
The Week in Art
381 episodes — Page 2 of 8

Censorship and Australia’s Venice Biennale pavilion, a controversial AI auction, and Elizabeth Catlett in Washington
It seems absurd that more than a year ahead of the next Venice Biennale, one of the major pavilions in the Giardini might be empty for next year’s event. But that is the dilemma facing Creative Australia, which is responsible for that country’s Biennale presentation. Last month, it announced the team comprising the Lebanese-born Sydney-based artist Khaled Sabsabi and the curator Michael Dagostino as its selection for the 2026 event—and then, within days, rescinded the invitation. An almighty row has engulfed the Australian art world to the extent that the pavilion has been thrown into doubt. So what happened? The Art Newspaper’s Australian correspondent, Elizabeth Fortescue, tells Ben Luke about the debacle. A controversial auction of AI art concluded this week on Christie’s website. It prompted an open letter signed by thousands of artists and creative people asking Christie’s to cancel the sale and accusing the auction house of incentivising the “mass theft of human artists’ work”. We talk to Louis Jebb, The Art Newspaper’s managing editor, who oversees our technology coverage, about the sale and the latest developments in art and AI. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Tired (1946), a terracotta sculpture made by the American-Mexican artist Elizabeth Catlett. It is part of the touring exhibition Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist, which arrived this week at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, after premiering at the Brooklyn Museum in New York last year. We discuss the sculpture with Catherine Morris, a senior curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, who co-curated the exhibition, and Lynn Matheny, the National Gallery of Art’s deputy head of interpretation and curator of special projects.Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist, National Gallery of Art, 9 March-6 July; Art Institute of Chicago, 30 August-4 January 2026.Subscription offer: enjoy 3 issues of The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3—subscribe before 21 March to start your subscription with the April bumper issue including our Visitor Figures 2024 report and an EXPO Chicago special. Subscribe here. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leigh Bowery at Tate Modern, Ukraine and art—three years on, Max Beckmann and the Gothic Modern
ETate Modern this week opened a vast exhibition exploring the life and work of the maverick Australian-born performance artist, fashion designer and self-styled “club monster”, Leigh Bowery, as well as the variety of cultural figures in his orbit in London. It coincides with other related London shows: one analysing the fashion work of Bowery and his collaborators and peers at the Fashion and Textile Museum, and another at the National Portrait Gallery about the style and culture magazine The Face, which emerged around the same time as Bowery set foot in the UK capital in the early 1980s. Ben Luke reviews the shows with Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent. Three years on from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and amid fraught international diplomacy following the US’s abrupt shift in approach to the war under President Trump, we speak to Sophia Kishkovsky, our international correspondent who has widely reported on Russia and Ukraine, about how Ukraine’s art world is responding to this new era. And this episode’s Work of the Week is actually a pair of works made more than 400 years apart called The Women’s Bath. The first is a woodcut based on a drawing by Albrecht Dürer from around 1500; the second a painting responding to it, made by the German artist Max Beckmann in 1919. They feature in an exhibition opening this week at the National Museum in Oslo, Gothic Modern: From Darkness to Light. Cynthia Osiecki, a curator at the museum, tells us more.Leigh Bowery!, Tate Modern, until 31 August; Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London, Fashion and Textile Museum, London, until 9 March; The Face Magazine: Culture Shift, National Portrait Gallery, London, until 18 May.Gothic Modern: From Darkness to Light, National Museum, Oslo, 28 February-15 June.Subscription offer: enjoy 3 issues of The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3—subscribe before 21 March to start your subscription with the April bumper issue including our Visitor Figures 2024 report and an EXPO Chicago special. Subscribe here. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gee’s Bend quiltmakers, “Degenerate” Art in Paris, and Mel Bochner remembered
Shows opening in Washington and Dublin this month explore quiltmaking by African American women. Ben Luke talks to Raina Lampkins-Fielder, chief curator for the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, and the organiser of the exhibition Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), about the history of quiltmaking in this small part of Alabama, and the growing recognition of its artistic importance. The Musée Picasso in Paris this week unveiled its exhibition “Degenerate” art: Modern art on trial under the Nazis, which looks back not just at the infamous 1937 exhibition in Munich but also the years-long campaign to attack modern art and artists in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. We speak to the exhibition’s co-curator, Johan Popelard. And this episode’s Work of the Week marks the death last week of Mel Bochner, a leading figure in the development of conceptual art. We speak to his gallerist, Peter Freeman, who knew and worked with Bochner for more than 50 years. We look in particular detail at the 1969 work, 48" Standards (#1).Last chance: The Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency, until Sunday, 23 February. Buy it here. https://account.theartnewspaper.com/subscribe?sourcecode=year_ahead&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=theyearaheadKith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, IMMA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, from 28 February-27 October; We Gather at the Edge: Black Women and Contemporary Quilts, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, 21 February-22 June; Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, US, 27 June-12 October“Degenerate” art: Modern art on trial under the Nazis, Musée Picasso, Paris, until 25 May. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anselm Kiefer, Hoor al Qasimi on Sharjah, a Picasso Blue Period mystery
Next month, the German artist Anselm Kiefer will be 80, and the first of a number of shows internationally to mark this landmark moment opened this week at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK. It focuses on his early works, and Ben Luke visits Oxford to discuss this pivotal moment in his career with Lena Fritsch, the curator of the exhibition. The latest edition of the biennial in the United Arab Emirate of Sharjah opened earlier this month. The Art Newspaper’s correspondent Dale Berning Sawa visited during opening week and spoke to Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, the president and director of Sharjah Art Foundation, which runs the biennial, about this year’s edition, her journey in art, and her role in establishing the biennial as a leading art world event. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto (1901) by Pablo Picasso, a painting from the artist’s Blue Period. Conservators at The Courtauld Institute in London have discovered an image of a mystery woman hidden beneath this portrait of De Soto, Picasso’s friend and fellow artist. We talk to Barnaby Wright, deputy head of The Courtauld Gallery, about the painting and the image beneath it. The work features in a new exhibition at the gallery, Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection.Anselm Kiefer: Early Works, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK, 14 February-15 June; Anselm Kiefer: Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 7 March-9 June; Kiefer / Van Gogh, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 28 June-26 October; Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Ocean, Saint Louis Art Museum, US, 18 October 2025-25 January 2026To carry, the 16th Sharjah Biennial, until 15 June 2025.The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 14 February-26 May.The Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Trump tariffs and Zona Maco in Mexico, India Art Fair, and American photography at the Rijksmuseum
Last weekend, the US President Donald Trump signed executive orders placing 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which were due to take effect on Tuesday. But at the last minute, the tariffs were postponed, at least for a month. Inevitably, though, the talk of a trade war set nerves jangling at Zona Maco, the art fair in Mexico City, which opened on Wednesday. Ben Luke speaks to Ben Sutton, The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, who is in the Mexican capital, about the prevailing mood, and about the effect on the art world more generally of some of Trump’s executive orders. It is also the India Art Fair in Delhi this week. Our art market editor, Kabir Jhala, is there and tells us more about the fair amid the wider social and political climate in India. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Henry Fitz Jr’s self-portrait, a daguerreotype, made in January or February 1840. It is thought to be the first photograph of a person made in the United States. It features in a major show at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, American Photography. We speak to Mattie Boom, Rijksmuseum’s curator of Photography, about the work, and the wider show.Zona Maco, Mexico City, until 9 February.The India Art Fair, Delhi, until 9 February.American Photography, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, until 9 June. Carrie Mae Weems’s 2021 series Painting the Town, Rijksmuseum, until the same date.The Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peter Hujar, Gregg Bordowitz and Rotimi Fani-Kayode: art and the Aids struggle
Peter Hujar, Gregg Bordowitz and Rotimi Fani-Kayode are three artists whose work reflects in different ways on the Aids crisis that has devastated communities across the world since the 1980s. Hujar, who died from Aids-related pneumonia in 1987, is the subject of a new show at Raven Row in London, the largest to date at a UK gallery. Host Ben Luke takes a tour of the show with its curators, the writer John Douglas Millar, and the artist, master printer and model for some of Hujar’s photographs, Gary Schneider. The artist Gregg Bordowitz was a member of The Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, founded in New York in the 1980s. Bordowitz has lived with HIV since the late 1980s, and it has fuelled his art and activism ever since, as a new show at Camden Art Centre in London demonstrates. We spoke to him about his life and work. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s Abiku (Born to Die) (1988), a photograph in The 80s: Photographing Britain, a show at Tate Britain in London. Fani-Kayode was a key figure in the UK’s burgeoning avant-garde photography scene in the late 1980s, but died in his early 30s in 1989 from complications relating to Aids. We talk to Jasmine Kaur Chohan, co-curator of the Tate Britain show, about the work.Peter Hujar—Eyes Open in the Dark, Raven Row, London, 30 January-6 AprilGregg Bordowitz—There: a Feeling, Camden Art Centre, London, until 23 MarchThe 80s: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain, until 5 MayThe Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Artists in Gaza respond to the ceasefire, Cimabue at the Louvre, a Baroque printmaking family
