The Week in Art

The fifth edition of London Gallery Weekend takes place this weekend, and opens as the global art market is at a low ebb. So what can it do to change the mood? Ben Luke speaks to Ananya Mukhopadhyay, the managing director of Ames Yavuz, which is opening a new London gallery to coincide with the weekend events, and Jeremy Epstein, co-director of the Edel Assanti gallery, who is the co-founder and co-director of London Gallery Weekend. In 2018, a devastating electrical fire tore through the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro with catastrophic consequences. This week, it will temporarily reopen some of its galleries. The museum’s director, Alexander Kellner, tells The Art Newspaper’s digital editor Alexander Morrison about its steady rise from the ashes. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a miniature portrait of Jane Austen by an anonymous 19th-century artist. The work belongs to the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, which this week opens the exhibition A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250. The show is co-organised by Juliette Wells, Professor of Literary Studies at Goucher College in Baltimore, and she speaks to Alexander Morrison about the portrait.London Gallery Weekend, 6-8 June. Simon Lehner: Of Peasants & Basterds, Edel Assanti, 6 June-22 August; Polyphonies, Ames Yavuz, London, 6-26 June.The temporary reopening of the National Museum of Brazil continues until the end of July.A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250, Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 6 June-14 SeptemberSummer subscription offer: get up to 50% off an annual print & digital subscription to The Art Newspaper. Link here: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-SUMMER25P&D?promocode=SUMMER25&utm_source=special+offer+banner&utm_campaign=SUMMER25

We visit major museum projects unveiled this week in London and New York: Ben Luke takes a tour of V&A East Storehouse in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which offers unprecedented access to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection. He meets the deputy director of the V&A, Tim Reeve, and speaks to key members of the team that are making this radical museological vision for London a reality: the museum’s lead technician, Matt Clarke, its senior curator Georgia Haseldine, and Kate Parsons, the director of collections care and access. The Art Newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Americas, Ben Sutton, visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which this week unveiled its revamped Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. The wing holds the Met’s collections of work from Africa, the Ancient Americas, and Oceania. Ben talks to Alisa LaGamma, the curator of African art who is in charge of the Rockefeller Wing, and the Papua New Guinea-born, Brisbane-based artist Taloi Havini, one of a number of contemporary artists who created new works for the the project. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Down and Up (2024-25) by Rachel Whiteread. It features in a new show of Whiteread’s work, the first at the Goodwood Art Foundation, a not-for-profit contemporary art gallery and sculpture park in West Sussex, UK. Ben Luke talks to Rachel about the work.V&A East Storehouse, London, opens 31 May.The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art New York, reopens 31 May.Rachel Whiteread, Goodwood Art Foundation, West Sussex, UK, 31 May-2 November.Summer subscription offer: get up to 50% off an annual print & digital subscription to The Art Newspaper. Link here: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-SUMMER25P&D?promocode=SUMMER25&utm_source=special+offer+banner&utm_campaign=SUMMER25

A host of exhibitions and events this month and next celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, one of the godfathers of kinetic and auto-destructive art. Ben Luke speaks to Roland Wetzel, the director of the Tinguely Museum in Basel about the artist’s life and work, and the events marking the centenary. In Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Fenix, a museum about migration, has just opened, featuring a dramatic stainless steel tornado form on its roof. We discuss the museum with its director, Anne Kremers. And this episode’s Work of the Week is by an immigrant artist, Ben Shahn, who was born in modern-day Lithuania but travelled as a child to the US, where he became a leading painter associated with Social Realism. Among his greatest achievements was the mural The Meaning of Social Security, painted between 1940 and 1942 in Washington D.C. to reflect the benefits of the then-recent Social Security Act. Shahn is the subject of a major show that opened this week at the Jewish Museum in New York. We speak to Laura Katzman, the co-curator of the exhibition with the Jewish Museum's Stephen Brown, about Harvesting Wheat (1941), Shahn’s study for one of the figures in the mural.The Tinguely Museum in Basel, Switzerland, has a permanent display of his work; Scream Machines–Art Ghost Train, by Rebecca Moss and Augustin Rebetez, Tinguely Museum, until 30 August; Mechanics and Humanity: Eva Aeppli and Jean Tinguely, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany, until 24 August; Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely: Myths & Machines, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Bruton, UK, until 1 February 2026; Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hultén, Grand Palais, Paris, 20 June-4 January 2026.The Fenix museum is open now.Ben Shahn: On Nonconformity, Jewish Museum, New York, 23 May-12 October. The book accompanying it published on 3 June by Princeton University Press, priced $45.00/£38.00.The Meaning of Social Security murals:https://art.gsa.gov/artworks/637/the-meaning-of-social-security?ctx=3bc918796c456cc8fb8e3d3f033918d4249d0ce6&idx=6https://livingnewdeal.org/sites/wilbur-j-cohen-building-shahn-frescoes-washington-dc/#lg=1&slide=1

