The Week in Art

This week: should the Science Museum in London stop taking money from the oil company Shell? We talk to a student activist, Anya Nanning Ramamurthy of the UK Student Climate Network, who held a protest at the Science Museum over the weekend of 19 and 20 June, and Chris Garrard, co-director of the ethical sponsorship campaigners Culture Unstained, about fossil-fuel sponsorship and the increasing pressure on the museum. Louisa Buck talks to the British artist Michael Landy about his exhibition Michael Landy's Welcome to Essex at Firstsite in Colchester in the southeastern English county of Essex. And in this week’s Work of the Week, Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander, who has a new exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, talks to Helen Stoilas, our editor in the Americas, about Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā beneath a flowering tree, a manuscript miniature in the Indian Nathadvara style, painted between 1825 and 1850, which is in the Morgan’s collection. Sikander discusses the way she has brought a contemporary perspective on this work and the broader tradition of manuscript painting in South and Central Asia in her own practice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we look at a much anticipated exhibition, Slavery at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The Rijksmuseum is the Netherlands’ national art and history museum and the curators of the exhibition state in the catalogue that the country’s colonial past has been "insufficiently examined in the national history of the Netherlands, including at the Rijksmuseum”. Ben Luke talks to Valika Smeulders, head of history at the Rijksmuseum and one of the four curators of the exhibition, focusing on several works in the show and exploring the people—from enslaved men and women to wealthy Amsterdam denizens who benefit from slavery—who feature in the exhibition. Also in this episode: as next year’s Venice Biennale is named after The Milk of Dreams, a children’s book by the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, Ben talks to Joanna Moorhead, a relative of Carrington’s and the author of The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington, about the stories, what they tell us about the author, and what they might mean for the next Venice Biennale. And this episode’s Work of the Week is actually two works: Peter Paul Rubens’s two landscape masterpieces The Rainbow Landscape and A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning, which have been reunited for the first time in 200 years at the Wallace Collection in London. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: two festivals of art. Aimee Dawson talks to Frida Kahlo and Kathe Kollwitz of the Guerrilla Girls about their ongoing activism and their new billboards for Art Night, while Ben Luke discusses Glasgow International with its director, Richard Parry, and then reviews the work in the festival with The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent Louisa Buck. And in this week’s Work of the Week, Ben talks to Samantha Friedman, co-curator of the Museum of Modern Art in New York’s Cézanne Drawing show, about a study sheet of pencil sketches by the French artist, with an apple, a self-portrait, a bather and a portrait of Francisco Goya. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: Mary Beard on Nero, one of the most infamous Roman emperors. Was he the sadistic murderer of legend, the emperor who fiddled as Rome burned, or has he been a victim of spin and myth? As well as getting Mary’s take on this infamous figure and Nero: the man behind the myth, the exhibition about him that’s just opened at the British Museum in London, Ben Luke also talks to the exhibition's curator Thorsten Opper. Also this week, as the first London Gallery Weekend begins—with 140 galleries from Mayfair to Mile End taking part—The Art Newspaper's editor-at-large Georgina Adam speaks to Jeremy Epstein, co-founder of Edel Assanti gallery and one of the founders of London Gallery Weekend initiative. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, we talk to the artist Nina Katchadourian about a very personal piece of embroidery, created by her adopted grandmother, which has inspired a new work by the artist in her show at Pace in New York. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: Viking-age treasures—what the medieval gold, silver, textiles and even dirt in a hoard found in 2014 in Scotland can tell us about the Viking age, its people, its art and its international networks.Ben Luke talks to the curator Martin Goldberg about the Galloway Hoard, which has just gone on view at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Also this week: six proposals for the highest-profile public art commission in London, the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, have gone on view at London’s National Gallery. We discuss the proposals and the current climate for public art in London with Ekow Eshun, Chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, and Justine Simons, London’s Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, we talk about Nike Air Force 1s, the design that changed the face of global sneaker culture, with Ligaya Salazar of London’s Design Museum. