The Week in Art

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 spring; New Museum, New York, date tbc. BIENNIALS: Venice Biennale, In Minor Keys, 9 May-22 Nov; Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince: Helter Skelter, Fondazione Prada, Venice, 9 May-22 Nov; Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, 6 May-19 Oct; Whitney Biennial, opens 8 Mar; Greater New York 2026, MoMA PS1, 16 Apr-17 Aug; EXHIBITIONS: Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture, Frick Collection, 12 Feb-11 May; Raphael: Sublime Poetry, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 29 Mar-28 Jun; Zurbarán, National Gallery, London, 2 May-23 Aug; Michaelina Wautier, Royal Academy of Arts, 27 Mar-21 Jun; James McNeill Whistler, Tate Britain, 21 May-27 Sep, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 16 Oct-10 Jan 2027; Seurat and the Sea, Courtauld Gallery, ​​13 Feb-17 May; Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 25 Apr-19 Oct; Royal Academy, London, 21 Nov-14 Mar 2027, Cezanne, Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 25 Jan-25 May; Leonor Fini, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 22 Oct-28 Feb 2027; Hilma af Klint, Grand Palais, 6 May-30 Aug, Matisse 1941-1954, Grand Palais, Paris, 24 Mar-26 Jul; Chez Matisse: The Legacy of a New Painting, Caixa Forum, Barcelona, 27 Mar-16 Aug; Fratino and Matisse: To See This Light Again, Baltimore Museum of Art, 11 Mar-6 Sep; Matisse’s Femme au Chapeau: A Modern Scandal, SFMOMA, San Francisco, 16 May-7 Sep; Marcel Duchamp, MoMA, New York, 12 Apr-22 Aug; Mary Cassatt: An American in Paris, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 14 Feb-30 Aug; Mary Cassatt: After Impressionism, Art Institute of Chicago, 6 Sep-3 Jan 2027; Modern Iran and the Avant-Gardes, 1948-78, Vancouver Art Gallery, 11 Dec-2 May 2027; Spectrosynthesis Seoul, Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 20 Mar-28 Jun; Carol Bove, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 5 Mar-2 Aug; New Humans: Memories of the Future, New Museum, New York, opens early 2026; Hurvin Anderson, Tate Britain, 26 Mar-23 Aug; Tracey Emin: A Second Life, 26 Feb-31 Aug; Ana Mendieta, Tate Modern, London, 9 Jul-10 Jan 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 of Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, published in 2015 by Knopf, and Why Architecture Matters, published in 2009 by Yale University Press.Joan Semmel: In the Flesh, Jewish Museum, New York, 12 December-31 May 2026 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Jocelyn Piirainen, about the work.Deviant Ornaments, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, until 15 March 2026.Winter Count: Embracing the Cold, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, until 22 March 2026Black Friday subscription offer: enjoy up to 70% off across subscription packages to The Art Newspaper this Black Friday, with a year’s digital subscription just £21, reduced from £70 (or the equivalent in your currency) and a print and digital subscription just £40, reduced from £99. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-BF25?promocode=BF25&utm_source=display+ads&utm_campaign=blackfriday25 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.