The Art Newspaper’s correspondent for the Middle East, Sarvy Geranpayeh, has been reporting on the effect of Israel’s military bombardment of Gaza on artists and art workers there since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict in 2023. In the wake of the three-stage ceasefire that began last Sunday, she has returned to those she has spoken to over the past 16 months to hear their views on the agreement and what happens next. The Musée du Louvre in Paris this week opened a show of the great 13th-century Italian painter Cimabue. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, spoke to Thomas Bohl, the exhibition’s curator. And this episode’s Work of the Week is actually three works produced in a family business of printmakers in 17th-century Netherlands. The works, by Hendrick Goltzius, and his grandsons Theodor and Adriaen Matham, are part of a new show, A Family Affair: Artistic Dynasties in Europe (Part I, 1500–1700), at the Blanton Museum of Art, part of The University of Texas, Austin. The curator of the exhibition, Holly Borham, tells me more about this printmaking dynasty.A New Look at Cimabue: At the Origins of Italian Painting, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 22 January – 12 May 2025A Family Affair: Artistic Dynasties in Europe (Part I, 1500–1700), Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas, Austin, US, 25 January-15 June; the second part of this exhibition, covering the period 1700 to 1900, opens in June.The Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Los Angeles wildfires, World Monuments Fund’s watch list, Katsushika Hokusai
This week: the Los Angeles wildfires. The Art Newspaper’s West Coast contributing editor in LA, Jori Finkel, tells our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, about the devastation in Southern California, and its effect on artists and institutions. The World Monuments Fund (WMF), the independent organisation devoted to safeguarding global heritage has released its biennial World Monuments Watch, a list of 25 sites that are potentially threatened. The aim of the list is, according to the WMF to “mobilise action, build public awareness, and demonstrate how heritage can help communities confront the crucial issues of our time”. Ben Luke talks to John Darlington, the director of projects for WMF Britain, who also reflects on the future of the organisation’s project to train Syrian refugees in stonemasonry skills, in the wake of the change in government in Syria. And this episode’s Work of the Week is All About Painting in Colour: An Illustrated Book, a portfolio in two volumes made by the leading artist of the late Edo period in Japan, Katsushika Hokusai. The last of his drawing manuals, made by the artist at the very end of his life, it features in a new book, Hokusai’s Method. We talk to Ryoko Matsuba, one of the authors of the new book.Hokusai’s Method, with texts by Kyoko Wada and Ryoko Matsuba, is published by Thames and Hudson. It is out on 23 January in the UK, and priced £35, and on 4 February in the US, priced $45.The Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Year Ahead 2025: market predictions, the big shows and openings
A 2025 preview: Georgina Adam, our editor-at-large, tells host Ben Luke what might lie ahead for the market. And Ben is joined by Jane Morris, editor-at-large, and Gareth Harris, chief contributing editor, to select the big museum openings, biennials and exhibitions.All shows discussed are in The Art Newspaper's The Year Ahead 2025, priced £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here.Exhibitions: Site Santa Fe International, Santa Fe, US, 28 Jun-13 Jan 2026; Liverpool Biennial, 7 Jun-14 Sep; Folkestone Triennial, 19 Jul-19 Oct; Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 5 Apr-2 Sep; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, 19 Oct-7 Feb 2026; Gabriele Münter, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 7 Nov-26 Apr 2026; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 4 Apr-24 Aug; Elizabeth Catlett: a Black Revolutionary Artist, Brooklyn Museum, New York, until 19 Jan; National Gallery of Art (NGA), Washington DC, 9 Mar-6 Jul; Art Institute of Chicago, US, 30 Aug-4 Jan 2026; Ithell Colquhoun, Tate Britain, London, 13 Jun-19 Oct; Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams, Courtauld Gallery, London, 20 Jun-14 Sep; Michaelina Wautier, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 30 Sep-25 Jan 2026; Radical! Women Artists and Modernism, Belvedere, Vienna, 18 Jun-12 Oct; Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 24 May-7 Sep; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 11 Oct-1 Feb 2026; Lorna Simpson: Source Notes, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 19 May-2 Nov; Amy Sherald: American Sublime, SFMOMA, to 9 Mar; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 9 Apr-Aug; National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, 19 Sep-22 Feb 2026; Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior, Cincinnati Art Museum, 14 Feb-4 May; Cleveland Museum of Art, US, 14 Feb-8 Jun; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, US, 1 Oct-25 Jan 2026; Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting, National Portrait Gallery, London, 20 Jun-7 Sep; Linder: Danger Came Smiling, Hayward Gallery, London, 11 Feb-5 May; Arpita Singh, Serpentine Galleries, London, 13 Mar-27 Jul; Vija Celmins, Beyeler Collection, Basel, 15 Jun-21 Sep; An Indigenous Present, ICA/Boston, US, 9 Oct-8 Mar 2026; The Stars We Do Not See, NGA, Washington, DC, 18 Oct-1 Mar 2026; Duane Linklater, Dia Chelsea, 12 Sep-24 Jan 2026; Camden Art Centre, London, 4 Jul-21 Sep; Vienna Secession, 29 Nov-22 Feb 2026; Emily Kam Kngwarray, Tate Modern, London, 10 Jul-13 Jan 2026; Archie Moore, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, 30 Aug-23 Aug 2026; Histories of Ecology, MASP, Sao Paulo, 5 Sep-1 Feb 2026; Jack Whitten, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 23 Mar-2 Aug; Wifredo Lam, Museum of Modern Art, Rashid Johnson, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 18 Apr-18 Jan 2026; Adam Pendleton, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, 4 Apr-3 Jan 2027; Marie Antoinette Style, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 20 Sep-22 Mar 2026; Leigh Bowery!, Tate Modern, 27 Feb- 31 Aug; Blitz: the Club That Shaped the 80s, Design Museum, London, 19 Sep-29 Mar 2026; Do Ho Suh, Tate Modern, 1 May-26 Oct; Picasso: the Three Dancers, Tate Modern, 25 Sep-1 Apr 2026; Ed Atkins, Tate Britain, London, 2 Apr-25 Aug; Turner and Constable, Tate Britain, 27 Nov-12 Apr 2026; British Museum: Hiroshige, 1 May-7 Sep; Watteau and Circle, 15 May-14 Sep; Ancient India, 22 May-12 Oct; Kerry James Marshall, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 20 Sep-18 Jan 2026; Kiefer/Van Gogh, Royal Academy, 28 Jun-26 Oct; Anselm Kiefer, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 14 Feb-15 Jun; Anselm Kiefer, Van Gogh Museum, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 7 Mar-9 Jun; Cimabue, Louvre, Paris, 22 Jan-12 May; Black Paris, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 19 Mar-30 Jun; Machine Love, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 13 Feb-8 Jun Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2024 in review: the biggest stories and the best shows
It is the final episode of 2024 and so, as always, we review the year, looking at the top stories, the big issues and the best art. Host Ben Luke is joined by The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, Louisa Buck, our art market editor, Kabir Jhala, and Ben Sutton, our editor in the Americas. Under discussion, among much else: the growing faultlines between institutions and artists in relation to Gaza; the big museum stories, from Saudi Arabian funding to attacks on artworks and restitution; a market roundup; culture and the climate emergency; and the panel’s exhibitions and biennials of the year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Carsten Höller, Takashi Murakami, Dia’s Echoes from the Borderlands
This week, three artist interviews: Carsten Höller on his book of games, Takashi Murakami on his new work, and Valeria Luiselli and Leo Heiblum on their Dia sound installation. Höller is the author of a book featuring 336 games that can be played alone, in pairs or in groups, without any props. He tells Ben Luke about art and play and his perennial quest for unpredictability. Takashi Murakami has been in London this week for the opening of his exhibition, Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami, at Gagosian. We speak to him about the show and his fascination with the television series Shōgun. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Echoes from the Borderlands, a sound installation created by Valeria Luiselli, Ricardo Giraldo and Leo Heiblum, which was unveiled at Dia Chelsea in New York this week. Valeria and Leo join us to tell us more about the project.Book of Games by Carsten Höller, edited by Stefanie Hessler and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Taschen, 760 pp, £40 or $50 (hb)Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami, Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, until 8 March 2025.Echoes from the Borderlands: Study Two, Dia Chelsea, New York, until 1 March 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Art Basel Miami Beach, Notre-Dame reopens in Paris, and Parmigianino’s Vision of St Jerome
The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, Ben Sutton, and our art market editor, Kabir Jhala, are in Florida and report on the sales and the mood on the first VIP day at Art Basel Miami Beach. On 8 December, the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris will reopen, more than five years after the fire that partly destroyed it. Ben Luke talks to one of the architects responsible for its rise from the ashes, Pascal Prunet. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Madonna and Child with Saints (1526-27) by Parmigianino, better known as The Vision of Saint Jerome. The painting this week returned to public display for the first time in 10 years, in a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London, following conservation, and we talk to Maria Alambritis, the show’s co-curator.Art Basel Miami Beach, until Sunday, 8 December.Notre-Dame reopens on Sunday, 8 December.Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome, National Gallery, London, until 9 March 2025Gift subscription: why not give a friend, colleague or family member a subscription to The Art Newspaper this holiday season? Choose between a digital-only and print and digital subscription package. Purchase the print and digital subscription before 13 December to get the January issue, which includes our essential magazine, The Year Ahead. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Art and technology shows in London and Los Angeles, a restored 17th-century cosmic atlas
