The Art Newspaper Weekly

This week: the Art Basel fair has opened in Switzerland, but are the collectors back and are they buying? We talk to Jane Morris, an editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper, about the art on show and whether the galleries’ jitters ahead of the fair have proved founded. Also, we hear from the classicist Mary Beard about her new book, Twelve Caesars, looking at representations of power across 2,000 years of art history, from Roman coins and busts, to 18th-century fakes, lost Titian masterpieces and Tudor tapestries. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, we focus on Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped—the last ever wrapping project by the late duo. Vladimir Yavachev, Christo’s nephew, who has overseen the final stages of the project in Paris, describes the technical challenges of cloaking one of Paris’s most famous monuments. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week: as a tribunal in London hears of human rights atrocities against the Uyghur community and other Muslim groups in China, how will museums, galleries and other cultural institutions working with government-supported institutions in China respond? We talk to The Art Newspaper’s editor-at-large Cristina Ruiz, who has heard many hours of disturbing evidence at the tribunal, and to Sir Geoffrey Nice, the tribunal’s chair.Also, this week, Martin Bailey tells us about his latest book, Van Gogh's Finale, looking at his final months, his death and his legacy. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, we talk to Kenneth Tyler, the master-printmaker who has collaborated on some of the great prints of the post-war era, about his collaboration on a group of six woodcuts by Helen Frankenthaler, The Tales of Genji (1998), now on view in an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As a huge survey of contemporary painting opens at the Hayward Gallery in London, we ask: is the time-honoured medium of painting the art form best suited to exploring the complexity of our age?We look at the thriving and diverse contemporary painting scene in the UK and explore the Hayward director Ralph Rugoff’s suggestion that this ancient medium “seems like the best technology there could possibly be for reflecting on what it's like to live in a culture where image is the primary currency it is”. We talk to two emerging artists in that show: Baghdad-born Mohammed Sami and Beijing-born Vivien Zhang, who are both based in London. We meet Doron Langberg, the Brooklyn-based painter, and discuss his latest work reflecting on queer desire and identity and landscape as a space of mourning. And we ask art advisor Lisa Schiff, founder of SFA advisory, about paintings and collectors. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, we explore a newly restored canvas by one of the greatest of all painters, Johannes

We're back with a new season of The Week in Art, which takes us right up to the holidays.In this episode, we reflect on events in Afghanistan in recent weeks. We hear from an anthropologist and an Afghan artist about the country's people, art and heritage as the Taliban assume power again. Melissa Chiovenda, an assistant professor of anthropology at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, discusses the sixth-century Bamiyan Buddhas that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 in the context of the Hazara people that live in Bamiyan city and province, and reflects on what the return to power of the Taliban means for that community. The artist Yama Rahimi addresses the implications for artists in Afghanistan and reflects on the contemporary art scene there over recent years. He also talks about the situation facing those people, including artists, that are able to leave Afghanistan and seek asylum in the West—a situation whose complexities he is familiar with as an asylum-seeker living in Germany.We also hear about a work

It's an all-woman line-up on this week's podcast. Nancy Kenney speaks to Andrea Nelson, the curator of The New Woman Behind the Camera, an exhibition opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and touring later to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Aimee Dawson talks to Camille Morineau, a former Centre Pompidou curator, about the Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions (Aware), an organisation she founded in order to rewrite art history from a more gender-equal perspective. And in this week’s Work of the Week, Helen Stoilas interviews Orin Zahra, a curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, about a group of photographs in the series SHE (2019) by Rania Matar. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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 co

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 Ve

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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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:

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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for

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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.