The Art Newspaper Weekly

This week: following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we talk to Svitlana Biedarieva, a Ukrainian art historian, artist and curator, about the community of artists in her home country, their work since the Maidan, or Revolution of Dignity in 2014, and how they are responding to the events of recent days. Also on Ukraine, Tom Seymour talks to the photographer Mark Neville, who has been based in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv for the past 18 months and left the city last week, about a photojournalistic series he made in Ukraine, about ethical approaches to reportage and about the effects of documenting war-torn countries. As a book is published featuring Chris Burden’s unrealised projects, we talk to Jori Finkel about the American performance and installation artist’s extraordinary imagination. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Jane Alison, curator of Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-65 at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, discusses one of the key works in the show: the Goa-born artist F.N. Souza’s Mr Seb

As an exhibition opens at the Whitechapel Gallery in London focusing on artists’ studios over the last century, we take an in-depth look at the subject. The artist, critic and activist William Powhida discusses the Artist Studio Affordability Project in New York and how developers and gentrification have forced artists’ communities to breaking point. We take a tour of the Whitechapel exhibition with the gallery’s director Iwona Blazwick, and explore works by Kerry James Marshall, Paul McCarthy, Laboratoire Agit’Art, Alina Szapocznikow, Tehching Hsieh and Egon Schiele, among others. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, the photographer Eamonn McCabe, who has made a series of photographs of artists in their studios, talks about his visit to Paula Rego’s space in Camden Town, London, in 2004. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week: The Collaboration, a new play dramatising the relationship between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat has opened at the Young Vic theatre in London. It looks at the period between 1983 and 1985 in which they worked together on a group of paintings, many of which were shown to critical derision and commercial failure at the Tony Shafrazi gallery in New York in 1985. Ben Luke talks to the playwright Anthony McCarten and the director Kwame Kwei-Armah about bringing these complex characters to life, and the issues, including race and class, that their relationship brings into focus. In today’s New York, a Faith Ringgold retrospective has opened at the New Museum; Ben talks to Massimiliano Gioni, the exhibition’s curator, about the astonishing breadth of the now 91-year-old artist’s work. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Helen Stoilas is at the Frieze Art Fair in Los Angeles, where she talks to Julie Roberts, the co-founder of the gallery Roberts Projects, about Betye Saar’s mural LA Energy—cre

As a show looking at Louise Bourgeois’s late-career obsession with textiles opens at the Hayward Gallery in London—ahead of other exhibitions of her work in Basel and New York—we look at the French-American artist’s fabric-related creations with Jerry Gorovoy, who worked with Bourgeois for 30 years and is now President of the foundation that manages her legacy. A host of contemporary art shows have just opened in Saudi Arabia. But does this, as some commentators have said, mark a new era in the country’s approach to culture, or is it “artwashing” the country’s record on human rights abuses? We ask The Art Newspaper’s chief contributing editor, Gareth Harris, who has travelled to the Middle Eastern country to find out. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Dietmar Elger, the curator of the Gerhard Richter Archive in Dresden, Germany, discusses Fels, a three-metre-tall abstract painting from 1989, which is at the heart of a new show curated by Richter at the Albertinum in the eastern German city. See acast.co

This week, we talk to Cecilia Alemani, the artistic director of the Venice Biennale for art, which opens in April, about her show, The Milk of Dreams. She discusses the story by the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington that gives the Biennale its title, the “time capsules” of historic art that punctuate the exhibition, the thematic structure, and the fact that it is the first Venice Biennale featuring a majority of women artists. For this episode’s Work of the Week, Martin Bailey visits the Courtauld Gallery, where 15 of Vincent van Gogh’s self-portrait paintings have been gathered for a once-in-a-generation show. He talks to the curator Karen Serres about Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889). And at the Belvedere in Vienna, a new exhibition explores the relationship between Salvador Dalí and Sigmund Freud—Ben Luke talks to Stephanie Auer from the museum about Dalí’s obsession with the father of psychoanalysis, his attempts to meet Freud in Vienna, and what happened when they finally encountered each other

This week, we visit the Royal Academy in London, where a new show looking at Francis Bacon’s use of animal imagery, Man and Beast, is about to open. The RA’s director, Axel Rüger sheds light on Bacon’s means of transposing the animal into the human figure. We talk to our editor-at-large, Georgina Adam, about The Man of Sorrows, the Botticelli painting sold at auction this week—and we find out if it went beyond its guaranteed sale price of $40m. We also talk about the big art market news of the week: that MCH Group, the owner of the Art Basel fairs, is to take over Fiac's slot at the Grand Palais in Paris to host a new contemporary art fair in October. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Aimee Dawson talks to Megan Merritt of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, about a pair of works in Seeing Gender, a new exhibition that explores the museum’s collection through the lens of gender for the first time: a contemporary piece on paper by the Chinese artist Wilson Shieh and a 20th-century carved sculpture by