Two exhibitions have just opened that look at art and tech: in London, Tate Modern’s Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet celebrates the pioneers of kinetic, programmed and digital art, and offers a kind of origin story of contemporary immersive installation. Ben Luke speaks to Val Ravaglia, the co-curator of the show, amid the blinking lights and bleeping sound. In California, meanwhile, Digital Witness at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) looks at how new software and hardware shaped the worlds of design, photography, and film between the 1980s and now. We speak to the exhibition’s curators, Britt Salvesen, the department head and curator of prints and drawings at Lacma, and Staci Steinberger, the curator of decorative arts and design at the museum. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the Harmonia Macrocosmica (1661) by Andreas Cellarius, a celestial atlas made in the Netherlands. Rebecca Feakes, the librarian at the Blickling Estate, a 17-century mansion in Norfolk, UK, run by the National Trust, tells our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, about the book.Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, Tate Modern, London, until 1 June 2025.Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, until 13 July.The Harmonia Macrocosmica is the centrepiece of Journey Through the Stars, Blickling Estate, UK, until 5 January. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The $6.2m banana, Frank Auerbach remembered, Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s photographs of addiction in South Africa
Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (2019), the work featuring a banana stuck to a wall with grey duct tape, sold at Sotheby’s in New York, on Wednesday for $5m or $6.2m with fees. But how did other works fare at this week’s auctions in New York? Ben Luke talks to Ben Sutton, The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, about the sales. Frank Auerbach, the painter who escaped the Holocaust and dedicated more than 70 years to creating portraits and cityscapes in London in raw, thick paint and expressive charcoal, has died. We speak to the curator of three of his most important exhibitions—and a model for Auerbach for more than 40 years—Catherine Lampert, about his work. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Mzwandile at home after coming from the rehab center (2018), a photograph from Nyaope, a series by the South African photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa. In the series he explored the devastating effect on his local community of a heroin-based drug, called nyaope. The work is part of the exhibition Heroin Falls, at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, UK, and I spoke to Lindo about the work.Heroin Falls, Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, UK, 23 November-27 April 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 300! British Museum, Tate Modern and V&A East directors in discussion
UK museums are at a moment of transformation with a new generation of directors taking the helm at several of the major national institutions in London. So for this landmark 300th episode, we felt it was a good moment to look at the challenges and opportunities for museums now and in the future. We invited Gus Casely-Hayford of V&A East, Nicholas Cullinan of the British Museum and Karin Hindsbo of Tate Modern to join our host Ben Luke for a wide-ranging discussion.LAST CHANCE subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Offer ends on 17 November. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Renaissance special: Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael in Florence, drawings and tapestries
This week: two exhibitions in London are showing remarkable works made during the Renaissance. At the King’s Gallery, the museum that is part of Buckingham Palace, Drawing the Italian Renaissance offers a thematic journey through 160 works on paper made across Italy between 1450 and 1600. Ben Luke talks to Martin Clayton, Head of Prints and Drawings at the Royal Collection Trust, about the show. At the Royal Academy, meanwhile, the timescale is much tighter: a single year, 1504 to be precise, when Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael were all in Florence. We talk to Julien Domercq, a curator at the Academy, about this remarkable crucible of creativity. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a magnum opus of Renaissance textiles: the Battle of Pavia Tapestries, made in Brussels to designs by Bernard van Orley, and currently on view in an exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Thomas Campbell, the director of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, talks to The Art Newspaper’s associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, about the series.Drawing the Italian Renaissance, King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, until 9 March 2025Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c.1504, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 9 November-16 February 2025Art and War in the Renaissance: The Battle of Pavia Tapestries, de Young Museum, San Francisco, US, until 12 January; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, spring 2025Subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

American sculpture—race and racism, Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art, Jusepe de Ribera in Paris
Shortly after the US election on 5 November, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington opens The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, a radical new perspective on the history of the discipline from 1792 to now. Ahead of its opening, Ben Luke speaks to Karen Lemmey, a curator of sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and co-curator of the exhibition. In Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art—a project 20 years in the making—has partially opened. We speak to its director, Joanna Mytkowska, about the long road to the unveiling and the upheavals in Polish politics along the way. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (early 1620s) by Jusepe de Ribera. It features in the first survey of the Spanish-born Baroque artist ever staged in France, at the Petit Palais in Paris. The museum’s director, Annick Lemoine, tells us more.The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 8 November-14 September 2025.The Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw is open now; its full programme will be unveiled in February 2025.Ribera: Shadows and Light, Petit Palais, Paris, until 23 February 2025.The Art Newspaper subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

US election, the glory of Siena, Gabrielle Goliath
This week: with less than two weeks before the US goes to the polls, and with early voting underway, Ben Luke talks to The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, Ben Sutton, about what we might expect depending on whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins the presidential election on 5 November. The exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350 is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and will open at the National Gallery in London next March. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, travelled to the Tuscan city to look at the work of some of the Sienese artists who light up the show, in the context of the city itself. He was guided by the co-curator of the exhibition, Caroline Campbell, the director of the National Gallery of Ireland. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Personal Accounts, an ongoing series of video installations exploring patriarchal violence by the South African artist Gabrielle Goliath. The latest cycle in the series, called Mango Blossoms, opens at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh this weekend and we speak to Gabrielle about the work.Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300‒1350, is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 26 January 2025; National Gallery, London, 8 March-22 June 2025.Gabrielle Goliath’s Personal Accounts: Mango Blossoms is shown alongside a number of other cycles from the series at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 26 October-15 February 2025. The series also features in Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, Venice Biennale, until 24 November.Subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paris: Art Basel at the Grand Palais and Guillermo Kuitca at Musée Picasso, plus Małgorzata Mirga-Tas at Tate St Ives
After descending on London last week, the art world arrived in Paris this week, with the main attraction being the Art Basel Paris art fair—now staged in the renovated Belle Epoque masterpiece, the Grand Palais. An editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper, Jane Morris, was at the VIP opening and tells us more. As always, alongside the fair are a number of eye-catching museum shows and projects. Among them is Chapelle, a new in-situ work for the Musée Picasso by the Argentinian artist Guillermo Kuitca. Ben Luke talks to Kuitca about the piece. And this episode’s Work of the Week is June (2022) by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, a work from a series in which the Polish-born Romani artist reimagines astrologically themed frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara in order to explore the history and contemporary life of the Roma people. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, talks to Mirga-Tas about the work, as it goes on display at Tate St Ives in the UK.Art Basel Paris, Grand Palais, until Sunday, 20 October.Chapelle by Guillermo Kuitca, Musée Picasso, Paris, until 31 December 2027.Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Tate St Ives, UK, 19 October-5 January 2025Subscription offer: you can get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Frieze, UK critics The White Pube, Giuseppe Penone and Arte Povera