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Luke talks to Ralph Rugoff, artistic director of the last Venice Biennale and director of the Hayward Gallery, London, about Matthew Barney and Igshaan Adams, two very different artists exploring autobiography, social issues and dance, among much else, at the Hayward; Louisa Buck talks to the curator Laura Smith as the Whitechapel Gallery unveils two shows about Surrealism and women artists: a solo show of Eileen Agar’s work and an archival show about women’s role in the movement. And for this week’s Work of the Week, Philip Larratt-Smith discusses Passage Dangereux (2007) by Louise Bourgeois, a work in his new show, Louise Bourgeois, Freud’s Daughter, at the Jewish Museum in New York. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's a big week in the New York salerooms: Scott Reyburn, art market expert for The Art Newspaper and The New York Times, discusses the big sales and notable trends at Christie’s and Sotheby’s New York auctions. Meanwhile, as museums in England get ready to open for the first time in five months, we talk to Heather Phillipson about her new exhibition in the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, to mark the centenary of the birth of the German artist Joseph Beuys, we talk to the artist duo Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey about Beuys’ seminal late work 7000 Oaks and their response to it, Beuys’ Acorns. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: ecocide in Brazil. In a special in-depth interview marking a retrospective at Fondazione MAST in Bologna, Italy, and an exhibition at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, the artist Richard Mosse discusses his photographs and forthcoming film installation picturing the scale of the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest. Mosse also talks about his earlier photographic and film series on the themes of war, displacement and migration. And in this episode's Work of the Week, the artist Rachel Maclean talks about her new work for Jupiter Artland, the sculpture park near Edinburgh, in the context of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: Los Angeles has finally opened its museums after more than a year. When New York's galleries have been open since August, what took California so long? We talk to Jori Finkel about LA's slow emergence from lockdown. Also: DB Burkeman tells us about his new book Art Sleeves, a trawl through 40 years of artist-designed record covers. And in this episode's Work of the Week, as Scottish museums re-open after a long lockdown, Kirsty Hassard, the curator of V&A Dundee's exhibition Night Fever: Designing Club Culture, talks about Volker Hinz's photograph of the singer and fashion model Grace Jones, in the Area nightclub in New York in 1984. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on the now award-winning The Week in Art: Kusamarama. We take a deep dive into Yayoi Kusama’s polka dots, pumpkins and infinity rooms as shows open in New York, Washington, London and Berlin. We’re joined by three curators: Frances Morris, the director of Tate Modern in London, talks about Kusama’s Infinity Rooms; Mika Yoshitake, the curator of an exhibition at the New York Botanical Garden, explains the fundamental role of plants and nature in Kusama’s art; and Stephanie Rosenthal, director of the Gropius Bau in Berlin, discusses the huge Kusama retrospective that’s just opened there.Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms will open to Tate Members from 18 May and then to the wider public from 14 June. It will continue until June 2022. Two of the Infinity Mirror Rooms, will feature in One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection, an exhibition soon to open at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. The museum's currently closed but do visit its website to check for announcements.KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature is at The New York Botanical Garden until 31 October. Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective continues at the Groipus Bau in Berlin until 1 August. And Stephanie Rosenthal has created a reading list on Kusama for our Book Club, visit theartnewspaper.com to read more. Later this year, the retrospective will travel to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art later this year. New My Eternal Soul paintings by Kusama will be shown in London, Tokyo, and New York this summer—at Victoria Miro in London from 4 June as part of exhibition of new paintings and sculptures, then at David Zwirner, New York, from 17 June and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, from 19 June. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: after four long months, commercial art galleries are open again in England. We discuss some of the London shows with Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, and take a tour of Rachel Whiteread’s exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Grosvenor Hill, London. And we talk to the artist Idris Khan, who has a new exhibition at the Victoria Miro gallery, about his oil, watercolour and collage works made in the English countryside and using sheet music from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. And in this episode’s Work of the Week we talk to the artist James Welling, whose latest photographic projects stem from direct encounters with ancient Greek objects, about Kore 674, an ancient Greek sculpture from 500 BCE in the Acropolis Museum, Athens. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's podcast: the world’s greatest art heist. As a new Netflix documentary hits our screens, who stole the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Manet, among other items, and are we any closer to finding them? We talk to Jeff Siegel, producer of the new Netflix series This is a Robbery about the 1990 heist at the Gardner museum, in Boston, Massachusetts. As Denmark brings in the "coronapas", a form of vaccine passport, we talk to Axel Rüger of the Royal Academy of Arts in London about whether such a scheme could work in the UK's museums and galleries, and to Tania Coen-Uzzielli of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel, where they have a “green pass” scheme, from which museums are exempt. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Susan Foister, deputy director of the National Gallery in London, discusses Jan Gossaert’s Adoration of the Kings—the subject of a show at the gallery which has now been developed into an experience for smartphone users. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Art Newspaper’s annual survey of museum attendance is out: just how many visitors and how much money have museums lost in the pandemic? And how have digital initiatives helped?José da Silva, exhibitions editor at The Art Newspaper, and one of the editors of our annual visitor figures survey, talks about the 77% global fall in visitor numbers and the huge losses in self-generated income in museums. And we talk to Chris Unitt, the founder of One Further, a digital consultancy for the arts industry, about museums’ work in the digital field, how effective it has been and how it might be used in the future. And, in excerpts from our sister podcast, A brush with... we hear Michael Armitage and Julie Mehretu discussing Titian and Velázquez. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: Germany announces that its museums will send the Benin bronzes back to Nigeria: will other nations follow? We talk to Catherine Hickley, who broke the story of Germany’s planned restitution of the bronzes in The Art Newspaper this week, and to Dan Hicks, whose book The Brutish Museums tells the story of British colonial destruction and looting that led to the bronzes’ collection by museums across the world. Also: a Van Gogh painting which had never been exhibited has just been sold at auction. We ask The Art Newspaper’s Martin Bailey about the painting and discuss his latest Van Gogh blog, about the tragic lives of Vincent’s sisters. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, the artist Rana Begum talks about Always Now (1981), by the painter Tess Jaray. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's podcast: the most influential annual art market report has just been published—so what does it tell us about the effects of a year of Covid-19 on the market? We talk to Clare McAndrew, the author of the The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. Also in this episode, we talk to the scholar of Dada and Surrealism, Dawn Ades, about her book on Marcel Duchamp—and we address the debate about who made Fountain (1917), the famous upturned urinal. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Jakob Fenger, a member of Danish artist collective Superflex, discusses a work by the Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles, Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project (1970). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we focus on two books: Aimee Dawson talks to Alice Procter about the debate over contested heritage in the UK and her book The Whole Picture, a strident call for colonial histories to be told in museums. Jori Finkel speaks to Glenn Adamson about Craft: An American History, a radical reappraisal of craft's role in forging American identity. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Ben Luke talks to the critic Michael Peppiatt—curator of an exhibition uniting Frank Auerbach and Tony Bevan at Ben Brown Fine Arts in London—about Auerbach's EOW Sleeping IV (1967), in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: the Frick Collection in New York has moved temporarily from its Gilded Age Mansion on Central Park to Marcel Breuer’s 1960s building created for the Whitney Museum. So what happens when the Old Masters meet Brutalism? We talk to Xavier Salomon, deputy director and chief curator of the Frick about this remarkable change of setting for one of the world’s great collections. We talk to Vincent Noce about his new book L'Affaire Ruffini, following an Old Master forgery scandal, involving works by artists including Cranach, Hals and Orazio Gentileschi and some of the world's most august institutions. And for this episode’s Work of the Week the artist Collier Schorr talks about the photographer August Sander's Young Soldier, Westerwald, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (and various other museum collections). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens. What are they? Are they a fad or do they represent the future of the art market? We talk to two people in the world of crypto commodities about the explosion of NFTs on the art market. We hear from the artist Beeple, whose piece Everydays: The First 5000 Days is the first standalone NFT work of art to be sold at auction, and to Jason Bailey, the founder of the analytical database artnome. And for this episode’s Work of the Week, the artist Doug Aitken talks about the minimalist composer Terry Riley’s 1968 piece You’re No Good. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: the curator Naomi Beckwith and artist Okwui Okpokwasili discuss Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, a major show at the New Museum in New York—the final project conceived by the late curator Okwui Enwezor. Also, we explore the effect of Covid-19 on artists with disabilities: we talk to the artist Cara Macwilliam and to Hannah Whitlock and Laura Miles from the UK charity Outside In. And Goya’s Graphic Imagination has opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, so for this episode’s Work of the Week we talk to Goya specialist Francisco Chaparro, who contributed to the exhibition’s catalogue, about one of the prints in his series The Disasters of War (1810-15), One can’t look (No se puede mirar). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: excavations have revealed new archaeological finds at Stonehenge but the UK government has approved a road tunnel through this iconic World Heritage Site—will it ruin it? We talk to Mike Pitts, an archaeologist, about the debate over the tunnel and its effect on the ancient stones and their surrounding landscape. Plus: museums in France are urging their government to let them reopen; we talk to Jean-François Chougnet of Mucem, a museum in Marseille. And for this episode’s Work of the Week, Aimee Dawson speaks to the artist Crystal Fischetti about Wish List, a sculptural installation by Karla Black. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's podcast: the artist-activists at the heart of Russia’s biggest protests in a decade and how the Indian government is using heritage and museums to re-write the history of the country. We talk to Lölja Nordic, an artist, DJ and activist in Saint Petersburg, who appeared in a video released this week by Pussy Riot, Russia’s most famous cultural activists, in support of "political prisoners" arrested in the protests across Russia. And we talk to the academic Sarover Zaidi about the Indian government's approach to the country's heritage. In this episode’s Work of the Week, the artist Navid Nuur talks about Walter De Maria’s New York Earth Room (1977). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the Old Masters in the digital age. We look at the $92m live-streamed auction sale (with fees) of a major Botticelli in New York and new research, including a study using artificial intelligence, into Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi. While a prize Botticelli sold for a record price for the early Renaissance master at Sotheby's, a Rembrandt, expected to fetch $20m-$30m, was withdrawn from the auction at the last minute. So as the coronavirus crisis continues, is this really a good moment to sell Old Masters? Scott Reyburn, who writes for The Art Newspaper and the New York Times, reflects on the results of the sale and the Old Masters market more generally. Then, Alison Cole, the editor of The Art Newspaper, explains the latest scientific findings about Salvator Mundi, the Leonardo painting that sold at Christie’s in 2017 for $450m—including a study using neural networks.And for this episode’s Work of the Week, the artist Gerard Byrne talks about a diorama in the Biological Museum, in Stockholm, which inspired Byrne’s series of photographs, Beasts, and a film installation, Film Inside an Image, both now showing in an online viewing room at kerlingallery.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are sworn in as the president and vice president of the United States, what might their administration do for the visual arts? We talk to Jori Finkel, a regular contributor to The Art Newspaper and The New York Times from Los Angeles. We explore an extraordinary story linking QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory and hate group, and how its origins may lie in the activities of a collective of radical Italian artists in the 1990s, the Luther Blisset Project, with Eddy Frankel, the Culture editor of Time Out and founder of the art and football magazine OOF. And in this week’s Work of the Week, we actually look at 20 works: Alphonse Mucha’s Slav Epic, with Mucha’s grandson, John. