The Art Newspaper Weekly

Two museum openings feature on this week’s podcast—V&A East in London and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.In our 300th episode in 2024, Gus Casely Hayford, the director of the V&A East, told us about the community-driven programming at the museum and its connection with its local environment in East London. Now, as the museum opens, he takes Ben Luke on a tour of its commissions, displays and its first exhibition, The Music is Black: A British Story. In California, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) has just opened its new building by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, which cost more than $700m, and has generated some controversy. Ben speaks to our correspondent in Los Angeles, Jori Finkel, about the new building and the debate about its scale, its cost, its suitability for LA and whether Angelinos and tourists will take to Zumthor’s building. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils (around 1826) by the great 18th-century artist and poet, William Blake.

Three artists who in different ways connect to the Surrealist movement are the subject of this week’s podcast. At the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first major US survey of the full career of Marcel Duchamp since 1973 opens this weekend, before travelling later in the year to Philadelphia. Ben Luke talks to its curators at MoMA, Ann Temkin and Michelle Kuo. A new book, Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World, exploring the extraordinary life and work of the Surrealist artist, is published this week by Yale University Press and Ben speaks to its author, Alyce Mahon. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Down Below (1940), a painting by another of the great women artists of Surrealism, the British Mexican painter Leonora Carrington. It was made while she was hospitalised in Santander in Spain in the early stages of the Second World War, before her pivotal journey to Latin America. The picture is part of an exhibition at the Freud Museum in London, The Symptomatic Surreal, which also features drawings from

The UK government last week issued a response to a report ostensibly exploring the future of the funding body Arts Council England but containing an idea that has prompted much debate: that the government should consider changing its policy of free admission for all to national museums in England, and charge tourists an entry fee. Ben Luke discusses the report and the charging issue with Gareth Harris, The Art Newspaper’s chief contributing editor, and one of our London-based correspondents, Dale Berning Sawa. Last weekend in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened Raphael: Sublime Poetry, amazingly the first full career survey of the Italian Renaissance master in the United States. Seven years in the making, it explores Raphael’s remarkable output across his short life, from his earliest years in his native Urbino to his work for two Popes in Rome, where he died aged just 37 in 1520. We talk to the show’s curator, Carmen Bambach. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Senga Nengudi’s Performance

The Grand Palais in Paris this week unveiled an enormous exhibition focusing on the final 13 years of Henri Matisse’s life and work, a project conceived by the Centre Pompidou. The show includes abundant examples of the celebrated gouache cut-outs, his works for the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, and his final paintings, drawings, and illustrated books, among much else. Ben Luke interviews the exhibition’s curator, the Centre Pompidou’s Claudine Grammont, in Paris. The latest edition of Art Basel Hong Kong opened this week amid much uncertainty about the Hong Kong art world after a prolonged downturn in the Chinese economy. Yet, some commentators are suggesting that Hong Kong has turned a corner. The Art Newspaper’s chief contributing editor, Gareth Harris, has been in Hong Kong this week and tells us what he discovered. And for this episode’s Work of the Week, we focus on a related painting and dress. The painting is Salvador Dalí’s Necrophiliac Spring (1936), which was owned by the fashion designer Elsa Sch

The New Museum in New York opens its new extension, designed by Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas of the architectural practice OMA, this week. Ben Luke talks to Massimiliano Gioni, the New Museum’s artistic director, and the co-curator of the inaugural exhibition in the new building, called New Humans: Memories of the Future. We then speak to one of The Art Newspaper’s editors-at-large, Georgina Adam, who has just published a new book NextGen Collectors and the Art Market. And this episode’s Work of the Week is an example of a Wardian Case, a wooden box with a glass cover developed by the physician Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward in the early 1830s. This example is part of the exhibition In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World, at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Ben speaks to Shailendra Bhandare, co-curator of the exhibition.The New Museum and New Humans: Memories of the Future open on 21 March.NextGen Collectors and the Art Market, by Georgina Adam, Lund Humphries, £19.99In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World, Ashmo