The Frieze London art fair has a new look for 2024 as it looks to keep its freshness amid increased competition with the new kid on the art fair block, next week’s Art Basel Paris. So how effective is the re-design? Ben Luke talks to Kabir Jhala, the art market editor at The Art Newspaper, about this year’s fair and about the auctions which have also taken place in London this week. The duo The White Pube who, since 2015, have shaken-up the world of art criticism in the UK, have just published a new book, called Poor Artists. We speak to the duo, Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad, about it. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a vital contribution to the history of the Italian Arte Povera group. Giuseppe Penone’s Alpi Marittime (1968) has just gone on display in a new survey of Arte Povera at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris. The exhibition is curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and we talk to her about Penone’s work.Frieze London and Frieze Masters, until 13 October, Regent’s Park, London.Poor Artists by The White Pube, Particular Books (UK), £20 (hb), Prestel (US) published 12 November, $24.99; thewhitepube.com.Arte Povera, Bourse de Commerce, Paris, until 20 January.Subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mike Kelley, a pivotal period of contemporary Indian art, Raoul Dufy and Berthe Weill
This week: a huge survey of the work of the late linchpin of the Los Angeles contemporary scene Mike Kelley has arrived at Tate Modern in London. We speak to its co-curator Catherine Wood about this enormously influential artist and his visceral and absurd response to popular culture and folk traditions of the US. A major show of Indian art made between 1975 and 1998, a pivotal period of political, social and economic change in the country, opened this week at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. Shanay Jhaveri, a former curator of international art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York who is now head of visual arts at the Barbican, leads us in a tour of show. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Raoul Dufy’s Thirty Years or La Vie en Rose (1931), a painting made originally for the 30th anniversary of a gallery in Paris, that was owned by the pioneering woman gallerist Berthe Weill. She is the subject of an exhibition at the Grey Art Museum at New York University, which will tour next year to Montreal and Paris. Lynn Gumpert, the co-curator of the show and director of the Grey Art Museum, tells us about the painting, the artist and the dealer.Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, Tate Modern, London, until 9 March 2025; Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 12 April-15 September 2025.The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 5 October-5 January 2025; and you can hear an in-depth interview with Nalini Malani on A brush with…, that’s the episode from 21 February this year.Make Way for Berthe Weill: Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde, Grey Art Museum, New York, until 1 March; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 10 May-7 September 2025; Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, 8 October 2025-25 January 2026.Subscription offer: get three months of The Art Newspaper for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Monet in London, Matisse in Basel, Frankenthaler in Florence
This week, three major international shows: Claude Monet’s Thames views in London, the Henri Matisse retrospective in Basel and Helen Frankenthaler in Florence. An exhibition that Claude Monet hoped to see in his lifetime but which never happened has at last become a reality. A gathering of Monet’s views of the Thames—looking from his hotel room at the Savoy and from across the river on a private terrace of St Thomas’s hospital—has just opened at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Monet had hoped to stage such an event in London soon after the paintings were exhibited to acclaim in Paris in 1904, but so quickly had they dispersed, he was unable to do so. Ben Luke spoke to the curator of the show, Karen Serres, first in the very room at the Savoy Hotel where he made many of the paintings, and then in the exhibition itself. Meanwhile, a rare European retrospective of Henri Matisse’s work has opened at the Beyeler Foundation in Basel. Matisse: Invitation to the Voyage focuses on the artist’s travels, in the world and also in his imagination, through paintings, sculptures and cut-outs made over more than 50 years. Ben Luke went to Basel and spoke to Raphaël Bouvier, the curator. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Mediterranean Thoughts (1960) one of the paintings in Helen Frankenthaler: Painting without Rules, a new exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. The Art Newspaper’s associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, spoke to Douglas Dreishpoon, who organised the show.Monet and London: Views of the Thames, Courtauld Gallery, London, until 19 January 2025.Matisse – Invitation to the Voyage, Beyeler Foundation, Basel, Switzerland, until 26 January 2025.Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, until 26 January 2025.Subscription offer: get the perfect start to the new academic year with 50% off a student subscription to The Art Newspaper—that’s £28, or the equivalent in your currency, for one year. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Glenn Ligon in Cambridge, new Gauguin biography, Teresa Margolles’s Fourth Plinth commission
This week: the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, has invited the US artist Glenn Ligon to explore its history and collections, and his interventions are revealed this week. Ben Luke goes to Cambridge to talk to Ligon about the project. Few artists’ lives prompt as much discussion as that of Paul Gauguin, and a new biography of the French artist by Sue Prideaux has just been published. We talk to Sue about the book. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the piece that has just been unveiled on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Mil Veces un Instante or (A Thousand Times in an Instant) by Teresa Margolles is made up of plaster casts of the faces of 726 trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people. Ekow Eshun, the chair of the group that commissions the projects for the Fourth Plinth, speaks to our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, about the work.Glenn Ligon: All Over The Place, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK, until 2 March 2025. Distinguishing Piss from Rain: Writings and Interviews by Glenn Ligon, Hauser & Wirth Publishers, £32 or $38. Untitled (America/Me), High Line, New York, until November 2024. Listen to our in-depth interview, A brush with… Glenn Ligon from 18 August 2021.Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin, by Sue Prideaux, Faber, £30; published in the US next year, by WW Norton, $39.99.Teresa Margolles: Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant), Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, until 2026.Subscription offer: you can get the perfect start to the new academic year with 50% off a student subscription to The Art Newspaper—that’s £28, or the equivalent in your currency, for one year. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Van Gogh blockbuster, the birth of Impressionism, Juan Pablo Echeverri
This week: the Van Gogh blockbuster in London, a new book on the birth of Impressionism, and Juan Pablo Echeverri’s performative self-portraits. As the exhibition Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers opens at the National Gallery in London as part of its bicentenary celebrations, The Art Newspaper’s special correspondent and resident expert in the Dutch painter, Martin Bailey, takes a tour of the exhibition with our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, meanwhile, has just opened the exhibition Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment, its iteration of the show marking 150 years since the first Impressionist exhibition, which began earlier this year at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Coinciding with the show is the publication of the book Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism, by the Washington Post art critic, Sebastian Smee. Ben Luke speaks to Sebastian about the book. And this episode’s Work of the Week is MUTIlady (2003) by Juan Pablo Echeverri. The photographic piece features nine photographs in which the late Colombian artist pictures himself with an apparently flayed body and wildly different haircuts seemingly reflecting a multitude of identities. The work is part of the exhibition GROW IT, SHOW IT! A look at hair from Diane Arbus to TikTok, which opened this week at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany. The show’s curator, Miriam Bettin, tells Ben more about the artist and the work.Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, The National Gallery, London, 14 September-19 January 2025; The Sunflowers are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame by Martin Bailey, Frances Lincoln, each £10.99/$14.99 (pb), from 17 October, but available now at the National Gallery.Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism is published by W. W. Norton & Company in US and out now, priced $35. In the UK it’s published by Oneworld, out on 17 October and priced £25; Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment, National Gallery of Art, Washington, until 19 January 2025.GROW IT, SHOW IT! A look at hair from Diane Arbus to TikTok, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, until 12 January 2025.Subscription offer: you can get the perfect start to the new academic year with 50% off a student subscription to The Art Newspaper—that’s £28, or the equivalent in your currency, for one year. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The art market slump, the artist freed in the US-Russia prisoner swap, Max Ernst and Surrealism in Paris
The Week in Art is back. In this first episode of the season: on Tuesday it was reported in the Financial Times that Sotheby’s core earnings are down 88% in the first half of this year. This is the latest evidence to suggest that the art market may be in a far more serious economic rut than its major players have previously indicated, after disappointing sales and job cuts at the major auction houses, as well as closures and layoffs in the world of commercial galleries. In the September issue of The Art Newspaper, Scott Reyburn suggests that the art market could be entering a new era, and he joins our host Ben Luke to explain why. We then talk to Sasha Skochilenko, the artist who was freed in the prisoner exchange between Russia and the US in August, about her activism, arrest and incarceration as well as her experience of the swap and the art she has made since. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Angel of Hearth and Home, made by Max Ernst in 1937, and later renamed by the artist as The Triumph of Surrealism. The painting is part of the major travelling show marking the 100th anniversary of the first Surrealist manifesto, which makes its stop from this week at the Centre Pompidou, in Paris. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, went to Paris to talk to Didier Ottinger, the co-curator of the exhibition.Sasha Skochilenko: skochilenko.ru.Surrealism, Centre Pompidou, Paris, until 13 January 2025; Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, Spain; 4 February-11 May 2025; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, 12 June-12 October 2025; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, US, end of 2025-beginning of 2026. You can hear our discussion about the centenary of the first Surrealist manifesto with the Surrealism expert Alyce Mahon on the episode of this podcast from 23 February this year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Arts and the UK election, ex-Uffizi head fails in Florence mayoral bid, Hank Willis Thomas at Glastonbury
