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News

Benin has received a €20 million loan from the French Development Agency to open a new museum showcasing restituted objects. President Emmanuel Macron has said that France will return 26 works looted from the African country in the 19th-century. [The Art Newspaper]

At least 33 people died yesterday after a man set fire to the Kyoto Animation studio in Japan. [BBC]

On View

Artist Risa Puno’s immersive, interactive installation The Privilege of Escape, which is presented by the nonprofit Creative Time, opened in Midtown Manhattan this week. The escape room-style experience addresses issues of privilege and inequality through a series of puzzles. [Gothamist]

View images from the group exhibition “New Mythologies” at David Castillo Gallery in Miami Beach. The show brings together works by Pepe Mar, Jillian Mayer, and Asser Saint-Val. [ARTnews]

Architecture

Take a look at artist Cary Leibowitz and creative director Simon Lince’s one-of-a-kind home in upstate New York, which has a hand-painted facade and 700 square foot extension with floor-to-ceiling windows. [T: The New York Times Style Magazine]

Film

Here’s a ranking of Hito Steyerl’s video works. The artist’s show at the Park Avenue Armory in New York continues through Sunday. [ARTnews]

Polygon has a guide to the paintings that figure in Ari Aster’s latest film, Midsommar, which chronicles the ghastly rituals of a fictional Swedish festival. The works were created for the movie by artist Ragnar Persson, with production designer Henrik Svensson and graphic designer Nille Svensson. “These murals are like a cartoon version of the script, twisted as we imagined time would do to these rituals,” Svensson said. [Polygon]

Historical Curiosities

After a successful fundraising campaign, the Charles Dickens Museum in London has purchased a portrait of the storied author at age 31 painted by Margaret Gillies. Cindy Sughrue, the director of the museum, said, “Dickens was already an emerging literary star when Gillies painted him and would have been in the thick of writing A Christmas Carol.” [The Guardian]

The first telegram of World War II, which contains a message in German, heads to auction in Maryland later this month. It’s dated August 26, 1939, a week before the war officially began. [Atlas Obscura]