As the war in the Middle East continues to rage, Ben Luke speaks to The Art Newspaper’s reporter on Iran and other countries in the region, Sarvy Geranpayeh, about the response of cultural communities in Iran and Lebanon, and the damage to heritage in both countries. The latest edition of the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report has been published and shows that the market has returned to growth. But the details show a more complicated story, which Ben explores with the writer of the report, Clare McAndrew. And this episode’s Work of the Week is VOLUME (III – White Bay Power Station, Australia) a new work by the Indigenous American artist Cannupa Hanska Luger. This sculpture and sound installation featuring seven ceramic dingo skulls is part of the latest edition of the Sydney Biennale in Australia, and has gained an unintended topicality due to a recent tragedy involving the death of a backpacker in Queensland. Ben speaks to our reporter in Australia, Elizabeth Fortescue, about the work and the wider c

As the war against Iran instigated last week by Israel and the United States continues to spread through the Middle East, we explore how it affects tourism in the Arabian Gulf, of which art and culture more generally have been a cornerstone. One of The Art Newspaper’s Middle East correspondents, Melissa Gronlund, joins Ben Luke to discuss the latest news. The 82nd biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York opens this weekend and our editor-in-chief in the Americas, Ben Sutton, and Elena Goukassian, our senior editor of museums and heritage, tell us what they thought of it. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the Vision of Zacharias in the Temple (1633) by Rembrandt. Researchers at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam have demonstrated that the painting, which had previously been documented as a copy of a lost original, is in fact an authentic work by the Dutch master. We speak to Jonathan Bikker, curator of 17th-century Dutch paintings, who was part of the team that secured the attribution to Rembr

Following the tragic death of Koyo Kouoh last May, the details of her final project—In Minor Keys, the international exhibition of the 2026 Venice Biennale—were unveiled this week by the collaborative team that will carry through her vision for the show. Ben Luke speaks to The Art Newspaper’s editor-at-large Jane Morris, about the show’s themes and strands and the artist list. The Barbican Art Gallery in London has opened a new exhibition of the work of the Colombian artist Beatriz González, who died in January, aged 93. Ben takes a tour of the show with its curator, Lotte Johnson. And this episode’s Work of the Week features in another major new London show: Tracey Emin: A Second Life, at Tate Modern. Our digital editor, Alexander Morrison, speaks to the outgoing director of Tate, Maria Balshaw, who has curated the Emin exhibition, about The Last of the Gold (2002), an embroidered blanket that has never been shown publicly until now.The Venice Biennale, 9 May-22 November.Beatriz González, Barbican Art Galler

After opening a major building project in May last year and announcing the details of another in September, which is due to open in the early 2030s, the National Gallery in London has revealed, quite unexpectedly, that it has to make serious cuts, including to its staff, in the face of a deficit that could rise to £8.2m in the coming year. Martin Bailey, The Art Newspaper’s special correspondent in London, tells us more. In The Hague in the Netherlands, the Mauritshuis has just opened a new exhibition called BIRDS – Curated by The Goldfinch & Simon Schama. Since The Goldfinch, the 17th-century painting by Carel Fabritius, is not able to speak, Schama tells Ben Luke about the show, including Fabritius’ remarkable picture. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Sunbeams or Sunlight. Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams, Strandgade 30 (1900) by the Danisj painter Vilhelm Hammershøi. The picture is one of the many highlights of a new exhibition, Hammershøi: The Eye that Listens, at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bo

On 4 July 2026 the US will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s founding document. But huge divisions in US society and culture are symbolised in a number of disputes relating to its history and the representation of its people. The latest furore came this week, when it emerged that the Trump administration had removed the rainbow Pride flag from the Stonewall Monument, the landmark for LGBTQ+ rights in New York. Ben Luke speaks to Ben Sutton, The Art Newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Americas, about this and other flashpoints as the US grapples with its history, and we explore the cultural initiatives that are marking the semiquincentennial. One of London’s best known and longest-established art dealers, Stephen Friedman, has announced the closure of his London gallery, following that of his New York space last year. Ben speaks to our contributing art market editor, Anny Shaw, about the fallout from the closure and the significance for the wider London art market. And this e