On Thursday 4 July, the UK will hold a general election, with the Labour party currently far ahead in the opinion polls. Dale Berning Sawa, a contributor to The Art Newspaper who is also commissioning editor at the online news site The Conversation, joins Ben Luke to reflect on the effects on culture of 14 years of Conservative or Conservative-led governments, and what they and the other parties are promising regarding culture in their manifestos. In Florence, Italy, the former director of the Uffizi galleries, the German Eike Schmidt, has lost the race to be mayor of the city. We speak to our correspondent in Italy, James Imam, to find out what happened. And this episode’s Work of the Week is All Power to All People by Hank Willis Thomas. This huge public sculpture depicting an Afro pick with a Black Power salute is at the Glastonbury festival, in a new initiative organised by the non-profit Level Ground, and we talk to Thomas about it.Hank Willis Thomas: All Power to All People, West Holts Stage, Glastonbury Festival, until 30 June. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Just Stop Oil’s Stonehenge protest, Tavares Strachan, Louise Bourgeois at the Galleria Borghese
EThis week: Just Stop Oil’s Stonehenge protest. On Wednesday, two activists sprayed orange powder paint made from cornflour on to three of the boulders at Stonehenge, prompting outrage and some support. Before this latest action, in an article for the July/August print edition of The Art Newspaper, John Paul Stonard had argued that Just Stop Oil’s museum-based protests add up to “one of the most successful campaigns of civil disobedience in history”. He reflects on whether the latest protests reinforce this conviction. At the Hayward Gallery in London, the Bahamian-born, US-based artist Tavares Strachan has just opened his first major survey exhibition. We go to the gallery to talk to him. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Janus Fleuri by Louise Bourgeois, made in 1968. It is one of the highlights of Unconscious Memories, a show in which Bourgeois’s sculptures and installations are installed alongside the historic works in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. We speak to Cloé Perrone, the co-curator of the exhibition.Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere, Hayward Gallery, London, until 1 September.Louise Bourgeois: Unconscious memories, Galleria Borghese, Rome, 21 June-15 September.Subscription offer: a free eight-week trial of a digital subscription to The Art Newspaper. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Art Basel: fireworks and nuance, Lynn Barber on her artist interviews, Guillaume Lethière at the Clark
This week: it’s arguably the best loved of the major art fairs among collectors and dealers, but what have we learned about the art market at this year’s Art Basel, in its original Swiss home? The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor, Tim Schneider, tells us about the big sales in Switzerland amid the wider market picture. The journalist Lynn Barber has a new book out, called A Little Art Education, in which she reflects on her encounters with artists from Salvador Dalí to Tracey Emin. We talk to her about the highs and lows of several decades of artist interviews. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Woman Leaning on a Portfolio (1799) by Guillaume Lethière. Lethiére was born in Guadeloupe in the Caribbean to a plantation-owner father and an enslaved mother, but eventually became one of the most notable painters of his period in France and beyond. We talk to Esther Bell and Olivier Meslay, the curators of a major survey of Lethière’s work opening this week at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, US, and travelling later in the year to the Louvre in Paris.Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland, until Sunday, 16 June.A Little Art Education by Lynn Barber, Cheerio, £15 (hb).Guillaume Lethière, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, US,15 June-14 October; Musée du Louvre, Paris, 13 November-17 February 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s New York, Studio Voltaire at 30, Martha Jungwirth responds to Goya
This week: we explore the Art Institute of Chicago’s exhibition dedicated to what Georgia O’Keeffe called her New Yorks—paintings of skyscrapers and views from one of them across the East River, which marked a turning point in her career. Sarah Kelly Oehler, one of the curators of the show, tells us more. One of the most distinctive of all London’s contemporary art spaces, Studio Voltaire, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and has begun a fundraising drive to consolidate its future, with a gala dinner this week and a Christie’s auction later this month. We talk to the chair of Studio Voltaire’s trustees and a non-executive director of Frieze, Victoria Siddall, about the anniversary and the precarious funding landscape, even for the UK’s most dynamic non-profits. And this episode’s Work of the Week is an untitled painting from the Austrian painter Martha Jungwirth’s 2022 series Francisco de Goya, Still Life with Ribs and Lamb’s Head. Based on a work by the Spanish master in the Louvre in Paris, Jungwirth’s painting features in a new survey of her work that has just opened at the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain. We speak to its curator, Lekha Hileman Waitoller.Georgia O’Keeffe: My New Yorks, Art Institute of Chicago, until 22 September; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, from 25 October-16 February 2025.The date of XXX, as the sale of works to benefit Studio Voltaire at Christie’s is called, is yet to be confirmed. Check the organisations’ websites for updates; Beryl Cook/Tom of Finland, Studio Voltaire, London, until 25 August.Martha Jungwirth, Guggenheim Bilbao, until 22 September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Art’s AI reckoning, the rise of comic art, and Degas’ Miss La La
The publication in April of Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Index Annual Report has provided the art world with much food for thought. We look at the implications for artists and institutions with Louis Jebb, the managing editor of The Art Newspaper and our technology specialist. As the Centre Pompidou in Paris is taken over on all its floors by what it calls the “ninth art”—graphic novels and comics—we talk to Joel Meadows, the editor-in-chief of Tripwire magazine and a comics aficionado, about the rise of this subculture in museums and the market. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Edgar Degas’ Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando (1879), which depicts a Black circus performer, Anna Albertine Olga Brown, who was briefly known as Miss La La. She and the painting are the subject of a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London opening next week. We talk to Anne Robbins, the curator of paintings at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and external curator of the exhibition, and Sterre Overmars, the curatorial fellow for post-1800 paintings at the National Gallery, about the painting.Comics on Every Floor, Centre Pompidou, Paris, until 4 November.Discover Degas & Miss La La, National Gallery, London, 6 June-1 September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Mona Lisa's endless, and problematic, allure; Judy Chicago; Christian Schad and the New Objectivity
As the Louvre’s director admits that the Paris museum wants to move its most famous painting away from the crowded gallery in which it is currently displayed, we ask the Leonardo specialist Martin Kemp: does the museum have a Mona Lisa problem? We also talk about the painting’s continuing allure and the ongoing efforts to explain its mysteries. In London, remarkably, Judy Chicago has just opened her first major multidisciplinary survey in a British public gallery, at the Serpentine North. We talk to her about the show. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Christian Schad’s Self-Portrait with Model (1927). The painting features in Splendour and Misery: New Objectivity in Germany at the Leopold Museum in Vienna. Hans-Peter Wipplinger, the director of the museum and co-curator of the show, tells us more.Judy Chicago: Revelations, Serpentine North, London, until 1 September.Splendour and Misery: New Objectivity in Germany, Leopold Museum, Vienna, until 29 September. Subscription offer: get a free six-week trial of a digital subscription to The Art Newspaper. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tate’s historic women artists show, Dia at 50, Martin Wong’s record-breaking painting
We take a tour of Tate Britain’s new exhibition, Now You See Us, featuring more than 100 women artists who worked between the 16th and 20th centuries, with Tabitha Barber, its curator. The Dia Art Foundation has reached its half century and its director, Jessica Morgan, tells us how it has changed in that time, and especially how it has radically expanded the range of artists it shows and collects. We also discuss the new commission at Dia Beacon by Steve McQueen. And this episode’s Work of the Week is one of the few record-breaking paintings in a relatively middling auction week in New York: Martin Wong’s Portrait of Mikey Piñero at Ridge Street and Stanton (1985), which sold for more than $1.6m (with fees) on Tuesday evening at Christie’s. Barry Blinderman, who sold the work in 1985 from his Semaphore gallery in New York, tells us more about the painting and the extraordinary circumstances of its making.Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920, Tate Britain, London, until 13 October.Steve McQueen: Bass, Dia Beacon, until 12 May 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gaza: artists’ stories, Frank Stella remembered, Vanessa Bell’s garden view
