The Week in Art

Shortly after the US election on 5 November, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington opens The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, a radical new perspective on the history of the discipline from 1792 to now. Ahead of its opening, Ben Luke speaks to Karen Lemmey, a curator of sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and co-curator of the exhibition. In Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art—a project 20 years in the making—has partially opened. We speak to its director, Joanna Mytkowska, about the long road to the unveiling and the upheavals in Polish politics along the way. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (early 1620s) by Jusepe de Ribera. It features in the first survey of the Spanish-born Baroque artist ever staged in France, at the Petit Palais in Paris. The museum’s director, Annick Lemoine, tells us more.The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 8 November-14 September 2025.The Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw is open now; its full programme will be unveiled in February 2025.Ribera: Shadows and Light, Petit Palais, Paris, until 23 February 2025.The Art Newspaper subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. 

This week: with less than two weeks before the US goes to the polls, and with early voting underway, Ben Luke talks to The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, Ben Sutton, about what we might expect depending on whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins the presidential election on 5 November. The exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350 is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and will open at the National Gallery in London next March. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, travelled to the Tuscan city to look at the work of some of the Sienese artists who light up the show, in the context of the city itself. He was guided by the co-curator of the exhibition, Caroline Campbell, the director of the National Gallery of Ireland. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Personal Accounts, an ongoing series of video installations exploring patriarchal violence by the South African artist Gabrielle Goliath. The latest cycle in the series, called Mango Blossoms, opens at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh this weekend and we speak to Gabrielle about the work.Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300‒1350, is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 26 January 2025; National Gallery, London, 8 March-22 June 2025.Gabrielle Goliath’s Personal Accounts: Mango Blossoms is shown alongside a number of other cycles from the series at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 26 October-15 February 2025. The series also features in Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, Venice Biennale, until 24 November.Subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more.

After descending on London last week, the art world arrived in Paris this week, with the main attraction being the Art Basel Paris art fair—now staged in the renovated Belle Epoque masterpiece, the Grand Palais. An editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper, Jane Morris, was at the VIP opening and tells us more. As always, alongside the fair are a number of eye-catching museum shows and projects. Among them is Chapelle, a new in-situ work for the Musée Picasso by the Argentinian artist Guillermo Kuitca. Ben Luke talks to Kuitca about the piece. And this episode’s Work of the Week is June (2022) by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, a work from a series in which the Polish-born Romani artist reimagines astrologically themed frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara in order to explore the history and contemporary life of the Roma people. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, talks to Mirga-Tas about the work, as it goes on display at Tate St Ives in the UK.Art Basel Paris, Grand Palais, until Sunday, 20 October.Chapelle by Guillermo Kuitca, Musée Picasso, Paris, until 31 December 2027.Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Tate St Ives, UK, 19 October-5 January 2025Subscription offer: you can get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more.

The Frieze London art fair has a new look for 2024 as it looks to keep its freshness amid increased competition with the new kid on the art fair block, next week’s Art Basel Paris. So how effective is the re-design? Ben Luke talks to Kabir Jhala, the art market editor at The Art Newspaper, about this year’s fair and about the auctions which have also taken place in London this week. The duo The White Pube who, since 2015, have shaken-up the world of art criticism in the UK, have just published a new book, called Poor Artists. We speak to the duo, Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad, about it. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a vital contribution to the history of the Italian Arte Povera group. Giuseppe Penone’s Alpi Marittime (1968) has just gone on display in a new survey of Arte Povera at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris. The exhibition is curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and we talk to her about Penone’s work.Frieze London and Frieze Masters, until 13 October, Regent’s Park, London.Poor Artists by The White Pube, Particular Books (UK), £20 (hb), Prestel (US) published 12 November, $24.99; thewhitepube.com.Arte Povera, Bourse de Commerce, Paris, until 20 January.Subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more.

This week: a huge survey of the work of the late linchpin of the Los Angeles contemporary scene Mike Kelley has arrived at Tate Modern in London. We speak to its co-curator Catherine Wood about this enormously influential artist and his visceral and absurd response to popular culture and folk traditions of the US. A major show of Indian art made between 1975 and 1998, a pivotal period of political, social and economic change in the country, opened this week at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. Shanay Jhaveri, a former curator of international art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York who is now head of visual arts at the Barbican, leads us in a tour of show. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Raoul Dufy’s Thirty Years or La Vie en Rose (1931), a painting made originally for the 30th anniversary of a gallery in Paris, that was owned by the pioneering woman gallerist Berthe Weill. She is the subject of an exhibition at the Grey Art Museum at New York University, which will tour next year to Montreal and Paris. Lynn Gumpert, the co-curator of the show and director of the Grey Art Museum, tells us about the painting, the artist and the dealer.Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, Tate Modern, London, until 9 March 2025; Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 12 April-15 September 2025.The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 5 October-5 January 2025; and you can hear an in-depth interview with Nalini Malani on A brush with…, that’s the episode from 21 February this year.Make Way for Berthe Weill: Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde, Grey Art Museum, New York, until 1 March; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 10 May-7 September 2025; Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, 8 October 2025-25 January 2026.Subscription offer: get three months of The Art Newspaper for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more.