The first Art Basel Qatar art fair is now open in Qatar’s capital, Doha, and The Art Newspaper’s art market editor, Kabir Jhala, joins Ben Luke to discuss its impact, as well as reflecting on the wider artistic outlook in Qatar and the Middle East. The author of a new catalogue raisonné of the work of Albrecht Dürer argues that a painting of the artist’s father in the National Gallery in London, long thought to be a copy after Dürer’s original, is in fact an autograph work. Our special correspondent in London, Martin Bailey, tells us about the arguments for and against its authenticity. And this episode’s Work of the Week is actually a pair of works. That is because there is a compelling double header opening at the Albertinum in Dresden this weekend, the exhibition Paula Modersohn-Becker and Edvard Munch: The Big Questions of Life. The exhibition’s co-curator Andreas Dehmer discusses Selbstbildnis mit Hand am Kinn or Self-Portrait with Hand on Chin (1906) by Modersohn-Becker and Vampir or Vampire (1895) by M

The South African culture minister, the right-wing populist Gayton McKenzie, is attempting to cancel the project for South Africa’s pavilion at the forthcoming Venice Biennale, proposed by the artist Gabrielle Goliath and curator Ingrid Masondo. Goliath and Masondo have appealed to the country’s president and submitted a case to its high court to overturn McKenzie’s decision. Ben Luke speaks to Charles Leonard, who has been reporting on this story for The Art Newspaper over the past few weeks. The art dealer Marian Goodman, who founded her gallery on New York’s 57th Street in 1977 and represented many of the world’s leading artists over recent decades, has died aged 97. Ben talks to one of The Art Newspaper’s New York writers, Linda Yablonsky, about this titan of the New York art world. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Card Players, made between 1893 and 1896 by Paul Cezanne. The painting is in a major new exhibition of the French artist’s late works at the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, Switzerland.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. this week opens Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art, a new exhibition focusing on LGBTQ+ artists from across Africa and its diaspora. Ben Luke talks to its co-curator, Kevin Dumouchelle, about the exhibition and forthcoming book. We explore the cultural effects of the protests in Iran that began at the end of last year, and the brutal crackdown that followed, with Sarvy Garenpayeh, one of The Art Newspaper’s reporters on the Middle East. Sarvy has attempted to contact art workers after the Iranian government cut off the internet two weeks ago. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Louise Nevelson’s Moon Garden Plus One (1958), a landmark installation first staged in New York that is being reprised, at least in part, in a new survey of the American sculptor’s work at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in Metz, France. We speak to the curator of the exhibition, Anne Horvath.Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art, National Museum of African Art,

As the British Museum opens Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans, Ben Luke takes a tour of the exhibition with the museum’s head of Oceania, Alice Christophe. We also hear about the museum’s fresh approach to the stewardship of its collection of Hawaiian objects and materials. In Venice, one of the most famous palazzi on the Grand Canal, the Ca’ Dario, is up for sale and we discuss the building, its history and its supposed curse with the founder of The Art Newspaper and former chair of the Venice in Peril charity, Anna Somers Cocks. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Bathtub (1961-87), a late work made by Joseph Beuys, cast in bronze after his death in 1986. It is at the centre of a new show of Beuys’s work at the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in London, and I speak to Thaddaeus Ropac about the sculpture and its long journey to completion.Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans, British Museum, London, until 25 May 2026.Joseph Beuys: Bathtub for a Heroine, Thaddaeus Ropac, London, until 21 March. Hosted on Acast

It is the first episode of 2026. So we look ahead at the next 12 months with a guide to big museum openings, biennials and exhibitions. Ben Luke is joined by Jane Morris, editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper and Cultureshock, and Gareth Harris, chief contributing editor at The Art Newspaper, to discuss the key art fairs, major museum building projects and the top biennials of the year, and we pick our exhibition highlights.All of the events discussed and many more are featured in The Art Newspaper’s guidebook The Year Ahead 2026, an authoritative look at the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events. Visit theartnewspapershop.com. £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency.Events discussed:ART FAIRS: Art Basel Qatar, Doha, Qatar, 5-7 Feb; Frieze Abu Dhabi, 17-22 Nov; MUSEUM OPENINGS: Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, date tbc; V&A East, opens 18 Apr; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma), opens Apr; Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, opens 22 Sep; Dataland, Los Angeles, opens sp