This week, our contemporary art correspondent Louisa Buck visits the exhibition Testament at Goldsmiths CCA in London, where 47 artists have been invited to make proposals that ponder the idea of tearing down and erecting monuments and what it might mean to rethink them. Louisa talks to Sarah McCrory, the director of Goldsmiths CCA, and to Adham Faramawy, one of the artists in the show. In Rome, a villa with ceiling paintings by Caravaggio and Guercino with a price tag of €471m failed to attract any bids. The Art Newspaper’s founder Anna Somers Cocks, who’s based in Turin, tells us why. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, the artist Michael Armitage tells us about Sane Wadu’s painting Black Moses (1993), a work in Wadu’s retrospective at the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute in Kenya, co-founded by Armitage, which opened last week. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this first episode of 2022, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent Louisa Buck and the novelist and columnist at The Art Newspaper Chibundu Onuzo preview the year’s biennials, exhibitions and art fairs and our editor-at-large Georgina Adam has a stab at predicting the art market’s fortunes. Events discussed: Venice BiennaleDocumenta 15Biennale of SydneyBerlin Biennale Whitney Biennial 2022Carnegie InternationalDonatello: the RenaissanceSteve McQueenCharles Ray: Sculpture FictionWorlds of NetworksThe World of StonehengeTestamentHew Locke: Tate Britain Commission 2022Cornelia ParkerSurrealism Beyond BordersIn the Black FantasticAnthea HamiltonFaith Ringgold: American PeoplePhilip Guston: NowCézanne50 Monuments in 50 VoicesMatisse: The Red Studio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It’s the final episode of 2021 and so, as always, it’s our review of the year. Joining Ben Luke to look at 2021’s biggest stories are three members of The Art Newspaper team: Martin Bailey, a correspondent in London, Anna Brady, art market editor, and Jane Morris, editor-at-large. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week: the French decorative art that inspired Walt Disney, Henri Matisse’s collaboration over 40 years with the Baltimore art collector Etta Cone, and Josef Albers’s prints.The Art Newspaper’s deputy digital editor, Aimee Dawson speaks to Wolf Burchard, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts, which opens today, 10 December and travels next year to the Wallace Collection, London. As the Baltimore Museum of Art opens its new Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies, with around 2,500-square-feet of space dedicated to the research and display of the art of Henri Matisse, on 12 December, Ben Luke discusses the French artist’s special relationship with the Baltimore-based collector Etta Cone, which is the foundation of the museum’s huge collection of Matisse’s works in all media. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, the gallerist Alan Cristea talks about Josef Albers’s Graphic Tectonic lithographs, and their relationship to his wid

This week, as Art Basel in Miami Beach opens, we discuss a new book, The Art Fair Story: A Rollercoaster Ride, with its author Melanie Gerlis, art market columnist at the Financial Times and editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper. Melanie ponders the past, present and future of art fairs. A huge new show, Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now has just opened at Tate Britain in London, and we talk to its curators, Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain, and David A Bailey, the artistic director of the International Curators Forum and the organiser of numerous seminal exhibitions on diaspora and Black representation in art. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, we’re back in Miami—our deputy digital editor Aimee Dawson talks to the artist Marco Brambilla about Heaven’s Gate, his new virtual reality work at the Pérez Art Museum.The Art Fair Story: A Rollercoaster Ride by Melanie Gerlis is published by Lund Humphries and priced £19.99 in the UK, $34.99 in the US and $46.99 in Canada.Life B

This week, we look at the case of the art dealer Inigo Philbrick, who pleaded guilty to fraud in a New York court last week: is the art world, as his attorney claimed, “corrupt from top to bottom”? Georgina Adam, editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper gives her response. For this epsiode’s Work of the Week, we talk to Carmen Hermo, the curator of the exhibition Andy Warhol: Revelation at the Brooklyn Museum, about a painting in the show, New York Post (Judge Blasts Lynch) (1983), and what it tells us about Warhol’s Catholicism. And as GES-2 House of Culture, the V-A-C Foundation’s huge cultural centre in a former power station transformed by architect Renzo Piano, opens in Moscow next week, and the Garage Museum in the Russian capital announces its expansion into a landmark Modernist building in Gorky Park, we talk to Anna Bronovitsksya, architectural historian and professor at the Moscow Architecture School about these museums and the wider political situation in which they are being constructed. See acast.com

This week, record-breaking auction sales in New York—are we in a new boom? Anna Brady discusses the big lots in New York over the last two weeks, and what they tell us about the market and the world of collectors. In London, Aimee Dawson visits the Victoria and Albert Museum to hear about Carl Fabergé’s shop in London, the subject of a new exhibition, with the show’s co-curators Kieran McCarthy and Hanne Faurby. And for this episode’s Work of the Week, Martin Bailey, our London correspondent, goes to the Agnews gallery to talk to Clifford Schorer of Agnews and Giulia Bartrum, former prints and drawings curator at the British Museum, about Albrecht Dürer’s rediscovered drawing Virgin and Child with a Flower on a Grassy Bench, which is about to go on view at Agnews gallery in London as part of an exhibition, Dürer and His Time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In Hong Kong, the long-awaited M+ Museum opens this week, amid accusations of censorship by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Ilaria Maria Sala joins us to tell us about her visit to the museum. The Courtauld Gallery, one of London’s great collections, is re-opening after a three-year renovation, and we take a tour of the gallery with its director Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen. And in this week’s Work of the Week, Christine Y Kim tells us about Samella Lewis’s Bag Man, a key work in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s exhibition Black American Portraits. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week, as talks continue at Cop26, the UN’s climate charge conference in Glasgow, we talk to Lucia Pietroiusti of the Serpentine Galleries about climate justice and how the art world can go beyond sustainability to "thriveability". As the spectacular Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen opens to the public, we talk to Sjarel Ex, the museum's director, and Sandra Kisters, its head of collections and research, about the building they’re calling the world's first publicly accessible art storage facility. And, for this episode's Work of the Week, we discuss Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing as it goes back on display at the Wallace Collection in London after conservation treatment. Yuriko Jackall, the Curator of French Paintings at the Wallace Collection, and Martin Wyld, the conservator, tell us about the French Rococo artist’s most famous painting.Related climate crisis discussions on The Week in Art:The Gallery Climate CoalitionVenice's climate emergencyFossil-fuel sponsors and activism at the Science Museum in Lo

