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The Week in Art
An oligarch vs Sotheby’s in a New York court, Singapore Art Week, Zanele Muholi
This week: the astonishing civil trial in Manhattan between a Russian oligarch and Sotheby’s. The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor, Tim Schneider, witnessed the Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev’s testimony in the trial in New York in which he accuses Sotheby’s of aiding the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier in an alleged fraud. It relates to the sale of major works of art, including the controversial Leonardo painting Salvator Mundi. Tim joins us to tell us about this extraordinary case. The second edition of Art SG art fair in Singapore has opened—with a 29% fall in the number of galleries. It takes place amid a wider festival, Singapore Art Week, and Lisa Movius, our reporter in Asia, tells us about the mood in Singapore and the wider art scene beyond Art SG. She also reflects on last weekend’s election in Taiwan. And our first Work of the Week of 2024 is the South African artist Zanele Muholi’s photograph ZaVa III, Paris (2013). The image is one of more than 100 works in Zanele Muholi: Eye Me, an exhibition that has just opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Shana Lopes, one of the curators of the exhibition, tells us more.
Art SG, until Sunday; Singapore Art Week until 28 January, artweek.sg
Zanele Muholi: Eye Me, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, US, until 11 August.
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Anselm Kiefer, Hoor al Qasimi on Sharjah, a Picasso Blue Period mystery
01:14:45|Next month, the German artist Anselm Kiefer will be 80, and the first of a number of shows internationally to mark this landmark moment opened this week at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK. It focuses on his early works, and Ben Luke visits Oxford to discuss this pivotal moment in his career with Lena Fritsch, the curator of the exhibition. The latest edition of the biennial in the United Arab Emirate of Sharjah opened earlier this month. The Art Newspaper’s correspondent Dale Berning Sawa visited during opening week and spoke to Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, the president and director of Sharjah Art Foundation, which runs the biennial, about this year’s edition, her journey in art, and her role in establishing the biennial as a leading art world event. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto (1901) by Pablo Picasso, a painting from the artist’s Blue Period. Conservators at The Courtauld Institute in London have discovered an image of a mystery woman hidden beneath this portrait of De Soto, Picasso’s friend and fellow artist. We talk to Barnaby Wright, deputy head of The Courtauld Gallery, about the painting and the image beneath it. The work features in a new exhibition at the gallery, Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection.Anselm Kiefer: Early Works, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK, 14 February-15 June; Anselm Kiefer: Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 7 March-9 June; Kiefer / Van Gogh, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 28 June-26 October; Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Ocean, Saint Louis Art Museum, US, 18 October 2025-25 January 2026To carry, the 16th Sharjah Biennial, until 15 June 2025.The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 14 February-26 May.The Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here.Trump tariffs and Zona Maco in Mexico, India Art Fair, and American photography at the Rijksmuseum
56:56|Last weekend, the US President Donald Trump signed executive orders placing 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which were due to take effect on Tuesday. But at the last minute, the tariffs were postponed, at least for a month. Inevitably, though, the talk of a trade war set nerves jangling at Zona Maco, the art fair in Mexico City, which opened on Wednesday. Ben Luke speaks to Ben Sutton, The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, who is in the Mexican capital, about the prevailing mood, and about the effect on the art world more generally of some of Trump’s executive orders. It is also the India Art Fair in Delhi this week. Our art market editor, Kabir Jhala, is there and tells us more about the fair amid the wider social and political climate in India. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Henry Fitz Jr’s self-portrait, a daguerreotype, made in January or February 1840. It is thought to be the first photograph of a person made in the United States. It features in a major show at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, American Photography. We speak to Mattie Boom, Rijksmuseum’s curator of Photography, about the work, and the wider show.Zona Maco, Mexico City, until 9 February.The India Art Fair, Delhi, until 9 February.American Photography, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, until 9 June. Carrie Mae Weems’s 2021 series Painting the Town, Rijksmuseum, until the same date.The Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here.Peter Hujar, Gregg Bordowitz and Rotimi Fani-Kayode: art and the Aids struggle