We talk to The Art Newspaper’s reporter Sarvy Geranpayeh about her conversations with six Palestinian artists about their daily lives amid Israel’s ongoing military offensive in Gaza. Frank Stella, one of the key artists in the history of American abstraction, has died, aged 87. We speak to Bonnie Clearwater, the director and chief curator of the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who worked with Stella on two landmark shows. And as Spring finally arrives in London, this episode’s Work of the Week is, fittingly, Vanessa Bell’s View into a Garden (1926). It features in an exhibition opening next week at the Garden Museum in London, called Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors. Emma House, the curator at the museum, tells me more.Glory of the World: Color Field Painting (1950s to 1983), NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, US, until 25 August. Frank Stella: Recent Sculpture, Deitch Projects, New York, until 24 May.Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors, Garden Museum, London, 15 May-29 September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Should UK museums charge for entry? Plus, Michelangelo’s last decades and Maria Blanchard
After years of decreasing public funding, the lingering effects of the Covid pandemic and enduring questions around the ethics of corporate sponsorship, UK museums are facing unprecedented financial pressures. Some commentators are suggesting that the time has come to abandon the policy of free admission to museums that is viewed by many as key to the cultural fabric of the UK. Among those arguing for charging is the critic and broadcaster Ben Lewis, who joins Ben Luke to discuss the issue. This week, the British Museum opened the exhibition Michelangelo: the Last Decades. It focuses on the period after 1534, when Michelangelo left his native Florence for Rome, never to return, and embarked on many of his most ambitious projects. We take a tour of the show with its curator, Sarah Vowles. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Maria Blanchard’s Girl at Her First Communion (1914). The painting features in a new exhibition at the Museo Picasso in Málaga. Its curator, José Lebrero Stals, tells us more about this underappreciated Spanish artist, who was at the heart of the Parisian avant garde in the 1910s and 20s.Michelangelo: the Last Decades, British Museum, until 28 July.María Blanchard: A Painter in Spite of Cubism, Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain, until 29 September.LAST CHANCE subscription offer: subscribe for as little as 50p per week for digital and £1 per week for print and digital, or the equivalent in your currency. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Klimt’s last picture sells for €35m, Rebecca Horn, a Cézanne restored
The last painting made by Gustav Klimt, left on his easel when he died in 1918 of illnesses relating to the Spanish flu epidemic of that year, has sold at auction in Vienna for €35m including fees. But much remains unclear about the picture, including its sitter, its commissioner and what happened to it in the Second World War. Ben Luke talks to Catherine Hickley, The Art Newspaper’s museums editor, about whether this murky provenance contributed to its relatively low price for a Klimt in the saleroom. A retrospective of the pioneering German artist Rebecca Horn opens this week at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and we talk to Jana Baumann, its co-curator, about the show. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Mont Sainte Victoire, one of dozens of paintings made by Paul Cézanne of the towering limestone peak near Aix-en-Provence in France. Painted in 1886-87, it is in the collection of the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Elizabeth Steele, the Phillips’s Head of Conservation, describes how she revealed the painting from a century of discoloured varnish and dust as it goes on view in the exhibition Up Close with Paul Cezanne, which is at the Phillips until 14 July.Rebecca Horn, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 26 April-13 OctoberUp Close with Paul Cezanne, Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., until 14 July.Subscription offer: subscribe to The Art Newspaper for as little as 50p per week for digital and £1 per week for print and digital, or the equivalent in your currency. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Venice Biennale special
We are back in Venice for the latest edition of the biggest biennial in the world of art. The 60th Venice Biennale comprises an international exhibition featuring more than 300 artists, dozens of national pavilions in the Giardini—the gardens at the eastern end of the city—and the Arsenale—the historic shipyards of the Venetian Republic—and host of official collateral exhibitions and other shows and interventions across Venice. The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, Louisa Buck, editor-at-large Jane Morris and host Ben Luke review the international exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere/Stranieri Ovunque, curated by the Brazilian artistic director, Adriano Pedrosa. We talk to artists and curators behind five national pavilions—Jeffrey Gibson in the US pavilion, John Akomfrah in the British pavilion, Romuald Hazoumè in the Benin pavilion, Gustavo Caboco Wapichana, the curator of the Hãhãwpuá or Brazilian pavilion, and Valeria Montii Colque in the Chilean pavilion—about their presentations. And we like to end our Venice specials by responding to an example of the historic work that made la Serenissima one of the world’s great centres for art. So for this episode’s Work of the Week, Ben Luke gained exclusive access to one of the most significant paintings in Venetian history: the Assunta or Assumption of the Virgin made between 1516 and 1518 by Titian. Since the last Biennale in 2022, the Assunta has been unveiled after a four-year conservation project, funded by the charity Save Venice. We spoke to the man who restored this incomparable masterpiece, Giulio Bono, right beneath Titian’s painting.The Venice Biennale, 20 April-24 November. Listen to the interview with Adriano Pedrosa in the episode of this podcast from 2 February.The website that Giulio Bono mentions, which will present the findings of the conservation of Titian’s Assunta in detail, will go online later this year.Save Venice, savevenice.org.Subscription offer: subscribe to The Art Newspaper for as little as 50p per week for digital and £1 per week for print or the equivalent in your currency. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marlborough Gallery closes, Rose B. Simpson in New York, Caravaggio’s final painting
This week: after 80 years in business, Marlborough Gallery, one of the most historic commercial galleries in London, New York and beyond, has announced that it is closing. Host Ben Luke talks to Anny Shaw, a contributing editor at The Art Newspaper, about what happened and what, if anything, it tells us about the market. The New Mexico-based sculptor Rose B. Simpson revealed newly commissioned public art works in Madison Square Park and Inwood Hill Park in New York on Wednesday, called Seed. The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, Ben Sutton went to meet her. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the final painting ever made by Caravaggio: The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, made in 1610. The painting is travelling to London for an exhibition opening at the National Gallery next week, called The Last Caravaggio. Francesca Whitlum-Cooper, the gallery’s acting curator of later Italian, Spanish and 17th-century French Paintings and the curator of the exhibition, tells us more.marlborougharchive.com.Rose B. Simpson: Seed, Madison Square Park and Inwood Hill Park, New York, until 22 September. The Whitney Biennial: Even Better than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 11 August. Rose B. Simpson: Strata, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, US, 14 July-13 April 2025; Rose B. Simpson: LEXICON, De Young, San Francisco, US, 16 November-29 June 2025.The Last Caravaggio, National Gallery, London, 18 April-21 JulySubscription offer: subscribe to The Art Newspaper for as little as 50p per week for digital and £1 per week for print (or the equivalent in your currency). Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Inigo Philbrick and art world fraud, Hong Kong’s new security law, a Maharaja’s sword
The convicted art fraudster Inigo Philbrick is out of prison and possibly seeking a return to art dealing. How is that possible? Tim Schneider, The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor, tells us about Philbrick’s story, why the art trade is a natural habitat for fraud, and why a criminal past need not lead to art-world banishment. In the wake of the first Art Basel Hong Kong art fair to take place after the newly instated Article 23 security law, our associate digital editor Alexander Morrison talks to our correspondent in China, Lisa Movius, about the law’s impact on artists, museums and others in the art world now and in the future. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a sword associated with Ranjit Singh, the Maharaja who is the subject of a major exhibition opening next week at the Wallace Collection in London. Davinder Toor, the co-curator of the show, tells us more.Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King, Wallace Collection, London, 10 April-20 October Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Richard Serra remembered. Plus, expressionist art special: Käthe Kollwitz at MoMA and the Blue Rider at Tate Modern
Richard Serra, one of the greatest artists of the past 50 years, a linchpin of the post-minimalist scene in late 1960s and early 1970s New York and later the creator of vast steel ellipses and spirals, died on Tuesday 26 March. We mark the passing of this titan of sculpture with Donna De Salvo, the senior adjunct curator of special projects at the Dia Foundation, whose Dia Beacon space has several major works by Serra on permanent view. There are a host of exhibitions focusing on expressionist art in the US and Europe in 2024 and in this episode we focus on two of them. The first ever Käthe Kollwitz retrospective in New York is taking place at the Museum of Modern Art or MoMA, while other shows dedicated to her are taking place in Frankfurt and Stockholm. We speak to Starr Figura, the curator of MoMA’s show, which opens this weekend, about Kollwitz’s extraordinary work and life. Then, we talk to Natalia Sidlina, the curator of Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider, a major survey opening at Tate Modern next month of the German Expressionist group, which looks anew at the deep friendships that formed the basis of the group, their international outlook and their multidisciplinary output.Richard Serra’s work is on long-term view across five galleries at Dia Beacon, New York, US.Käthe Kollwitz, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 31 March-20 July; Städel Museum, Frankfurt, until 9 June; SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, 7 November-25 February 2025.Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider, Tate Modern, London, 25 April-20 October 2024; Gabriele Münter: the Great Expressionist Woman Painter, Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid, 12 November-9 February 2025.Further expressionist exhibitions in 2024: The Anxious Eye: German Expressionism and Its Legacy, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, until 27 May; Munch to Kirchner: The Heins Collection of Modern and Expressionist Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, US, until 5 January 2025; Munch and Kirchner: Anxiety and Expression, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, US, until 23 June; Erich Heckel, Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, Belgium, 12 October-25 January 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whitney Biennial reviewed, museum visits back to normal, Pieter Bruegel the Elder
