Xue Tan, the curator in charge of a closely watched Hong Kong art center’s acclaimed programming, is set to join the staff of one of Germany’s top museums.

Currently senior curator of the Tai Kwun Contemporary center, Tan is now slated to become chief curator of the Haus der Kunst in Munich starting this June. The post is a highly coveted one, and was previously held by Emma Enderby, whose departure to become artistic director of the KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin was announced in October.

Tan has overseen the exhibition program of Tai Kwun Contemporary since it opened in 2018. It is among the few Hong Kong art spaces with an international following, and has under Tan staged shows by Cao Fei, Maria Hassabi, Tino Sehgal, and more, as well as group exhibitions such as a current one about women, Indigenous knowledge, and the natural world.

Director Andrea Lissoni praised Tan for her “deep knowledge and experience on the Asian Region” in a statement.

“After dedicating almost a decade on establishing Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, I am thrilled to join Andrea Lissoni and the team in furthering the vision of art as a complex evolution through inventive and transformative engagements, and impactful programming,” Tan said in a statement. “I look forward to contributing to the transformation of the institution, my network of artists and communities across the globe will be a solid support for our work.”

During the development of a fine arts museum in Vannes, Brittany, in northwestern France, excavations revealed the remains of a medieval castle, according to Heritage Daily. The dig began in the courtyard of an 18th century mansion, the Château Lagorce, which currently operates as a hotel. 

Researchers from France’s national institute for archeological research learned that the castle was built around 1380 by Jean IV, the Duke of Brittany and Count of Montfort from 1345, and the 7th Earl of Richmond from 1372. The structure was known as the Château de l’Hermine and was built to assert the Duke’s authority in the area. 

The archaeologists found a moat and two stories of the fortress-like castle’s outer defensive wall in the courtyard as deep as 13 feet below street level. The stonework suggests that the castle as many as four levels, multiple staircases, latrines, and drainage pipes. The latrine area was filled with everyday objects that date back to the 15th century including jewelry, coins, padlock and several pieces of clothing. 

The team also found the remains of a bridge that stretched over the moat, connecting the castle to the town, and a mill that was built into the castle’s residential area “in a very original way.” The mill’s wheel was powered by a canal that flowed underneath the castle and released into the moat through a grate in the mill room. 

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THE HEADLINES

MOROCCO PAVILION CANCELED. After the surprise, last-minute replacement of Morocco’s exhibitors at what would have been the country’s first Venice Biennale pavilion, Morocco has now fully canceled their participation in the exhibition set to open in April, and it’s unclear why, according to The Art Newspaper . In January, the artists Safaa Erruas, Majida Khattari, and Fatiha Zemmouri, as well as curator Mahi Binebine, learned in what they called a “nightmare” situation, that the artworks they had spent months completing for Venice would no longer be exhibited, and that a new program would replace theirs, helmed by Paris-based Moroccan curator Mouna Mekouar. Erruas has reportedly said the Moroccan government promised to reimburse them for their production costs, and that their works would be exhibited some time in the future.

LAVA TREASURE CONVICTION. A French court in Marseille has convicted two men of smuggling sunken gold treasure found off the west coast of Corsica, from the Golf de Lava. The so-called “Lava treasure saga” began in 1985, when three men discovered a mysterious hoard of rare Roman gold coins from the third century, while fishing. One of them, Félix Biancamaria , was found guilty of trying to sell a golden plate worth several millions, which the court said was from the same stash, and now faces a 12-month suspended prison sentence. His friend Jean-Michel Richaud was handed an eight-month suspended sentence, and both face a 100,000-euro fine. Their lawyers said they were appealing the decision.

THE DIGEST

A version of this essay originally appeared in Reframed, the Art in America newsletter about art that surprises us and works that get us worked up. Sign up here to receive it every Thursday.

Growing up, Anu Põder wanted to be a ballerina. But her small body failed to conform to the discipline’s impossible standards, so she turned to art, where misfit physiques soon became her primary preoccupation. The feminine forms that resulted—made of materials including fat, surgical plastic, and found fashion—comprise the Estonian artist’s retrospective “Anu Põder: Space for My Body” at Switzerland’s Muzeum Susch, a picturesque private institution carved into the side of a mountain. The show is curated by Cecilia Alemani, on the heels of the late artist’s inclusion in Alemani’s 2022 Venice Biennale.

Põder’s figurative sculptures can be roughly divided into two camps: porous and plastic. Works of the permeable, penetrable variety include Limsijad (Lickers), 2007—a series of dangling busts made of wire mesh, with holes here and there patched over with aluminum foil. Mostly, the metal is a kind of armature supporting the main event: giant pink satin tongues, flexed and pointed upward. This silly cage-like sculpture feels at once protected and open. It is extremely delicate, but if you touched it, it would hurt you. You’re left unsure whether the viewer or the object has more power to inflict damage. The humor eases this thrilling tension.

Delicacy is similarly pushed to the brink of brutality in porous works Põder made from garments, often excising planes of fabric to leave behind only the seams. Ruum minu keha jaoks (Space for My Body), 1995, overlays just the hems of three shirts—in pink, white, and black—plus some shoulder pads. The lines dangle from a robust wooden hanger that gives them volume. It is easy to envision a torso in the negative space. The harsh contours of this exoskeleton read as protective, like armor or a cage. Yet the soft, torn nature of the fabric exudes an almost pathetic vulnerability.

Põder excised other garments in the ’90s, too: bags, coats, shoes, all found and worn. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, she became fascinated by consumer culture, which was new to her, so she turned to such mass-produced goods. Before that, while working in the Soviet Union, she had preoccupied herself with the various ways that bodies resist conforming to standards of the idealized laborer. It helped that during this time she was not an official artist working for the state: instead, she made her income as a teacher, allowing her some creative freedom. A single mother of three children, she maintained a studio in her state-provided apartment, where she avoided materials she could not lift and transport on her own.

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