As always, the final episode of The Week in Art of the year is a review of the past 12 months. To look at the top stories, the big issues and the best art in 2025, host Ben Luke is joined by The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, Louisa Buck, our art market editor, Kabir Jhala, and Ben Sutton, our editor-in-chief, Americas. We reflect on subjects from the Los Angeles wildfires in January, via President Trump’s raft of policies in relation to culture and heritage, to the crisis at the Louvre, the National Gallery in London’s expansion plans and their potential effect on the gallery’s relationship with Tate, and the fortunes of the art market, including the flight to the Middle East for art fairs and auction houses. Plus, the guests select their exhibitions and works of the year, including those by Kerry James Marshall, Helen Chadwick, Coco Fusco, Jack Whitten, Henri Matisse and Hamad Butt. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Frank Gehry, the architect behind the Guggenheim Bilbao, Geffen Contemporary at MoCA, Los Angeles, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, among other museums and art spaces, died last Friday at his home in Santa Monica, California. He was 96. Ben Luke discusses his long engagement with art, artists and museums with Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic and Gehry’s biographer. Serpentine and the US-based FLAG Art Foundation last week announced the creation of a prize for artists that will see £1 million being awarded over 10 years to five artists, so £200,000 to each recipient—the largest contemporary art prize in the UK given to a single artist. Ben speaks to Glenn Fuhrman, founder of The FLAG Art Foundation, and Jonathan Rider, its director, about the prize. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Sunlight (1978) by Joan Semmel. The painting features in a new exhibition opening at the Jewish Museum in New York this week, and we speak to the show’s curator, Rebecca Shaykin.Paul Goldberger is the author o

The Art Newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Americas, Ben Sutton, and art market editor, Kabir Jhala, are in Miami Beach for Art Basel’s latest edition and discuss the top sales and the wider mood at the fair. As staff at the Musée du Louvre in Paris vote to strike, Ben Luke talks to Vincent Noce, our correspondent in Paris, about the deepening crisis at the museum, following the robbery in October. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Helene Scherfbeck’s The Tapestry (1914-16). It features in a new exhibition of the Finnish artist’s work opening this week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. We talk to the curator of the exhibition, Dita Amory, about the painting.Art Basel Miami Beach, 5-7 December 2025.Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 5 December-5 April 2026 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After a delayed application process and an aborted initial commission, the US has at last appointed its artist for next year’s Venice Biennale: the Utah-born, Mexico-based artist Alma Allen. The Art Newspaper’s editor-in-chief in the Americas, Ben Sutton, talks Ben Luke through this confusing saga. At the National Museum of Norway in Oslo a new exhibition, Deviant Ornaments, focuses on the expression and representation of queerness in Islamic art over more than a millennium. Ben talks to the curator of the exhibition Noor Bhangu. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the Cree artist Duane Linklater’s wintercount_215_kisepîsim (2022), a piece using recycled canvas from teepees, and referencing the deaths of First Nations children after they were separated from their families in the Residential School system in Canada. It’s part of an exhibition called Winter Count: Embracing the Cold, at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and we talk to two of the four curators of that show, Wahsontiio Cross and Jocely

Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16) sold for the second highest price ever realised at auction at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday. It was the most notable of several big sales in the sold-out (or “white-glove”) auction of 24 works from the collection of the late billionaire Leonard Lauder, and has prompted some commentators to declare that the art market has turned a corner following a prolonged downturn. Ben Luke speaks to The Art Newspaper’s senior art market editor in the Americas, Carlie Porterfield, about this week’s auctions, and asks if they do mark a turning point in the art market’s fortunes. Cop 30, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, is taking place in Belém, Brazil, and ends on Friday. To coincide with the conference, the Gallery Climate Coalition is publishing a Stocktake Report, in which it gives hard data on the efforts of its members to reduce their carbon emissions. The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent in London, Louisa Buck, who is a co-founder of