This week: the Whitney Biennial reviewed. Host Ben Luke discusses the show with Ben Sutton, The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, and the critic Annabel Keenan. Our annual survey of visitor numbers at museums is published in the next print edition of The Art Newspaper and Lee Cheshire, the co-editor of the report, joins us to discuss the findings. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s drawing The Temptation of St Anthony (around 1556). It features in the exhibition Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings, which opens this weekend at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK. An Van Camp, the curator of the show, discusses this remarkable study.The Whitney Biennial: Even Better than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 11 August.Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK, 23 March-23 June. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tate’s racist mural—Keith Piper’s response, the Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report, Anni Albers
Four years after Tate Britain closed its restaurant because Rex Whistler’s murals on its walls contained racist imagery, it has unveiled the work it commissioned in response to Whistler’s painting by the artist Keith Piper. We talk to Piper about the work. The annual Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report was published on Wednesday and, as ever, reviews the status of the international art market. We speak to its author, the cultural economist and founder of the company Arts Economics, Clare McAndrew. And this episode’s Work of the Week is With Verticals, one of Anni Albers’s pictorial weavings, made in 1946. It is a key piece in the exhibition Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, which arrived this week at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. We discuss the weaving with the show’s curator, Lynne Cooke.Keith Piper: Viva Voce, Tate Britain, until at least 2025.Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2024, theartmarket.artbasel.com.Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 17 March-28 July; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 25 October-2 March 2025; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 20 April 2025-13 September 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Photography and feminist activism, Jacob Rothschild remembered, Robert Ryman
To coincide with International Women’s Day on 8 March, the South London Gallery is opening the exhibition Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest. Activism and photography have long gone hand in hand but this collaborative exhibition, organised with the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), attempts to capture a new chapter in this distinguished history, with a particular focus on feminism across the world. We talk to Sarah Allen, the head of programme at the South London Gallery, and Fiona Rogers, the V&A’s Parasol Foundation curator of women in photography, about the show. The financier, philanthropist, collector and leader of cultural organisations Jacob Rothschild died last week at the age of 87. We talk to Anna Somers Cocks, the founder of The Art Newspaper, who interviewed Lord Rothschild on numerous occasions, about his impact on the visual arts and heritage. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Adelphi, made in 1967 by Robert Ryman. It is one of around 50 pieces by Ryman in the exhibition The Act of Looking, which opened this week at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. Guillaume Fabius, the co-curator of the show, joins us to discuss the painting.Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest, South London Gallery, London, 8 March-9 June.Robert Ryman: The Act of Looking, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, until 1 July.New subscription offer for The Art Newspaper: up to 50% off our annual subscription packages. Subscribe at theartnewspaper.com before 14 March to receive our bumper April issue, with a Venice Biennale Guide, the Art of Luxury magazine, our annual Attendance Figures report and a supplement on the Expo Chicago fair. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Los Angeles and Frieze, Angelica Kauffman, Matthew Wong and Van Gogh
As Frieze Los Angeles opens its fifth iteration, The Art Newspaper’s associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, talks to our correspondent in LA, Jori Finkel about the changing landscape of the city’s art scene. In London, the Royal Academy has finally opened an exhibition dedicated to the 18th-century painter Angelica Kauffman, a show that was threatened with cancellation as Covid ravaged the plans and finances of museums. We take a tour of the exhibition with its co-curator, Annette Wickham. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Space Between Trees (2019), the late Canadian-Chinese painter Matthew Wong’s direct response to a lost masterpiece by Vincent van Gogh, The Painter on the Road to Tarascon (1888). The connection between the two artists is explored in a new exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Painting as a Last Resort. Its curator, Joost van der Hoeven, tells us more.Frieze Los Angeles, until Sunday, 3 March, Santa Monica Airport, Los Angeles.Angelica Kauffman, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1 March - 30 June.Matthew Wong | Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 1 March-1 September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Black figuration, Surrealism is 100, Tonita Peña’s Eagle Dance mural
The exhibition The Time Is Always Now, featuring 22 artists from the African diaspora whose work takes the Black figure as its starting point, is now open at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and will tour to Philadelphia later in the year. We explore the show with its curator Ekow Eshun. 2024 marks the centenary of the the first Surrealist manifesto by André Breton, and the first of a series of exhibitions focusing on the movement this year opened at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels this week, before travelling to the Centre Pompidou later in the year and Hamburg, Madrid and Philadelphia (again) next year. But what did that first manifesto contain and how did it influence the course of the movement? Alyce Mahon, a Surrealism specialist and professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Cambridge, tells us more. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Eagle Dance (1934) by Tonita Peña, one of the leading Native American Pueblo artists of the 20th century. It features in a new exhibition, Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection, at the Saint Louis Art Museum in the US. Alexander Brier Marr, the associate curator of Native American art at the museum, joins us to discuss the painting.The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, National Portrait Gallery, London, 22 February-19 May; The Box, Plymouth, UK, 29 June-29 September; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 9 November-9 February 2025.Alyce Mahon is the co-editor of a new International Journal of Surrealism, published by Minnesota University Press; Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World, by Alyce Mahon, Yale University Press, published in September. IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, 21 February-21 July; Centre Pompidou, Paris, 4 September-13 January 2025; Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, 4 February–11 May 2025; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, 12 June 2025-12 October 2025; Philadelphia Museum of Art, US, autumn 2025–spring 2026.Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection, Saint Louis Art Museum, US, until 14 July.Last chance: buy The Art Newspaper’s magazine The Year Ahead 2024, an authoritative guide to the world’s must-see art exhibitions and museum openings at theartnewspaper.com until 1 March for just £9.99 or $13.69. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yoko Ono at Tate Modern, Elton John’s collection, a Roman colossus remade
A vast survey covering seven decades of art by Yoko Ono has just opened at Tate Modern, and we take a tour of the show with Juliet Bingham, its curator. The collection from Elton John’s home in Atlanta in the US is up for auction at Christie’s and ahead of its big Opening Night auction next week, The Art Newspaper’s associate digital editor Alexander Morrison spoke to Tash Perrin, Christie’s deputy chairman in the Americas, about the works and John’s particular taste in art and objects. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a reconstructed and reimagined statue of the fourth-century Roman emperor, Constantine the Great. The colossus has been remade from the 10 known fragments of the original sculpture by the Madrid-based Factum Foundation, and was installed last week in a garden in Rome’s Capitoline Museums. Adam Lowe, the founder of the Factum Foundation, tells me more.Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, Tate Modern, until 1 September; K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, 28 September-16 March 2025The Collection of Sir Elton John: Goodbye Peachtree Road auctions begin at Christie’s New York on 21 February; online sales are now open.The Colossus of Constantine, Capitoline Museums, Rome, until at least the end of 2025.Get The Art Newspaper’s magazine The Year Ahead 2024, an authoritative guide to the world’s must-see art exhibitions and museum openings—many of which were discussed on our podcast from 12 January—at theartnewspaper.com for just £9.99 or $13.69. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tania Bruguera on censorship, Frank Auerbach, an Indian painting from Howard Hodgkin’s collection