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we look at white supremacist art in the Capitol in Washington and discuss the legacy of Hannah Arendt. Plus, we look at a record-breaking auction sale of a Batman comic. Sarah Beetham, chair of liberal arts and assistant professor of art history at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, discusses the statue of the Confederate General Robert E. Lee that was removed from the Capitol building two weeks before right-wing mobs, incited by President Donald Trump and other Republican lawmakers, attacked the Capitol and filled it with white supremacist imagery like the Confederate flag. A further eight Confederate statues remain in the Capitol's National Statuary Hall today. With the riots in Washington as a backdrop, we talk to two artists, Peter Kennard and Vivienne Koorland, who feature in an exhibition programme dedicated to Hannah Arendt at Richard Saltoun in London this year. They discuss the the political theorist's legacy and her affect on their work.And as a copy of the first ever comic featuring Batman sells for $2.2m at auction, we ask Ed Jaster, the Senior Vice President at Heritage Auctions, what makes this item so special. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s the final episode of 2020 and so, as we always do as the year comes to an end, we’re reviewing the last 12 months in the art world. And what a year it’s been. Host Ben Luke was joined by three of The Art Newspaper’s correspondents on the frontline reporting the huge events of the year and their effects on the art world. Anna Brady is our art market editor, Louisa Buck is our contemporary art correspondent, and Gareth Harris is our chief contributing editor. Inevitably, as we tackled the year’s events, two major global events dominated the discussions: the coronavirus pandemic and the death of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter and the fight for racial justice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Brexit deadline is imminent and the UK and the European Union are desperately seeking an agreement. But what are the implications either way for the art trade? We asked the writer and art market specialist Ivan Macquisten and former Conservative MEP and current chief executive of the British Chamber of Commerce in Brussels, Daniel Dalton. And for this episode’s Work of the Week, the curator Neville Wakefield tells us about the planks made by John McCracken, who’s suddenly gained a new audience because he was initially rumoured to be the artist behind that shiny monolith in the Utah desert. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we look at contemporary public art, as debate has raged about various works in recent weeks. Who is public art for and why does it continue to provoke such strong reactions? Host Ben Luke talks to Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, and James Lingwood from the visionary producers of public works, Artangel, about art by Christoph Büchel, Jeremy Deller, Maggi Hambling, Rachel Whiteread, Marc Quinn and Mark Wallinger; the artist Olaf Breuning tells us about a public work he has made for a hospital in Miami; and for this episode’s Work of the Week, the artist Tom Sachs talks about Mondrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we look at museums and Africa: we explore the future of museums and African institutions’ central role in it and we look at the 19th-century looting of the Benin Bronzes and what it tells us about museums and colonialism, then and now. We talk to Sonia Lawson, the founding director of the Palais de Lomé in Togo, and András Szántó, the writer of the new book The Future of the Museum: 28 Dialogues. We also speak to Dan Hicks, professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford and curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum there, about his book The Brutish Museums, focusing on the Benin Bronzes. And for our Work of the Week, Christopher Riopelle of the National Gallery in London talks about a painting of Copernicus by the Polish artist Jan Matejko, which is coming to the National for an exhibition next year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s Thanksgiving on 26 November, so this week, we look at the myths behind this American holiday, and particularly the story of the Mayflower, the ship that landed in Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts, 400 years ago. We talk to Jo Loosemore, the curator of the exhibition Mayflower 400: Legend and Legacy at The Box in Plymouth, about the voyage, the settlement and decolonising the story. And then we get the in-depth perspective of Steven Peters, the co-founder of the creative agency Smoke Sygnals and a member of the Wompanoag nation, the native inhabitants of the region around Plymouth Colony, who along with other tribes, had lived there for 10,000 years before the Europeans arrived. Steven curated the exhibition Our Story: The Early Days of the Wampanoag Tribe and the Pilgrims Who Followed at the Provincetown Museum in Massachusetts. For this episode’s Work of the Week, the painter Chantal Joffe explores Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Self-Portrait, Age 30, 6th Wedding Day. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: we speak to our China correspondent Lisa Movius in Shanghai about the fairs and other events opening in the city this week. And we look at a rare museum event opening in Europe: Tate Britain’s Winter Commission, which—because it’s on the facade of the building—opens to the public this week; Louisa Buck meets the latest artist to take on the commission, Chila Kumari Singh Burman. And for this week’s Work of the Week, we focus on Art is… by Lorraine O’Grady, a performance made in 1983 that inspired the video made for the triumphant candidates in the US election, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the ramifications of the US election are set to continue for weeks, where do we stand in the art world? We look at the economics and the response of artists and art communities over the last four years and into the future. We talk to Felix Salmon, the chief financial correspondent at Axios, about the economic situation and its potential effects; Carolina Miranda of the Los Angeles Times reflects on individualism and collective action in the cultural sphere; and the Mexican artist Pedro Reyes talks about his project in New York City, Mañanaland, timed to coincide with the election. For this week’s Work of the Week, Martin Rowson, a cartoonist for the Guardian and the Daily Mirror, among others, talks about William Hogarth’s Gin Lane (1751), drawing President Trump, and the power of satire to address moments of crisis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: like the rest of the art world, the market has been upended by the pandemic. But has the turmoil forced it to be any more transparent? Do we know any more about the actual price of art? Ben Luke is joined by Georgina Adam, an editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper and art market specialist, to discuss transparency and the market. Also this week, we talk to David Blayney Brown, the curator of Turner’s Modern World, a new show at Tate Britain in London. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, the artist John Stezaker talks about a grisaille painting, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, in the Courtauld collection but currently on display at the National Gallery in London. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Following a historic relaxation of deaccessioning laws in the US, we probe the moral quandaries faced by museums forced to sell-off parts of their collections to stay afloat. We speak to Christopher Bedford, the director of the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland, which has announced it is to sell three works; to Georgina Adam about what this all means for the art market, and to James H. Duff, a former director of the Brandywine River Museum and chair of the Professional Issues Committee of the Association of Art Museum Directors, for an overview of the history of deaccessioning. Plus, in our latest work of the week, artist Jennifer Packer discusses a Buddhist mural in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we talk to the critics and curators Barry Schwabsky and Aindrea Emelife about the four-year delay to the show Philip Guston Now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the museums of fine arts in Houston and Boston and Tate Modern in London. What does the postponement of a big show of the American artist’s work tell us about museums’ response to art and race in the wake of Black Lives Matter? Also, Louisa Buck meets Maggi Hambling as a new show of her work opens at Marlborough Gallery in London. And in our Work of the Week, the artist Martha Tuttle talks about a medieval Visitation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s Frieze Week in London, yet there’s no big art fair at its heart. Can galleries create the usual excitement—and is anyone still buying?There’s no Frieze London or Frieze Masters but there are plenty of exhibitions and events being staged across the city, the now customary online viewing rooms and digital sales platforms and a big New York auction. We talk to The Art Newspaper's contemporary art correspondent Louisa Buck about the art around town and to our editor-at-large and FT columnist Melanie Gerlis about how the market is faring without the fairs. And Linda Yablonsky talks to Theaster Gates about his shows at Gagosian in New York and White Cube in London. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we look at two great women artists: at last, we visit the postponed Artemisia exhibition at the National Gallery in London, taking a tour with its curator Letizia Treves, and picking out some of the extraordinary highlights of the show. And we also explore a new biography of Frida Kahlo with its author, Hettie Judah. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With UK museums and galleries in crisis, might the Royal Academy of Arts be forced to sell its Michelangelo? We look at the story that has emerged in recent days that some Royal Academicians—the artists and architects that run the RA—are suggesting selling the Taddei Tondo to prevent huge job losses and keep the Academy afloat. Also this week: Margaret Carrigan speaks to Legacy Russell, the author of a new book, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, about how her ideas relate to the world of art and museums. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Imma Ramos of the British Museum chooses 19th-century figure of the goddess Kali, which features in the Tantra exhibition she has curated at the museum, which has just opened. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: the artist Grayson Perry has a new exhibition and documentary series about the United States. What can a British artist and broadcaster tell us about the faultlines in American culture? Louisa Buck talks to him in his show at Victoria Miro in London. Ben Luke talks to the curator and art historian Robert Storr, the author of a huge new book about the painter Philip Guston. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Margaret Carrigan talks to the artist Jacolby Satterwhite about Édouard Manet’s masterpiece Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the grass). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s Berlin Art Week, and unusually for 2020, art fairs, a biennale, and a range of exhibitions are all opening at once in the German capital. But is Berlin still the thriving art centre it’s been over the last two decades? We talk to the Canadian artist and adoptive Berliner AA Bronson about participating in one of the big shows opening this week, at the legendary Berghain nightclub, and about his experience of living in the city. We hear from the veteran art dealer Thomas Schulte about Berlin’s return to normality. And, in this episode’s Work of the Week, we talk to the artist Jadé Fadojutimi about an Untitled painting by Laura Owens in the Tate Collection. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this first episode of the new season, we talk to Erich Hatala Matthes, associate professor of philosophy at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, US—who’s writing a book on immoral artists—about how useful the notion of “cancelling” may be. With The Art Newspaper’s correspondent Tom Seymour and the photographer and lecturer Lewis Bush we explore the cases of Martin Parr and David Alan Harvey, two photographers whose activities have recently come under scrutiny. And, In this episode’s Work of the Week, the artist Tavares Strachan talks about Robert Smithson’s seminal earthwork from 1970, the Spiral Jetty. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Week in Art, sponsored by Christie’s, is The Art Newspaper’s topical news podcast, released every Friday. Each week, we look at the big stories in the art world, from museums and the major exhibitions to heritage and the art market. We talk to the top artists and museum directors; we take tours of the essential shows; and our experts analyse the latest events and trends across the art scene. Plus, in every episode we ask a leading art-world figure—from artists and curators to critics and art historians—to choose a favourite piece of art in our Work of the Week. Join us every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A new series of The Week in Art podcast will begin on 4 September; expect all the latest art world news, exclusive interviews, exhibition tours and much more. In the meantime, why not subscribe to A brush with..., the brand new podcast from The Art Newspaper, which we launched this week. You can hear the trailer in this podcast. The first episode, A brush with... Michael Armitage, is out now, and three more in-depth conversations with painters are released in the coming weeks. There are also details of the next event in The Art Newspaper Live series on our YouTube channel: on 13 August, our host Ben Luke will talk to Russell Tovey and Robert Diament from the art podcast Talk Art. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, in our last episode of this series, we look at the top exhibitions you can see this summer in the UK, Europe and the US, with Anna Brady and Gareth Harris joining Ben Luke in London, and Helen Stoilas, Nancy Kenney and Jillian Steinhauer in New York. We also reflect on the anxieties and ethics of visiting galleries as Covid-19 remains widespread.And we have our usual Work of the Week, this time chosen by the artist Hassan Hajjaj, who looks at an album cover, Doctor Alimantado’s 1978 debut The Best Dressed Chicken in Town, and discusses how it influenced his own photography. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We explore the Serpentine Galleries’ new report into Future Art Ecosystems: with existing art industry models under threat, can new ones emerge in the post-coronavirus era? We talk to Ben Vickers, the Serpentine Galleries’ chief technology officer, about art and advanced technologies. As his BBC radio series Great Gallery Tours continues, we hear from a Simon Schama, who is marooned in Trump’s America yet yearns for a sunlit morning on the Thames in London: his choice for our Work of the Week is J.M.W. Turner’s Mortlake Terrace: Early Summer Morning in the Frick in New York. And as unemployment in the US surges past Great Depression-era levels, we look at a historic cultural programme that may have pointers for this moment: the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act or CETA, a response to the economic crisis of the 1970s.Links:The Art Newspaper: theartnewspaper.comThe Serpentine Galleries' Future Art Ecosystems report: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/future-art-ecosystems/Simon Schama's BBC radio series Great Gallery Tours: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kw4tTurner's Mortlake Terrace: Early Summer Morning: https://collections.frick.org/objects/267/mortlake-terrace-early-summer-morningCETA: ceta-arts.