This week, three major international shows: Claude Monet’s Thames views in London, the Henri Matisse retrospective in Basel and Helen Frankenthaler in Florence. An exhibition that Claude Monet hoped to see in his lifetime but which never happened has at last become a reality. A gathering of Monet’s views of the Thames—looking from his hotel room at the Savoy and from across the river on a private terrace of St Thomas’s hospital—has just opened at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Monet had hoped to stage such an event in London soon after the paintings were exhibited to acclaim in Paris in 1904, but so quickly had they dispersed, he was unable to do so. Ben Luke spoke to the curator of the show, Karen Serres, first in the very room at the Savoy Hotel where he made many of the paintings, and then in the exhibition itself. Meanwhile, a rare European retrospective of Henri Matisse’s work has opened at the Beyeler Foundation in Basel. Matisse: Invitation to the Voyage focuses on the artist’s travels, in the world and also in his imagination, through paintings, sculptures and cut-outs made over more than 50 years. Ben Luke went to Basel and spoke to Raphaël Bouvier, the curator. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Mediterranean Thoughts (1960) one of the paintings in Helen Frankenthaler: Painting without Rules, a new exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. The Art Newspaper’s associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, spoke to Douglas Dreishpoon, who organised the show.Monet and London: Views of the Thames, Courtauld Gallery, London, until 19 January 2025.Matisse – Invitation to the Voyage, Beyeler Foundation, Basel, Switzerland, until 26 January 2025.Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, until 26 January 2025.Subscription offer: get the perfect start to the new academic year with 50% off a student subscription to The Art Newspaper—that’s £28, or the equivalent in your currency, for one year. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more.

This week: the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, has invited the US artist Glenn Ligon to explore its history and collections, and his interventions are revealed this week. Ben Luke goes to Cambridge to talk to Ligon about the project. Few artists’ lives prompt as much discussion as that of Paul Gauguin, and a new biography of the French artist by Sue Prideaux has just been published. We talk to Sue about the book. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the piece that has just been unveiled on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Mil Veces un Instante or (A Thousand Times in an Instant) by Teresa Margolles is made up of plaster casts of the faces of 726 trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people. Ekow Eshun, the chair of the group that commissions the projects for the Fourth Plinth, speaks to our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, about the work.Glenn Ligon: All Over The Place, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK, until 2 March 2025. Distinguishing Piss from Rain: Writings and Interviews by Glenn Ligon, Hauser & Wirth Publishers, £32 or $38. Untitled (America/Me), High Line, New York, until November 2024. Listen to our in-depth interview, A brush with… Glenn Ligon from 18 August 2021.Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin, by Sue Prideaux, Faber, £30; published in the US next year, by WW Norton, $39.99.Teresa Margolles: Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant), Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, until 2026.Subscription offer: you can get the perfect start to the new academic year with 50% off a student subscription to The Art Newspaper—that’s £28, or the equivalent in your currency, for one year. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more.

This week: the Van Gogh blockbuster in London, a new book on the birth of Impressionism, and Juan Pablo Echeverri’s performative self-portraits. As the exhibition Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers opens at the National Gallery in London as part of its bicentenary celebrations, The Art Newspaper’s special correspondent and resident expert in the Dutch painter, Martin Bailey, takes a tour of the exhibition with our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, meanwhile, has just opened the exhibition Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment, its iteration of the show marking 150 years since the first Impressionist exhibition, which began earlier this year at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Coinciding with the show is the publication of the book Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism, by the Washington Post art critic, Sebastian Smee. Ben Luke speaks to Sebastian about the book. And this episode’s Work of the Week is MUTIlady (2003) by Juan Pablo Echeverri. The photographic piece features nine photographs in which the late Colombian artist pictures himself with an apparently flayed body and wildly different haircuts seemingly reflecting a multitude of identities. The work is part of the exhibition GROW IT, SHOW IT! A look at hair from Diane Arbus to TikTok, which opened this week at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany. The show’s curator, Miriam Bettin, tells Ben more about the artist and the work.Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, The National Gallery, London, 14 September-19 January 2025; The Sunflowers are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame by Martin Bailey, Frances Lincoln, each £10.99/$14.99 (pb), from 17 October, but available now at the National Gallery.Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism is published by W. W. Norton & Company in US and out now, priced $35. In the UK it’s published by Oneworld, out on 17 October and priced £25; Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment, National Gallery of Art, Washington, until 19 January 2025.GROW IT, SHOW IT! A look at hair from Diane Arbus to TikTok, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, until 12 January 2025.Subscription offer: you can get the perfect start to the new academic year with 50% off a student subscription to The Art Newspaper—that’s £28, or the equivalent in your currency, for one year. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more.

The Week in Art is back. In this first episode of the season: on Tuesday it was reported in the Financial Times that Sotheby’s core earnings are down 88% in the first half of this year. This is the latest evidence to suggest that the art market may be in a far more serious economic rut than its major players have previously indicated, after disappointing sales and job cuts at the major auction houses, as well as closures and layoffs in the world of commercial galleries. In the September issue of The Art Newspaper, Scott Reyburn suggests that the art market could be entering a new era, and he joins our host Ben Luke to explain why. We then talk to Sasha Skochilenko, the artist who was freed in the prisoner exchange between Russia and the US in August, about her activism, arrest and incarceration as well as her experience of the swap and the art she has made since. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Angel of Hearth and Home, made by Max Ernst in 1937, and later renamed by the artist as The Triumph of Surrealism. The painting is part of the major travelling show marking the 100th anniversary of the first Surrealist manifesto, which makes its stop from this week at the Centre Pompidou, in Paris. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, went to Paris to talk to Didier Ottinger, the co-curator of the exhibition.Sasha Skochilenko: skochilenko.ru.Surrealism, Centre Pompidou, Paris, until 13 January 2025; Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, Spain; 4 February-11 May 2025; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, 12 June-12 October 2025; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, US, end of 2025-beginning of 2026. You can hear our discussion about the centenary of the first Surrealist manifesto with the Surrealism expert Alyce Mahon on the episode of this podcast from 23 February this year.