As she stages a non-stop reading of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism for five days at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Tania Bruguera reflects on growing concerns about the censorship of artists in Germany in relation to the Israel-Hamas war. She also discusses the comments made by Ai Weiwei this week that censorship in the West was now “exactly the same” as in Mao’s China. The Courtauld in London this week opened an exhibition of the monumental charcoal drawings made by Frank Auerbach in the 1950s and early 1960s, and we take a tour of the exhibition with the show’s curator Barnaby Wright. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Mihrdukht Aims Her Arrow at the Ring, a folio from the Hamzanāma (Story of Hamza). Made in India in around 1570, during the Mughal period, it is one of the works acquired by the British painter Howard Hodgkin in a lifetime of collecting Indian art. The collection is the subject of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which opened this week. Navina Najat Haidar, one of the co-curators of the show, tells us more.Tania Bruguera: Where Your Ideas Become Civic Actions (100 Hours Reading “The Origins of Totalitarianism”), Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin, until 11pm on Sunday, 11 February. You can hear a discussion about Hannah Arendt’s legacy and her influence on artists in our episode from 15 January 2021.Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads, The Courtauld, London, until 27 May.Indian Skies: The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 9 June. And you can hear my interview with Antony Peattie, Hodgkin’s partner for the last few decades of his life, about the artist’s final paintings, on the episode from 25 May 2018.Offer: you can still buy The Art Newspaper’s magazine The Year Ahead 2024, an authoritative guide to the world’s must-see art exhibitions and museum openings—many of which were discussed on our podcast from 12 January. Get a print and digital subscription to The Art Newspaper at theartnewspaper.com before the 15th of this month to receive a copy of The Year Ahead with your next printed issue. Or you can buy the magazine on its own on the website for just £9.99 or $13.69. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Venice Biennale, the immersive art explosion, Barbara Kruger by Hans Ulrich Obrist
This week: Adriano Pedrosa, the artistic director of the 60th Venice Biennale, on his exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere. As he announces the themes, concepts and the list of artists in the show, we speak to the Brazilian curator about his plans. Hugely popular immersive art experiences are popping up across the world from London to Las Vegas, Tokyo and Abu Dhabi, and we discuss this phenomenon and its implications for museums and galleries with Chris Michaels—an art and technology consultant and former director of digital, communications and technology at the National Gallery, London. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Forever), an installation first made in 2017 and now on view in the Serpentine South gallery in London, where Kruger’s career survey arrived this week after spells in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Hans Ulrich Obrist, the Serpentine Galleries’ artistic director, explores the installation.The 60th Venice Biennale: Foreigners Everywhere, Giardini and Arsenale, Venice, Italy, 20 April-24 November.Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You, Serpentine South, London, until 17 March.Offer: you can still buy The Art Newspaper’s magazine The Year Ahead 2024, an authoritative guide to the world’s must-see art exhibitions and museum openings—many of which were discussed on our podcast from 12 January. Get a print and digital subscription to The Art Newspaper at theartnewspaper.com before the 15th of this month to receive a copy of The Year Ahead with your next printed issue. Or you can buy the magazine on its own on the website for just £9.99 or $13.69. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The masters market, India’s controversial Hindu temple, Honoré Daumier
This week: masters week in New York—can the market for historic works be revived? Scott Reyburn, a market reporter for The Art Newspaper, has for some time been exploring the decline in the trade for Old Master paintings. He looks ahead to the auctions in Masters Week in New York, which begin this weekend. In India on Monday, the prime minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a vast temple to the Hindu god Ram in the city of Ayodhya. The temple replaces a 16th-Century mosque that was destroyed by Hindu mobs in 1992, an event that provoked riots in which nearly 2,000 people died, most of them Muslim people. Our deputy art market editor and regular correspondent in India, Kabir Jhala, is in Mumbai, and joins us to discuss this pivotal issue in modern Indian history, what it means ahead of India’s general election in the spring, and whether it is affecting the Indian art market. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Madame déménage (1867), a political cartoon by the French artist Honoré Daumier that was deemed so provocative in its time that it was not published. The lithograph is part of an exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt that features 120 Daumier works from the Hellwig Collection. Hans-Jürgen Hellwig, the who is donating the collection to the Städel, joins us to discuss this incendiary image.Honoré Daumier: The Hellwig Collection, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany, until 12 May.Offer: to get The Art Newspaper’s magazine The Year Ahead 2024, an authoritative guide to the world’s must-see art exhibitions and museum openings, get a print and digital subscription to The Art Newspaper at theartnewspaper.com before 15 February. Your copy of The Year Ahead will arrive with your next printed issue. You can buy the magazine on its own on the website for just £9.99 or $13.69. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An oligarch vs Sotheby’s in a New York court, Singapore Art Week, Zanele Muholi
This week: the astonishing civil trial in Manhattan between a Russian oligarch and Sotheby’s. The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor, Tim Schneider, witnessed the Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev’s testimony in the trial in New York in which he accuses Sotheby’s of aiding the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier in an alleged fraud. It relates to the sale of major works of art, including the controversial Leonardo painting Salvator Mundi. Tim joins us to tell us about this extraordinary case. The second edition of Art SG art fair in Singapore has opened—with a 29% fall in the number of galleries. It takes place amid a wider festival, Singapore Art Week, and Lisa Movius, our reporter in Asia, tells us about the mood in Singapore and the wider art scene beyond Art SG. She also reflects on last weekend’s election in Taiwan. And our first Work of the Week of 2024 is the South African artist Zanele Muholi’s photograph ZaVa III, Paris (2013). The image is one of more than 100 works in Zanele Muholi: Eye Me, an exhibition that has just opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Shana Lopes, one of the curators of the exhibition, tells us more.Art SG, until Sunday; Singapore Art Week until 28 January, artweek.sgZanele Muholi: Eye Me, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, US, until 11 August. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2024: market predictions and the big shows
In the first episode of 2024 we look ahead to the next 12 months. The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor Tim Schneider peers into his crystal ball to tell us what we might expect from the coming 12 months in the art market. Then, Jane Morris, editor-at-large, Gareth Harris, chief contributing editor, and host Ben Luke select the biennials and exhibitions they are most looking forward to in 2024.Events discussed:60th Venice Biennale: Foreigners Everywhere, 20 April-24 November; Pierre Huyghe, Punta Della Dogana, Venice, 17 March-24 November; Julie Mehretu, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 17 March-6 January; Willem de Kooning, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, 16 April–15 September; Jean Cocteau, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 13 April-16 September; Whitney Biennial: Whitney Museum of American Art, opens 20 March; PST Art: Art & Science Collide, 14 September-16 February; Istanbul Biennial, 14 September-17 November; Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024, Saudi Arabia, 20 February-24 May; Desert X 2024 AlUla, Saudi Arabia, 9 February-30 April; Frick Collection, New York, reopening late 2024; Grand Egyptian Museum, Giza, Egypt, dates tbc; IMAGINE!: 100 Years of International Surrealism, The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, 21 February-21 July; Centre Pompidou, Paris, 4 September-6 January (travels to Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany, Fundación Mapfré, Madrid, Philadelphia Museum of Art, US); Paris 1874: Inventing impressionism, Musée d’Orsay, 26 March-14 July; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 8 September-19 January; Van Gogh, National Gallery, London, 14 September-19 January; Matthew Wong, Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 1 March-1 September; Caspar David Friedrich, Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, until 1 April; Caspar David Friedrich, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 19 April-4 August; Caspar David Friedrich, Albertinum and Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden, Germany, 24 August-5 January; Arte Povera, Bourse de Commerce, Paris, 9 October-24 March; Brancusi, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 27 March-1 July; Comics, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 29 May-4 November; Yoko Ono, Tate Modern, London, 15 February-1 September 2024; Angelica Kauffman, Royal Academy, London, 1 March-30 June; Women Artists in Britain, Tate Britain, London, 16 May-13 October; Judy Chicago, Serpentine North, London, 22 May-1 September; Vanessa Bell, Courtauld Gallery, London, 25 May-6 October; Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, US, until 21 January; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 17 March-28 July; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 25 October-2 March; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, dates tbc; Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Barbican, London, 13 February-26 May 2024, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 14 September-5 January; The Harlem Renaissance, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 25 February-28 July; Siena: the Rise of Painting, 1300-50, Metropolitan Museum, 13 October-26 January; Museum of Modern Art, New York, shows: Joan Jonas, 17 March-6 July, LaToya Ruby Frazier, 12 May-7 September, Käthe Kollwitz, 31 March-20 July; Kollwitz, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany, 20 March-9 June; Käthe Kollwitz, SMK-National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, 7 November-25 February; The Anxious Eye: German Expressionism and Its Legacy, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 11 February-27 May; Expressionists, Tate Modern, London, 25 April-20 October; Gabriele Münter: the Great Expressionist Woman Painter, Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid, 12 November-9 February Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.