The Week in Art

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, The Art Newspaper’s senior editor of museums and heritage in New York, about the partisan rift that led to failure of the bill, as well as other developments relating to the Smithsonian. As part of London Gallery Weekend, which begins on 5 June, the British artist Oliver Beer will show new paintings and related sound and video works in an exhibition, The Sky in the Cave, at Thaddaeus Ropac. The show relates to Beer’s opus Resonance Project: The Cave, in which he brought eight singers into a prehistoric painted cave in the Dordogne in France to respond to its particular acoustic frequencies. Among them was the singer songwriter Rufus Wainwright, and Ben speaks to Oliver and Rufus about their collaboration. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Painting with Two Balls by Jasper Johns. It is part of a new retrospective of the American artist’s work at the Guggenheim Bilbao, Night Driver. Ben talks to the exhibition’s curator, Enrique Juncosa.

Oliver Beer: The Sky in the Cave, Thaddaeus Ropac, London, 5 June—31 July. Oliver and Rufus will be in conversation at the gallery on Friday 5 June, 12.00;
Visit rufuswainwright.com
Jasper Johns: Night Driver, Guggenheim Bilbao, 29 May-12 October.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 just opened at Tate Britain in London, and travels later in the year to the Netherlands, where it forms two shows, at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and The Mesdag Collection in The Hague. Ben takes a tour of the Tate show with its lead curator Carol Jacobi. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the frieze made by Edvard Munch in 1922 for the women’s canteen of the Freia Chocolate Factory in Oslo. The frieze remains in the collection of the Freia chocolate company today, but is on temporary loan to MUNCH, the museum in the Norwegian capital for the exhibition Edvard Munch and the Chocolate Factory. Our digital editor, Alexander Morrison, went to Oslo to speak to the curator of the exhibition, Ana María Bresciani, about the frieze.

James McNeill Whistler, Tate Britain, London, until 27 September 2026; before splitting into two parallel presentations in the Netherlands, Whistler: Dandy and Disruptor, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Whistler: Loving The Netherlands, The Mesdag Collection, The Hague, both 16 October-10 January 2027.

Edvard Munch and the Chocolate Factory, MUNCH, Oslo, until 11 October.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Adolf Hitler. In The Art Newspaper’s May print edition, a photograph of the work in Hitler’s Munich apartment is reproduced for the first time in an English-language publication. Ben Luke talks to Martin Bailey, our special correspondent in London, who has been following this story since the 1990s, about the latest news. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the Glamour Posse series from the early 1990s by the British photographer Ajamu X. The work features in Gender Stories, a UK touring exhibition that this week opens at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and Ben speaks to the head of the gallery, Charlotte Keenan.

Frieze New York continues until Sunday, 17 May, Esther continues until 16 May and Tefaf is on until 19 May.

Gender Stories, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 16 May-31 August.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 exhibitions alongside major museum shows, performances and other interventions. We bring you our immediate impressions of this year’s offering: Louisa Buck, Jane Morris and host Ben Luke review the main exhibition, In Minor Keys, curated by the late Koyo Kouoh and realised by five of her collaborators. Ben talks to two artists: Gabrielle Goliath whose work for the South African pavilion was cancelled and is being staged in a church in the heart of Venice, and Lubaina Himid, who is showing in the British pavilion in the Giardini. He also meets the writer and thinker Saidiya Hartman, two of whose essays have inspired a production called Minor Music at the End of the World, staged at Venice’s Goldoni Theatre and featuring contributions from, among others, the artists Arthur Jafa, Precious Okoyomon and Okwui Okpokwaseli. And The Art Newspaper’s digital editor, Alexander Morrison, talks to Daniella Kaliada, one of the team behind Official. Unofficial. Belarus., a collateral art project by Belarus Free Theatre. Finally, we always end our Venice specials with a historic masterpiece, and in this episode’s Work of the Week, we look at two: Jacopo Tintoretto’s The Last Supper and The Israelites in the Desert of 1591-92, the pair of paintings made for the presbytery of the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore. The paintings have just returned to the basilica after a major conservation project, funded by the charity Save Venice, and Ben spoke to Save Venice’s Senior Researcher, Gabriele Matino, about them.

In Minor Keys, 9 May-22 November
Gabrielle Goliath: Elegy, Chiesa di Sant’Antonin, 5 May-31 July
Predicting History: Testing Translation, British Pavilion, 9 May-22 November
Official. Unofficial. Belarus., Chiesa di San Giovanni Evangelista di Venezia, 9 May-22 November
Visit savevenice.org
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Carnegie International, held at the Carnegie Museum of Art and several other venues in Pittsburgh, also opens this weekend. This 59th iteration of the exhibition, which happens every four years, is called If the word we, and Ben speaks to the director of the museum, Eric Crosby. And this episode’s Work of the Week is one of the five painted versions of Ennui, made around 1914 by Walter Sickert. The painting features in the exhibition Walter Sickert: Working Notes at Charleston in Lewes in Sussex, UK, part of the organisation based in the former home of the Bloomsbury linchpins Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Ben talks to Robert Travers, the founder of the gallery Piano Nobile, who curated the exhibition in partnership with Charleston.

Zurbarán, National Gallery, London, 2 May-23 August; Musée du Louvre, Paris, 7 October-25 January 2027; Art Institute of Chicago, 28 February-20 June 2027
If the word we, 59th Carnegie International, 2 May-3 January 2027
Walter Sickert: Working Notes, Charleston in Lewes, 2 May–11 October 2026.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.