The Art Newspaper Weekly

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

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

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

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