The Art Newspaper Weekly

While we're on our summer break, we're looking back over the 200 interviews we've done for the podcast and putting together highlights in a weekly themed episode. First up are two conversations about Van Gogh, from September 2018 and earlier this year, with Martin Bailey of The Art Newspaper and Martin Gayford, critic and writer of books on Michelangelo, Freud and Hockney, among others. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We speak to the leading Ghanaian artist as he unveils a major new commission about the forgotten history of his homeland, on show at the Whitworth as part of the Manchester International Festival. Plus, we find out about the Picasso blockbuster at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We hear about how a painting of Cupid in one of Vermeer's greatest masterpieces, in Dresden, was long thought to have overpainted by the master himself, but was in fact covered by a later artist. It's now in the process of being revealed, as Vermeer intended. We also learn about the Prado's show where Vermeer appears alongside Velázquez and Rembrandt, among many others. And we talk to Helen Cammock about her Whitechapel show and her nomination for this year's Turner Prize. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The great American sculptor's work comes to Yorkshire Sculpture Park as part of the Yorkshire Sculpture International festival, and we talk to Clare Lilley, the park's director, and to Smith's daughters Rebecca and Candida. And Jori Finkel tells us about her new book, in which she has interviewed 50 artists about works of art in their home-town museums that inspired them. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As his show opens at the Kunstmuseum Basel to coincide with the Art Basel fair, we talk to the South African artist about his latest works, his complex methods and his extraordinary family history. We also look at the 50th edition of the fair with Melanie Gerlis, an editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We talk to two artists of different generations as they open new London shows. Howardena Pindell discusses the use of the circle in her abstract paintings, its origins in segregation in the US and the resistance to her art that she encountered among her peers. And Oscar Murillo reflects on his journey from rural Colombia to the UK, its effect on his multifarious art and why it's only now that he's doing a pure painting show for the first time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We talk to Michael Shnayerson about his book Boom, following the big art dealers from the 1940s to now. Plus, we speak to Nancy Spector, the organiser of Guggenheim in New York’s Artistic Licence: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection, and Paul Chan, one of the six artist-curators invited to mine the museum’s collection. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We talk to Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere of the British Museum about Manga, the museum's huge new show exploring the Japanese cultural phenomenon. And we explore the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Camp: Notes on Fashion with Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As a Mark Rothko painting is sold by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, we talk to Christopher Bedford from the Baltimore Museum of Art about deaccessioning works by white male artists in order to diversify museum collections. And we speak to Marz Saffore, an organiser for Decolonize This Place, and Adam Weinberg, the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, about the protests that have greeted this year’s Whitney Biennial. They relate to Safariland, a company owned by the museum’s vice-chairman Warren Kanders, which manufactures tear gas canisters and other military products that have been used against asylum seekers along the US-Mexico border. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ben Luke and Jane Morris review the main exhibition and we speak to the artists Laure Prouvost and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster about their works in the show. Plus, we talk about climate change and the challenges Venice is facing as the surrounding waters rise. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The artistic director of this year's main show at the Biennale tells us how he is creating two playful but serious shows in one, each featuring the same 79 artists. We then talk to Venet, the veteran French artist, about his work and his own collection, and ask the director of the Berlin Gallery Weekend if criticism of its gender imbalance is fair. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We talk to Ben Lewis about his book The Last Leonardo, the story of the world’s most expensive painting. And Martin Bailey tells us about his latest book Living with Vincent Van Gogh, exploring the Dutch master’s search for a home. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We talk to Jonathan Foyle about the effects of the fire at Notre Dame, the building’s history, including moments of neglect, and what happens next. And as a book of his photomontages is published, we speak to Christopher Spencer, the man behind the Cold War Steve about his extraordinary journey from a cult Twitter collagist to Britain’s favourite satirical artist. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We talk to Giulia Bartram at the British Museum about her exhibition of Munch’s prints, Love and Angst. And we look at the new shapeshifting cultural centre in New York, The Shed. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We examine the growing unease amongst British museums to accept money from Sackler family members involved in the sale of the opioid painkiller OxyContin, and look at 2018's most visited shows and museums with Met director Max Hollein See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We talk to Marc Spiegler, global director of Art Basel, about the latest fair in Hong Kong, the Asian market and supporting smaller galleries. We look at Bonhams’s show in Hong Kong of Richard Lin’s work – Lin achieved great fame in the West in the 1960s, but later was largely forgotten, especially in the West; only now is he being rediscovered. Finally, we talk to the curators of The World Between Empires at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, focusing on the period between the first century B.C.E and the third century A.D., when the Middle East was the meeting point between two powerful empires, the Parthian and the Roman. We also discuss the troubled recent history of the region and its heritage. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We meet David Bailey at his London studio to discuss his new book: the latest SUMO from Taschen. And we remember the Picasso biographer John Richardson, who died aged 95 last week, with Gijs van Hensbergen, who worked with Richardson on the as-yet-unpublished fourth volume of his magisterial A Life of Picasso. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As George Michael's collection of contemporary art, dominated by Young British Artists, goes under the hammer in London, we speak to Paola Saracino Fendi from Christie's about the collection and then report on the sale immediately after the final fall of the gavel. What does it tell us about the YBA market and the pull of celebrity auctions?Plus, we speak to the artist Shezad Dawood about Encroachments, his new installation for the Sharjah Biennial, featuring a virtual reality work. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We pay tribute to the pioneering painter, performance artist and film-maker, ask what on earth is going on with the New York fairs this week, and discuss what it’s like to curate a Venice Biennale national presentation with the curators of the British pavilion, Scotland + Venice and Wales in Venice. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As numerous exhibitions open marking the 350th anniversary of the Old Master's death, we speak to Taco Dibbits, the director of the Rijksmuseum about the museum's blockbuster shows and its imminent public restoration of The Night Watch. We also look closely at a masterpiece in the Dulwich Picture Gallery and at his prints and drawings in the British Museum. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.