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, as the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown hit museums, we’re seeing unprecedented layoffs on both sides of the Atlantic. We ask: are museums doing all they can to save their staff? We look at the latest developments in the UK and US, where hundreds of museum workers are losing their jobs.Our museums editor, Hannah McGivern sets the scene in the US and Europe, our senior editor Margaret Carrigan speaks to Dana Kopel, the New Museum Union’s unit chair, and Frankie Altamura, one of the union’s stewards, both of whom lost their jobs at the museum this week, about the growing movement for museum workers’ rights across the US and whether institutions can care for their workers. And we speak to Steven Warwick of the Public and Commercial Services union about the effect of the job cuts in UK museums on his members.This week’s Work of the Week is chosen by Emily Butler, a curator at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, about Rhea Storr’s film Junkanoo Talk (2017). You can see the full film here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is the future of the art world in Hong Kong now that a new national security law curbs human rights and threatens freedom of expression? We look at the effects on artists and the wider art scene with two people based there: the artist Kacey Wong and the commentator Alexandra Seno.And in our Work of the Week Alyce Mahon, the author of the new book The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde, explores one of Leonor Fini’s illustrations for Story of O by Pauline Réage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we look at the destruction on 24 May of sacred Aboriginal sites in Western Australia by a mining company. We talk to Sven Ouzman, an archeologist and activist at the University of Western Australia about the most recent events and the wider context. Can anything be done to better protect Aboriginal country and Australia’s ancient heritage? Also, this week, as a Russian referendum approves Vladimir Putin’s new constitution—a foregone conclusion, of course—we look at the Russia's alarming crackdown on artists.And in the latest in our series Lonely Works, in which explore art behind the doors of museums closed due to Covid-19, we look at a work that will soon be lonely no more. The artist George Shaw tells us about Thomas Jones’s A Wall in Naples, which will be seen for the first time in more than three months at the National Gallery in London when it re-opens on 8 July. Links:Our full guide to gallery openings in UK, Europe and the USThomas Jones's A Wall in Naples at the National GalleryThe University of Western Australia's Centre for Rock Art Research and Management Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Plus, artist Rita Keegan on her postponed show and Julia Peyton-Jones on Leonardo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we address the toppling of statues around the world amid the Black Lives Matter protests: is this an airbrushing of history as some claim or a long overdue corrective to historic prejudices?We explore what happens now: we talk to Richard Benjamin, the director of the International Slavery Museum (ISM) in Liverpool, UK, about the events which saw the pulling down of the statue of the slaver Edward Colston in Bristol and how museums like ISM can respond to the increased focus on histories of the transatlantic slave trade. We speak to Astrid de Bruycker, the alderwoman for equal opportunities in Ghent, Belgium, where a bust of Leopold II, the king responsible for one of the most brutal of all the colonial regimes, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is being removed. And Hew Locke, the artist who has made works about problematic statuary in various parts of the globe for many years, tells us about his work as some of the statues he has addressed become flashpoints for a new movement. Hew also chooses the latest in our series Lonely Works, looking at art behind the doors of museums that are closed because of the coronavirus pandemic—a painting in the Tate Collection by Agostino Brunias, depicting slaves in the Caribbean. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's podcast, as galleries in London re-open amid a pandemic, we ask: what does the new normal look like for the art world?Ben Luke takes his first steps in an art gallery for three months and talks to Stefan Ratibor and Millicent Wilner at the Gagosian Gallery in London as they plan to re-open on the 15 June. We look at the ways that galleries across the British capital have joined together to share information and plan for the future. Is this a new, kinder era for commercial galleries? Jo Stella-Sawicka from the Goodman Gallery offers her views. And in the latest in our series of Lonely Works behind the doors of closed museums, the artist Deborah Roberts explores Benny Andrews’s No More Games in the Museum of Modern Art, New York.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.