01:14:51|Peter Hujar, Gregg Bordowitz and Rotimi Fani-Kayode are three artists whose work reflects in different ways on the Aids crisis that has devastated communities across the world since the 1980s. Hujar, who died from Aids-related pneumonia in 1987, is the subject of a new show at Raven Row in London, the largest to date at a UK gallery. Host Ben Luke takes a tour of the show with its curators, the writer John Douglas Millar, and the artist, master printer and model for some of Hujar’s photographs, Gary Schneider. The artist Gregg Bordowitz was a member of The Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, founded in New York in the 1980s. Bordowitz has lived with HIV since the late 1980s, and it has fuelled his art and activism ever since, as a new show at Camden Art Centre in London demonstrates. We spoke to him about his life and work. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s Abiku (Born to Die) (1988), a photograph in The 80s: Photographing Britain, a show at Tate Britain in London. Fani-Kayode was a key figure in the UK’s burgeoning avant-garde photography scene in the late 1980s, but died in his early 30s in 1989 from complications relating to Aids. We talk to Jasmine Kaur Chohan, co-curator of the Tate Britain show, about the work.Peter Hujar—Eyes Open in the Dark, Raven Row, London, 30 January-6 AprilGregg Bordowitz—There: a Feeling, Camden Art Centre, London, until 23 MarchThe 80s: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain, until 5 MayThe Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here.Artists in Gaza respond to the ceasefire, Cimabue at the Louvre, a Baroque printmaking family
01:00:08|The Art Newspaper’s correspondent for the Middle East, Sarvy Geranpayeh, has been reporting on the effect of Israel’s military bombardment of Gaza on artists and art workers there since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict in 2023. In the wake of the three-stage ceasefire that began last Sunday, she has returned to those she has spoken to over the past 16 months to hear their views on the agreement and what happens next. The Musée du Louvre in Paris this week opened a show of the great 13th-century Italian painter Cimabue. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, spoke to Thomas Bohl, the exhibition’s curator. And this episode’s Work of the Week is actually three works produced in a family business of printmakers in 17th-century Netherlands. The works, by Hendrick Goltzius, and his grandsons Theodor and Adriaen Matham, are part of a new show, A Family Affair: Artistic Dynasties in Europe (Part I, 1500–1700), at the Blanton Museum of Art, part of The University of Texas, Austin. The curator of the exhibition, Holly Borham, tells me more about this printmaking dynasty.A New Look at Cimabue: At the Origins of Italian Painting, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 22 January – 12 May 2025A Family Affair: Artistic Dynasties in Europe (Part I, 1500–1700), Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas, Austin, US, 25 January-15 June; the second part of this exhibition, covering the period 1700 to 1900, opens in June.The Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here.Los Angeles wildfires, World Monuments Fund’s watch list, Katsushika Hokusai
58:58|This week: the Los Angeles wildfires. The Art Newspaper’s West Coast contributing editor in LA, Jori Finkel, tells our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, about the devastation in Southern California, and its effect on artists and institutions. The World Monuments Fund (WMF), the independent organisation devoted to safeguarding global heritage has released its biennial World Monuments Watch, a list of 25 sites that are potentially threatened. The aim of the list is, according to the WMF to “mobilise action, build public awareness, and demonstrate how heritage can help communities confront the crucial issues of our time”. Ben Luke talks to John Darlington, the director of projects for WMF Britain, who also reflects on the future of the organisation’s project to train Syrian refugees in stonemasonry skills, in the wake of the change in government in Syria. And this episode’s Work of the Week is All About Painting in Colour: An Illustrated Book, a portfolio in two volumes made by the leading artist of the late Edo period in Japan, Katsushika Hokusai. The last of his drawing manuals, made by the artist at the very end of his life, it features in a new book, Hokusai’s Method. We talk to Ryoko Matsuba, one of the authors of the new book.Hokusai’s Method, with texts by Kyoko Wada and Ryoko Matsuba, is published by Thames and Hudson. It is out on 23 January in the UK, and priced £35, and on 4 February in the US, priced $45.The Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here.The Year Ahead 2025: market predictions, the big shows and openings
01:19:34|A 2025 preview: Georgina Adam, our editor-at-large, tells host Ben Luke what might lie ahead for the market. And Ben is joined by Jane Morris, editor-at-large, and Gareth Harris, chief contributing editor, to select the big museum openings, biennials and exhibitions.All shows discussed are in The Art Newspaper's The Year Ahead 2025, priced £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here.Exhibitions: Site Santa Fe International, Santa Fe, US, 28 Jun-13 Jan 2026; Liverpool Biennial, 7 Jun-14 Sep; Folkestone Triennial, 19 Jul-19 Oct; Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 5 Apr-2 Sep; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, 19 Oct-7 Feb 2026; Gabriele Münter, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 7 Nov-26 Apr 2026; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 4 Apr-24 Aug; Elizabeth Catlett: a Black Revolutionary Artist, Brooklyn Museum, New York, until 19 Jan; National Gallery of Art (NGA), Washington DC, 9 Mar-6 Jul; Art Institute of Chicago, US, 30 Aug-4 Jan 2026; Ithell Colquhoun, Tate Britain, London, 13 Jun-19 Oct; Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams, Courtauld Gallery, London, 20 Jun-14 Sep; Michaelina Wautier, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 30 Sep-25 Jan 2026; Radical! Women Artists and Modernism, Belvedere, Vienna, 18 Jun-12 Oct; Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 24 May-7 Sep; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 11 Oct-1 Feb 2026; Lorna Simpson: Source Notes, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 19 May-2 Nov; Amy Sherald: American Sublime, SFMOMA, to 9 Mar; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 9 Apr-Aug; National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, 19 Sep-22 Feb 2026; Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior, Cincinnati Art Museum, 14 Feb-4 May; Cleveland Museum of Art, US, 14 Feb-8 Jun; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, US, 1 Oct-25 Jan 2026; Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting, National Portrait Gallery, London, 20 Jun-7 Sep; Linder: Danger Came Smiling, Hayward Gallery, London, 11 Feb-5 May; Arpita Singh, Serpentine Galleries, London, 13 Mar-27 Jul; Vija Celmins, Beyeler Collection, Basel, 15 Jun-21 Sep; An Indigenous Present, ICA/Boston, US, 9 Oct-8 Mar 2026; The Stars We Do Not See, NGA, Washington, DC, 18 Oct-1 Mar 2026; Duane Linklater, Dia Chelsea, 12 Sep-24 Jan 2026; Camden Art Centre, London, 4 Jul-21 Sep; Vienna Secession, 29 Nov-22 Feb 2026; Emily Kam Kngwarray, Tate Modern, London, 10 Jul-13 Jan 2026; Archie Moore, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, 30 Aug-23 Aug 2026; Histories of Ecology, MASP, Sao Paulo, 5 Sep-1 Feb 2026; Jack Whitten, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 23 Mar-2 Aug; Wifredo Lam, Museum of Modern Art, Rashid Johnson, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 18 Apr-18 Jan 2026; Adam Pendleton, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, 4 Apr-3 Jan 2027; Marie Antoinette Style, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 20 Sep-22 Mar 2026; Leigh Bowery!, Tate Modern, 27 Feb- 31 Aug; Blitz: the Club That Shaped the 80s, Design Museum, London, 19 Sep-29 Mar 2026; Do Ho Suh, Tate Modern, 1 May-26 Oct; Picasso: the Three Dancers, Tate Modern, 25 Sep-1 Apr 2026; Ed Atkins, Tate Britain, London, 2 Apr-25 Aug; Turner and Constable, Tate Britain, 27 Nov-12 Apr 2026; British Museum: Hiroshige, 1 May-7 Sep; Watteau and Circle, 15 May-14 Sep; Ancient India, 22 May-12 Oct; Kerry James Marshall, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 20 Sep-18 Jan 2026; Kiefer/Van Gogh, Royal Academy, 28 Jun-26 Oct; Anselm Kiefer, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 14 Feb-15 Jun; Anselm Kiefer, Van Gogh Museum, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 7 Mar-9 Jun; Cimabue, Louvre, Paris, 22 Jan-12 May; Black Paris, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 19 Mar-30 Jun; Machine Love, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 13 Feb-8 Jun2024 in review: the biggest stories and the best shows
01:22:24|It is the final episode of 2024 and so, as always, we review the year, looking at the top stories, the big issues and the best art. 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 the Americas. Under discussion, among much else: the growing faultlines between institutions and artists in relation to Gaza; the big museum stories, from Saudi Arabian funding to attacks on artworks and restitution; a market roundup; culture and the climate emergency; and the panel’s exhibitions and biennials of the year.Carsten Höller, Takashi Murakami, Dia’s Echoes from the Borderlands
53:54|This week, three artist interviews: Carsten Höller on his book of games, Takashi Murakami on his new work, and Valeria Luiselli and Leo Heiblum on their Dia sound installation. Höller is the author of a book featuring 336 games that can be played alone, in pairs or in groups, without any props. He tells Ben Luke about art and play and his perennial quest for unpredictability. Takashi Murakami has been in London this week for the opening of his exhibition, Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami, at Gagosian. We speak to him about the show and his fascination with the television series Shōgun. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Echoes from the Borderlands, a sound installation created by Valeria Luiselli, Ricardo Giraldo and Leo Heiblum, which was unveiled at Dia Chelsea in New York this week. Valeria and Leo join us to tell us more about the project.Book of Games by Carsten Höller, edited by Stefanie Hessler and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Taschen, 760 pp, £40 or $50 (hb)Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami, Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, until 8 March 2025.Echoes from the Borderlands: Study Two, Dia Chelsea, New York, until 1 March 2025.Art Basel Miami Beach, Notre-Dame reopens in Paris, and Parmigianino’s Vision of St Jerome
55:48|The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, Ben Sutton, and our art market editor, Kabir Jhala, are in Florida and report on the sales and the mood on the first VIP day at Art Basel Miami Beach. On 8 December, the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris will reopen, more than five years after the fire that partly destroyed it. Ben Luke talks to one of the architects responsible for its rise from the ashes, Pascal Prunet. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Madonna and Child with Saints (1526-27) by Parmigianino, better known as The Vision of Saint Jerome. The painting this week returned to public display for the first time in 10 years, in a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London, following conservation, and we talk to Maria Alambritis, the show’s co-curator.Art Basel Miami Beach, until Sunday, 8 December.Notre-Dame reopens on Sunday, 8 December.Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome, National Gallery, London, until 9 March 2025Gift subscription: why not give a friend, colleague or family member a subscription to The Art Newspaper this holiday season? Choose between a digital-only and print and digital subscription package. Purchase the print and digital subscription before 13 December to get the January issue, which includes our essential magazine, The Year Ahead. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more.