The discovery in Denmark of "extreme mould" targeting Golden Age paintings and historic objects sounds like the start of a bad horror film, but museum staff around the world will be hoping it does not end like one.

Studies are underway at 150 different sites in the country after the new form of fungi, which leaves objects covered in a white coating, was discovered in a dozen different museums.

Camilla Jul Bastholm, head of conservation at the National Museum in Copenhagen, likened it to "a kind of Coronavirus epidemic for Golden Age paintings and cultural history museum objects”.

She said she thought its spread may have been affected by climate change, adding she believes it is a global phenomenon.

She told Danish TV: "The ultimate consequence could be that collections and museum objects slowly become degraded and useless."

A Paul Klee watercolour that once belonged to Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin is to go on show in Berlin.

The work, called Angelus Novus, was hidden on Benjamin's behalf when he fled Paris in 1940 to escape the Nazis only to commit suicide after French authorities threatened to hand him over to the Gestapo.

It was recovered after the war and ended up in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem after it was left to a friend of the philosopher.

It has been lent to the Bode Museum in Berlin for their new show which includes images of angels from Berlin Museums damaged or burned during the war.

The Angel of History: Walter Benjamin, Paul Klee and the Berlin Angels 80 Years After World War II opens tomorrow and also features clips from the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire which is partly inspired by the painting and Benjamin's writings about it.

Julia M. Alexander, who was the first female director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, has died aged 57 after a heart attack.

Alexander held the top job at the museum for more than a decade before leaving last year to become president of New York’s Samuel H. Kress Foundation, which supports the studies of European art, architecture and archaeology.

She also worked at the Yale Center for British Art at Yale University and the San Diego Museum of Art.

1 - An exhibition tracing the history of tattooing in the Mediterranean world opens in Marseille on May 17. The show, which runs to September 28, features work by leading artists including recently acquired drawings by Ahmed Cherkaoui.

2 - There has been another twist in the legal battle over who owns an Egon Schiele drawing, Russian War Prisoner, with the Art Institute of Chicago appealing a court order to return it to the heirs of Jewish art collector Fritz Grunbaum who was murdered by the Nazis. The museum says there is "significant evidence" the work was not looted before it ended up in their collection.

3 - Rarely seen drawings and sketches by Damien Hirst go on show in an exhibition opening today in Vienna. The Albertina Modern show runs to October 12 and visitors will be able to use Hirst's interactive Drawing Machine every Monday afternoon until August, followed by Tuesdays during September and October.