Koyo Kouoh remembered, Queen Elizabeth II memorial, Jasper Johns by Robert StorrKoyo Kouoh, the Cameroon-born curator who was director of Zeitz Mocaa in Cape Town and had been invited to curate next year’s Venice Biennale died on 10 May. There has been an outpouring of moving tributes to Kouoh from artists, curators and gallerists across the world, and Ben Luke speaks to Nolan Oswald Dennis, the Johannesburg-based artist who has a current show at Zeitz, and Liza Essers, the owner and director of Goodman Gallery, about her life and work. A design competition for the Queen Elizabeth II National Memorial in St James’s Park in London has been launched, with five designs competing for the commission. We talk to Sandy Nairne, the former director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, who is on the committee tasked with choosing the winning design. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Regrets, a painting from the series of that name made by Jasper Johns in 2013. The work is discussed in a new book of writings on Johns by the former curator at the Museum of Modern Art and of the Venice Biennale in 2007, Robert Storr. We speak to Storr about the work.Nolan Oswald Dennis: Understudies, Zeitz Mocaa, Cape Town, South Africa, until 27 July; Nolan Oswald Dennis: throwers, Gasworks, London, until 22 June.To see the five proposals for the Queen Elizabeth II National Memorial and give feedback visit competitions.malcolmreading.com/queenelizabethmemorial#overview. The opportunity to give feedback on the designs will close on 19 May.Robert Storr, Focal Points: Jasper Johns, HENI publishing, £19.99 (hb).

This week: after a two-year closure, the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing reopens this week, revealing a major overhaul by the architect Annabelle Selldorf. The gallery has also rehung its entire collection and Ben Luke takes a tour of both the revamped building and the new displays with the National Gallery director, Gabriele Finaldi. Tate Modern celebrates its 25th anniversary this weekend, and Luke talks to The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent Louisa Buck and another of our regular contributors, Dale Berning Sawa, about its seismic impact in London and beyond over the past quarter of a century, its complex present circumstances and its future. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the late German artist Inge Mahn’s sculpture Balancing Towers (1989). It is a key work in an exhibition called “Are we still up to it?” – Art & Democracy at the Herrenchiemsee, the castle on an island in the Chiemsee lake, in southern Bavaria, Germany. Oliver Kase, the director of collections at the Pinakothek der Moderne, in Munich, and co-curator of the exhibition, joins Luke to discuss the sculpture.The Sainsbury Wing and CC Land: The Wonder of Art, National Gallery, London, from 10 May. You can hear a conversation with Annabelle Selldorf about the Frick Collection on the episode of this podcast from 28 March 2025. And our interview with the architectural critic Rowan Moore reflecting on the debate about Selldorf’s alterations to the original Sainsbury Wing project is in the episode from 4 November 2022.Tate Modern’s 25th Birthday Weekender, Tate Modern, London, 9-12 May.“Are we still up to it?” – Art & Democracy, Herrenchiemsee Palace, Chiemsee, Germany, 10 May-12 October

During his lifetime, the late artist Frank Auerbach never had an exhibition in Berlin, the city of his birth, which he left for the UK in 1939 to escape the Nazis. This weekend, the first show of his work in the German capital opens at the Galerie Michael Werner. Our digital editor, Alexander Morrison, went to Berlin to talk to the artist’s son, the filmmaker Jake Auerbach, about the exhibition. A new book by Dan Hicks, a curator at the Pitts River Museum in Oxford, UK, titled Every Monument Must Fall explores the origins of the fierce contemporary debates around colonialism, art, and heritage. It investigates in particular the acquisition of human remains and their ongoing place in museums and other historical institutions. Ben Luke spoke to him about the publication. And this week’s Work of the Week is Republic (1995) by Ian Hamilton Finlay, whose centenary is being celebrated this year with a new publication and a series of exhibitions in London, Edinburgh, Palma de Mallorca, Brescia, New York, Hamburg, Basel and Vienna. Luke spoke to Stephen Ban, a long-term specialist in Finley’s work, about this sculptural installation.Frank Auerbach, Galerie Michael Werner, Berlin, 3 May-28 JuneDan Hicks, Every Monument Must Fall, is published by Hutchinson Heinemann. It is out now in the UK and priced £25. It will be published in the US in August and priced $47.99Fragments, an exhibition of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s work, is showing at Victoria Miro, London, until 24 May. Further exhibitions are at the Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh, Kvenig Gallery in Palma de Mallorca, Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia, David Nolan Gallery in New York, the Svea Semmler Gallery in Hamburg, the Stamper Gallery in Basel and the Galleria Hubert Winter in ViennaThe book Fragments is published by ACC Art Books and edited by Pia Maria Simig. It is published on 8 May and priced £50

