emotion,' says JQueen. 'When the listener hears it, they feel it too.' One of the first tracks they performed in Delhi was their cypher 'Uddu Azad'— a song that speaks of breaking free from societal chains and carving space in a world that often limits women. 'In hip hop, there's this pressure to maintain a tough, hardened exterior,' says Pratika. ''Uddu Azad' was the first time we allowed ourselves to feel everything fully. We weren't trying to be 'inspiring' or 'hard.''
