The Week in Art

This last episode of the current season begins with Frida Kahlo. Tate Modern in London this week opened Frida: The Making of an Icon, an exhibition that began at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston earlier this year and which explores the Mexican artist’s paintings but also her influence on other artists and wider cultural forms. Ben Luke speaks to Tobias Ostrander, the co-curator of the exhibition...

Kabir Jhala, The Art Newspaper’s art market editor, joins Ben Luke to discuss this year’s Art Basel, the big sales and the wider mood music. Pierre Huyghe has an exhibition at the Beyeler Foundation in Riehen, just outside Basel, and Ben speaks to him about it. And this episode’s Work of the Week is As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace by the US artist James Turrell, which opens this week at ARoS,...

The exhibition Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica began its life at the Art Institute of Chicago before travelling to Museu d’art contemporani de Barcelona (Macba) in Barcelona and now to the Barbican in London, in each case changing in relation to the particular circumstances of its location. One of the show’s curators is Elvira Dyangani Ose, the director of the Barcelona mu...

After years of civil war and continuity violence, Yemen’s heritage has suffered hugely, with buildings damaged across the country and antiquities looted. Yet across the country, there is a determination to protect and restore its historical landmarks and cultures. Ben Luke speaks to Melissa Gronlund, one of The Art Newspaper’s reporters on the Middle East, about these efforts. At the National Gall...

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. has faced unprecedented scrutiny and government interference since President Trump came to power. Now, its long cherished plans for a Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum on the National Mall in D.C. have been dealt a blow because the US House of Representatives has struck down a bill to build the museum. Ben Luke talks to Elena Goukassian, Th...

This season’s much anticipated auctions in New York have brought some records and eye-popping prices, including for works by Jackson Pollock, Constantin Brancusi and Mark Rothko, and some more middling results. Ben Luke talks to Judd Tully, who has been reporting on some of the sales for The Art Newspaper. The largest show of the art of James McNeill Whistler in Europe for more than 30 years has j...

The latest edition of Frieze New York is open now and we hear all about this year’s fair from The Art Newspaper’s editor-in-chief in the Americas, Ben Sutton, and our art market editor, Kabir Jhala. Cupid Complaining to Venus (1526-27), a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the National Gallery in London has long been known to have a complicated provenance and was once in the possession of Adol...

It’s Venice Biennale opening week and so, as ever, this episode is our Venice special. The Biennale comprises many aspects: an international exhibition that this year features more than 100 artists in the Central Pavilion in the Giardini—Venice’s easternmost gardens—and the Arsenale, the historic Venetian shipyards, as well as national pavilions and, across the city, countless official collateral...

The largest career survey of the great 17th-century Spanish master Francisco de Zurbarán since the 1980s opens this weekend at the National Gallery in London. It presents a more rounded perspective on an artist best known for his austere paintings of saints and other religious subjects. Ben Luke takes a tour of the show with its co-curator, Francesca Whitlum-Cooper. The latest edition of the Carne...

This Sunday, 26 April, marks the 40th anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Soviet Ukraine. It is the most serious disaster ever to occur in the nuclear power industry, with widespread effects then and now. An exhibition at the Nikolaikirche in Potsdam, Germany, called The Chernobyl disaster: 40 years ago and yet still relevant, continues until Monday 27 April, and Ben Lu...

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, dis...

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...

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 Ha...

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 exh...

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...

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 gr...

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...

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 Gal...

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 i...

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 Stonewal...

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, l...

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 Ch...

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...

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 buildi...

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...