Following the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday, The Art Newspaper’s managing editor, Louis Jebb, who has written an extensive obituary of the late pontiff, joins Ben Luke to talk about the late pope’s engagement with art and with the Vatican art collections. Wednesday 23 April was the 250th anniversary of the birth of JMW Turner, one of the greatest British artists. A host of exhibitions and events are marking this moment, and we speak to Amy Concannon, the senior curator of historic British art at Tate Britain, about Turner’s enduring appeal. And this episode’s Work of the Week is arguably John Singer Sargent’s most famous—and in its time, his most infamous—painting, Madame X (1883-84). A portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, it features in a major show of Sargent’s work that opens this week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, before travelling later in the year to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, discusses the picture with Stephanie L. Herdrich, a co-curator of the exhibition.You can explore the Turner Bequest at tate.org.uk—the full collection will be online later this year. Cataloguing Turner’s Bequest: Sketchbooks, Drawings, Watercolours, Tate Britain, London, ongoing. Full list of the Turner 250 events: tate.org.uk/art/turner-250Sargent and Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 21 April-3 August; Sargent: The Paris Years, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 22 September 22-11 – January 2026.Last chance! Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Offer ends on 30 April. Subscribe here. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3

ollowing on from opening her exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which continues until August, the US-born, Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim this week opened a show in London in collaboration with Thomas Mader. The exhibition, 1880 THAT, uses a notorious historic conference in Milan in 1880, which effectively outlawed sign language in Deaf education, as a springboard to explore languages and stigma in Deaf and hearing cultures today. Ben Luke discusses the show with Kim and Mader. In Abu Dhabi, the latest museum devoted to the interactive art of the Japanese collective teamLab opens this week in the Saadiyat Cultural District. The Art Newspaper’s reporter in the Middle East, Melissa Gronlund, has visited the museum and tells us more about teamLab’s newest immersive experience. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Young Woman seated at a Virginal (1670-75), a painting by Jan Vermeer that may be the very last picture he ever made. Our special correspondent, Martin Bailey, tells us how new conservation of the picture has revealed that 17th-century pollution may hold the key to dating the painting.1880 THAT: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, Wellcome Collection, London, until 16 November; Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night is at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 6 July.teamLab: Phenomena, Abu Dhabi, opens 18 April.From Rembrandt to Vermeer: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection, H’ART Museum, Amsterdam, until 24 August.Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app, including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Subscribe here.https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3

In two-and-a-half months since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, a series of executive orders and other initiatives have attempted systematically to eliminate and defund some of the federal agencies responsible for the distribution of federal money to museums, libraries and other organisations. The Art Newspaper’s editor-in-chief in the Americas, Ben Sutton, joins Ben Luke to discuss what is being seen as an authoritarian and ideologically driven attempt to control cultural activities in taxpayer-funded institutions, restrict free speech and—to use the administration’s own term—“rewrite history”. We also discuss the effect of the economic chaos caused by President Trump’s seesawing on trade tariffs in the past week. That same topic is discussed by Clare McAndrew of Arts Economics, the writer of the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025. The report’s key finding is that global art sales declined by 12% in 2024 and McAndrew discusses this stark statistic and other aspects of the survey. And this episode’s Works of the Week are by Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, the two artists in an exhibition subtitled The Art of Friendship at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. Jellett and Hone were key figures in Irish Modernism, and we talk to one of the curators of the exhibition, Brendan Rooney, about Jellett’s painting, Decoration (1923) and Hone’s stained-glass image of a chalice (1948-52), a study for her most famous piece, the East Window of Eton College Chapel in Berkshire, UK.The Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025, theartmarket.artbasel.com.Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, until 10 August.Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app, including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Subscribe here.https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3