This week, Aimee Dawson, deputy digital editor at The Art Newspaper, is in Giza in Egypt for Forever is Now, where works by Egyptian and international artists are shown along a trail around the Giza plateau, among the pyramids (until 7 November). She talks to its curator, Nadine Abdel Ghaffar, as well as two of the artists involved, Gisela Colón and Lita Albuquerque. The New Museum in New York’s latest triennial exhibition, this time called Soft Water Hard Stone, has just opened (until 23 January 2022), featuring 40 artists from across the world. Ben Luke talks to Margot Norton and Jamillah James, the two curators behind the show, about planning a major triennial during a pandemic. In this episode’s Work of the Week, Dorothee Hansen, a curator at the Kunsthalle Bremen in Germany, discusses Édouard Manet’s remarkable depiction of the poet, critic and artist Zacharie Astruc, who was a central figure in Manet's milieu yet has been rather forgotten. The painting is the centrepiece of Manet and Astruc: Friendship

This week, Paris’s resurgence: is the French capital stealing London’s thunder? As established and up-and-coming galleries open branches in Paris and the Fiac art fair opens there, we ask Melanie Gerlis if this is indeed a shift of power from the UK to the French capital. For this episode’s Work of the Week, Donatien Grau, curator of contemporary programmes at the Musée d’Orsay discusses Lady of Uruk, a painting from one of the two shows of the work of the South African artist Marlene Dumas that have just opened at the museum. And as the Château de Versailles, and the Louvre and the Centre Pompidou in Paris all pay tribute to Christian Boltanski, who died in July, Annalisa Rimmaudo, curator at the Pompidou, discusses the three displays and remembers this leading figure in French art over the past 50 years. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week, as the Frieze art fairs open and the international art world descends on London, we talk about Mark Rothko’s late paintings, now on view at Pace’s new space in the British capital, with his son Christopher. He also reflects on Rothko’s Seagram Mural paintings, which are now back at Tate Britain, close to JMW Turner’s works, as Rothko had hoped when he gave them to the Tate. Louisa Buck talks to Heath Lowndes, managing director of the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC), a charity founded by galleries across the world in response to the climate emergency—the GCC has a booth at the Frieze London fair. And, for this episode’s Work of the Week, Ben Luke visits Poussin and the Dance, a show at the National Gallery in London that travels to the Getty Center in Los Angeles next year. There, Francesca Whitlum-Cooper, the show’s curator, tells us about Poussin’s obsession with the Borghese Dancers, an ancient Roman bas-relief now in the Louvre, and how the French artist responded to it in his painting. See acas

This week: Jasper Johns. Carlos Basualdo of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Scott Rothkopf of the Whitney Museum of American Art talk to Ben Luke about their simultaneous shows of the 91-year-old artist, and taking a radical approach to a retrospective of a radical artist. Also this week: Venice’s tourist problem. Are Venetian authorities subjecting tourists in Venice to unprecedented surveillance? We talk to Anna Somers Cocks, founder of The Art Newspaper and former chair of Venice in Peril. And in our Work of the Week, Aimee Dawson asks Marja Sakari, director of the Ateneum in Helsinki, about the Finnish artist Outi Heiskanen's Dream Play: Fleeting Virginity (1984), a key work in her retrospective at the Ateneum. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week: is the burgeoning phenomenon of private museums, founded by billionaires and corporations, undermining our public cultural institutions? We talk to Georgina Adam about her new book, The Rise and Rise of the Private Art Museum. Also, Nancy Kenney explores a huge new museum that has just opened in Los Angeles, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, and hears from its curators Doris Berger and Ana Santiago, who have sought to question and expand the traditional Hollywood narrative by highlighting some painful film industry stories—including systemic racism—and incorporating an international array of creators, including the Studio Ghibli lynchpin, Hayao Miyazaki. And in this week’s Work of the Week, as the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam opens Remember Me, an extraordinary exhibition of Renaissance portraits, Matthias Ubl, the show’s curator discusses one of the many highlights: Piero di Cosimo’s portraits of the architect Giuliano da Sangallo and his father Francesco Giamberti, made around 1482–85. See acas