The Week in Art

This week: as the exhibition Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia opens at the Kling & Bang gallery in Reykjavik, Ben Luke talks to Masha Alekhina, one of the founding members of Pussy Riot, and the artist Ragnar Kjartansson, one of the co-curators of the show. As protests continue across Iran, Aimee Dawson, The Art Newspaper’s acting digital editor, speaks to Shirin Neshat, the artist whose work expressing solidarity with women in Iran was recently installed outside the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. And this episode’s Work of the Week is by the Puerto Rican artist Gabriella Torres-Ferrer. Their 2018 sculpture—called Untitled (Value Your American Lie)—is part of a major new show at the Whitney Museum in New York, exploring art in Puerto Rico in the five years since the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Maria in 2017.Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia, Kling & Bang, Reykjavik, until 15 January 2023. Pussy Riot: Riot Days, National Theatre of Iceland, Reykjavik, 25 November. Proceeds from the concert and the exhibition go to supporting Ukraine. You can hear an in-depth interview with Ragnar Kjartansson from 2020 on our sister podcast A brush with… on the usual podcast platforms.No existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 23 Apr 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Luke talks to Hannah McGivern, a correspondent for The Art Newspaper who has just been to Qatar, about the vast number of public art projects that will accompany the FIFA Men’s World Cup that begins there on Sunday 20 November. She also discusses the museums that Qatar plans to open by 2030. How does this explosion of cultural initiatives sit with Qatar’s record on human rights and treatment of low-paid migrant workers in the building of its cultural venues and World Cup stadia? It has been a heady fortnight of auctions in New York. Ben speaks to Georgina Adam, an editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper, about the highs and lows, and whether we can expect even more sales of blockbuster collections in the coming years. And this episode’s Work of the Week is an untitled painting by Luis Meque, an artist born in Mozambique who came to fame in the 1980s and early-1990s in Zimbabwe. Tandazani Dhlakama, the curator of the exhibition When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, tells us about Meque’s painting and his brief and brilliant life.When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, South Africa, 20 November-3 September 2023 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: as the UN’s climate emergency summit, Cop27, continues in Egypt, Ben Luke talks to Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent—and the author of our online column about art and climate change—about international art initiatives responding to the crisis. Kaywin Feldman, the director of the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, tells us about the museum’s new $10m endowment fund for purchases of works by women artists. The historic gift, from the family of the gallery’s first female president, Victoria P. Sant, will help the NGA fill gaps in its collection. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Mother with Child on her Arm, Nude II (1906) by the German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker. The work is a highlight of Making Modernism, a show of German women artists that opens this weekend at the Royal Academy in London. The exhibition’s curator, Dorothy Price, discusses this late painting in Modersohn-Becker’s short but productive life.Making Modernism: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Käthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 12 November-12 February 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: uproar over the National Gallery in London’s building plans—is it a sensitive makeover or like “an airport lounge”? We talk to the director of the National Gallery, Gabriele Finaldi, about the gallery’s controversial plans for changes to its Sainsbury Wing, and to Rowan Moore, architecture critic at the Observer, about his views on the designs by the architect Annabel Selldorf, and how they respond to Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s original Post-Modern building. Tokini Peterside-Schwebig, the director of Art X Lagos, tells us about the contemporary art scene in Nigeria’s most populous city, and how the fair is addressing the climate emergency, as devastating floods wreak havoc in West Africa. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Marc Chagall’s The Falling Angel (1923/1933/1947), the centrepiece of a new exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany.Art X Lagos, Federal Palace, Lagos, Nigeria, 5-6 NovemberChagall: World in Turmoil, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany, until 19 February 2023 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: the recent opening of Edward Hopper’s New York at the Whitney Museum has reignited a controversy over the provenance of some of his works. We talk to the leading Hopper scholar Gail Levin about the story of Arthayer R. Sanborn, a Baptist Minister who befriended the Hopper family and eventually amassed a vast collection of memorabilia and art, some of which is in the Whitney Museum’s exhibition. In London, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard tell us about The Horror Show!, their exhibition looking at British culture over the past 50 years, and how artists, film-makers and musicians have used horror and fantasy as a means of exploring the political and social realities of the UK in that time. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the newly restored Death of the Virgin by the Flemish primitive painter Hugo van der Goes, which is the centrepiece of a new exhibition in Bruges.Edward Hopper’s New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 5 March 2023.Gail Levin’s website: gaillevin.commons.gc.cuny.eduThe Horror Show! A Twisted Tale of Modern Britain, Somerset House, London, until 19 February 2023Face to Face with Death: Hugo van der Goes, Old Masters and New Interpretations, Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges, Belgium, until 5 February 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: we talk to Emma Brown of Just Stop Oil about why the group targeted Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the National Gallery, London, for its climate emergency protest. Stacy Boldrick, assistant professor of museum studies at the University of Leicester, discusses the climate protests in the context of the long history of iconoclasm and attacks on works of art. The first version of Paris+, Art Basel’s fair in the French capital, opened this week, and we ask Melanie Gerlis, a columnist for the Financial Times and The Art Newspaper, how it compares to Paris’s previous fair, Fiac, and to the Frieze fairs in London last week. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Frank Bowling’s Suncrush (1976), which features in an exhibition of the Guyana-born artist’s work at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Reto Thüring, the curator of the show, tells us about the painting and Bowling’s 10-year stay in America in the 1960s and 1970s.Links:juststopoil.orgStacy Boldrick, Iconoclasm and the Museum, Routledge, 212pp, £27.99, $35.96 (pb)Paris+, until 23 October.Melanie Gerlis, The Art Fair Story: a Rollercoaster Ride, Lund Humphries, 104pp, £19.99, $34.99 (hb)Frank Bowling’s Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 22 October-9 April 2023; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 13 May-10 September next year. Related shows: Equals 6: A Sum Effect of Frank Bowling’s 5+1, University Hall Gallery, UMass Boston, 14 November-18 February 2023; Revisiting 5+1, Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery, Staller Center for the Arts, Stony Brook University, 10 November-23 February 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: Ben Luke talks to Anny Shaw, a contributing editor at The Art Newspaper, about the atmosphere at the Frieze London and Frieze Masters fairs amid the UK’s economic struggles and the strong US dollar. They also discuss the booming market for so-called “ultra-contemporary” art, and a shift in the artists being bought by collectors. We then talk to Cecilia Vicuña, the Chilean artist and poet who, this year alone, has won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, had a major exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and is the latest artist to take on the Turbine Hall commission at Tate Modern, where we caught up with her. Our acting digital editor, Aimee Dawson, talks to Camille Morineau, founder of the Paris-based organisation AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions), about Spotlight, the section of Frieze Masters dedicated this year to women artists of the 20th century. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Boy in Short Pants (1918) by Amedeo Modigliani. We talk to Simonetta Fraquelli, the consulting curator for a new exhibition of Modigliani’s work at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, about the painting.Frieze London and Frieze Masters, Regents Park, London, until 16 October.The Hyundai Commission: Cecilia Vicuña: Brain Forest Quipu, Tate Modern, London, until 16 April 2023; A Quipu of Encounters, Rituals and Assemblies, Tate Modern, from 14 October. Works by Cecilia Vicuña are at Lehmann Maupin, Frieze London, stand F2.Modigliani Up Close, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, 16 October-29 January 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: Georgina Adam joins Ben Luke to discuss the intriguing story of the bankrupt entrepreneur and art collector, the museum scholar and a host of Old Master paintings given new attributions. We talk to Suzanne Pagé, the curator of Monet-Mitchell, an exhibition bringing together the Impressionist Claude Monet and the post-war American abstract painter Joan Mitchell, at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a 1583 painting of Elizabeth I of England, known as the Sieve Portrait, which is one of the highlights of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York’s exhibition The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England. The show’s curators, Elizabeth Cleland and Adam Eaker, tell us about this richly layered picture.Monet-Mitchell, Joan Mitchell retrospective, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, until 27 February 2023. Joan Mitchell: Paintings, 1979-85, David Zwirner, New York, 3 November-17 December.The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10 October-8 January 2023 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a host of new exhibitions of the work of Lucian Freud opens across London to mark his centenary, this episode is all about this leading figure in post-war British painting. Ben Luke takes a tour of the major show at the National Gallery, which promises new perspectives on his work, with its curator, Daniel Herrmann. Martin Gayford discusses Freud’s little-explored letters, gathered in Love Lucian, a new book that Gayford has co-edited with Freud’s former assistant David Dawson. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the painting Mare Eating Hay (2006). The gallerist Pilar Ordovas, who worked closely with Freud in his later years, discusses the centrepiece of her new exhibition, Horses and Freud.Lucian Freud: New Perspectives, National Gallery, London, 1 October– 2 January 2023David Dawson and Martin Gayford (eds), Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud 1939-1954, Thames & Hudson, 392 pp, £65/$95 (hb)Freud and Horses, Ordovas, until 16 December.Other Freud exhibitions in London this autumn:Lucian Freud: The Painter and His Family, Freud Museum, until 29 January 2023; Lucian Freud: B.A.T, Lyndsey Ingram, until 4 November; Lucian Freud: Interior Life, with photographs by David Dawson, Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, 6 October-16 December; Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits, Garden Museum, 14 October-5 March 2023; Friends and Relations: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, Gagosian Gallery, 18 November-28 January 2023 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amid growing support for hard-right parties in Europe, Ben Luke speaks to James Imam, The Art Newspaper’s Italian correspondent, about the far-right party Brothers of Italy, whose leader Georgia Meloni looks set to win power in the general election on 25 September. The party has given culture unusual prominence in its election campaign. The longest-running contemporary art exhibition in the US, the Carnegie International, opens this weekend in Pittsburgh, and Ben talks to its curator, Sohrab Mohebbi about the show and the institution. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Endless Egg (1985) by Maria Bartuszová. Juliet Bingham, co-curator of a new show of Bartuszová’s work at Tate Modern in London, tells us about this enigmatic sculpture.The 58th Carnegie International: Is it morning for you yet?, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 24 September-2 April 2023.Maria Bartuszová, Tate Modern, London, until 16 April 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.