This week: the Whitney Biennial reviewed. Host Ben Luke discusses the show with Ben Sutton, The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, and the critic Annabel Keenan. Our annual survey of visitor numbers at museums is published in the next print edition of The Art Newspaper and Lee Cheshire, the co-editor of the report, joins us to discuss the findings. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s drawing The Temptation of St Anthony (around 1556). It features in the exhibition Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings, which opens this weekend at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK. An Van Camp, the curator of the show, discusses this remarkable study.The Whitney Biennial: Even Better than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 11 August.Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK, 23 March-23 June. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Four years after Tate Britain closed its restaurant because Rex Whistler’s murals on its walls contained racist imagery, it has unveiled the work it commissioned in response to Whistler’s painting by the artist Keith Piper. We talk to Piper about the work. The annual Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report was published on Wednesday and, as ever, reviews the status of the international art market. We speak to its author, the cultural economist and founder of the company Arts Economics, Clare McAndrew. And this episode’s Work of the Week is With Verticals, one of Anni Albers’s pictorial weavings, made in 1946. It is a key piece in the exhibition Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, which arrived this week at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. We discuss the weaving with the show’s curator, Lynne Cooke.Keith Piper: Viva Voce, Tate Britain, until at least 2025.Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2024, theartmarket.artbasel.com.Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 17 March-28 July; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 25 October-2 March 2025; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 20 April 2025-13 September 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To coincide with International Women’s Day on 8 March, the South London Gallery is opening the exhibition Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest. Activism and photography have long gone hand in hand but this collaborative exhibition, organised with the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), attempts to capture a new chapter in this distinguished history, with a particular focus on feminism across the world. We talk to Sarah Allen, the head of programme at the South London Gallery, and Fiona Rogers, the V&A’s Parasol Foundation curator of women in photography, about the show. The financier, philanthropist, collector and leader of cultural organisations Jacob Rothschild died last week at the age of 87. We talk to Anna Somers Cocks, the founder of The Art Newspaper, who interviewed Lord Rothschild on numerous occasions, about his impact on the visual arts and heritage. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Adelphi, made in 1967 by Robert Ryman. It is one of around 50 pieces by Ryman in the exhibition The Act of Looking, which opened this week at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. Guillaume Fabius, the co-curator of the show, joins us to discuss the painting.Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest, South London Gallery, London, 8 March-9 June.Robert Ryman: The Act of Looking, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, until 1 July.New subscription offer for The Art Newspaper: up to 50% off our annual subscription packages. Subscribe at theartnewspaper.com before 14 March to receive our bumper April issue, with a Venice Biennale Guide, the Art of Luxury magazine, our annual Attendance Figures report and a supplement on the Expo Chicago fair. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Exploring Frieze LA's impact on the art scene, the Royal Academy's Angelica Kauffman exhibition, and Matthew Wong's response to Van Gogh. Dive into the challenges faced by museums during Covid-19 and the connection between the two artists. Delve into the evolving art landscape of Los Angeles post-Frieze and the ambition of female artists in history painting. Explore the intricate portrayal of Lady Hamilton and the artistic achievements inspired by neoclassicism.

The exhibition The Time Is Always Now, featuring 22 artists from the African diaspora whose work takes the Black figure as its starting point, is now open at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and will tour to Philadelphia later in the year. We explore the show with its curator Ekow Eshun. 2024 marks the centenary of the the first Surrealist manifesto by André Breton, and the first of a series of exhibitions focusing on the movement this year opened at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels this week, before travelling to the Centre Pompidou later in the year and Hamburg, Madrid and Philadelphia (again) next year. But what did that first manifesto contain and how did it influence the course of the movement? Alyce Mahon, a Surrealism specialist and professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Cambridge, tells us more. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Eagle Dance (1934) by Tonita Peña, one of the leading Native American Pueblo artists of the 20th century. It features in a new exhibition, Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection, at the Saint Louis Art Museum in the US. Alexander Brier Marr, the associate curator of Native American art at the museum, joins us to discuss the painting.The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, National Portrait Gallery, London, 22 February-19 May; The Box, Plymouth, UK, 29 June-29 September; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 9 November-9 February 2025.Alyce Mahon is the co-editor of a new International Journal of Surrealism, published by Minnesota University Press; Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World, by Alyce Mahon, Yale University Press, published in September. IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, 21 February-21 July; Centre Pompidou, Paris, 4 September-13 January 2025; Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, 4 February–11 May 2025; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, 12 June 2025-12 October 2025; Philadelphia Museum of Art, US, autumn 2025–spring 2026.Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection, Saint Louis Art Museum, US, until 14 July.Last chance: buy The Art Newspaper’s magazine The Year Ahead 2024, an authoritative guide to the world’s must-see art exhibitions and museum openings at theartnewspaper.com until 1 March for just £9.99 or $13.69. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A vast survey covering seven decades of art by Yoko Ono has just opened at Tate Modern, and we take a tour of the show with Juliet Bingham, its curator. The collection from Elton John’s home in Atlanta in the US is up for auction at Christie’s and ahead of its big Opening Night auction next week, The Art Newspaper’s associate digital editor Alexander Morrison spoke to Tash Perrin, Christie’s deputy chairman in the Americas, about the works and John’s particular taste in art and objects. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a reconstructed and reimagined statue of the fourth-century Roman emperor, Constantine the Great. The colossus has been remade from the 10 known fragments of the original sculpture by the Madrid-based Factum Foundation, and was installed last week in a garden in Rome’s Capitoline Museums. Adam Lowe, the founder of the Factum Foundation, tells me more.Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, Tate Modern, until 1 September; K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, 28 September-16 March 2025The Collection of Sir Elton John: Goodbye Peachtree Road auctions begin at Christie’s New York on 21 February; online sales are now open.The Colossus of Constantine, Capitoline Museums, Rome, until at least the end of 2025.Get The Art Newspaper’s magazine The Year Ahead 2024, an authoritative guide to the world’s must-see art exhibitions and museum openings—many of which were discussed on our podcast from 12 January—at theartnewspaper.com for just £9.99 or $13.69. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As she stages a non-stop reading of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism for five days at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Tania Bruguera reflects on growing concerns about the censorship of artists in Germany in relation to the Israel-Hamas war. She also discusses the comments made by Ai Weiwei this week that censorship in the West was now “exactly the same” as in Mao’s China. The Courtauld in London this week opened an exhibition of the monumental charcoal drawings made by Frank Auerbach in the 1950s and early 1960s, and we take a tour of the exhibition with the show’s curator Barnaby Wright. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Mihrdukht Aims Her Arrow at the Ring, a folio from the Hamzanāma (Story of Hamza). Made in India in around 1570, during the Mughal period, it is one of the works acquired by the British painter Howard Hodgkin in a lifetime of collecting Indian art. The collection is the subject of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which opened this week. Navina Najat Haidar, one of the co-curators of the show, tells us more.Tania Bruguera: Where Your Ideas Become Civic Actions (100 Hours Reading “The Origins of Totalitarianism”), Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin, until 11pm on Sunday, 11 February. You can hear a discussion about Hannah Arendt’s legacy and her influence on artists in our episode from 15 January 2021.Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads, The Courtauld, London, until 27 May.Indian Skies: The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 9 June. And you can hear my interview with Antony Peattie, Hodgkin’s partner for the last few decades of his life, about the artist’s final paintings, on the episode from 25 May 2018.Offer: you can still buy The Art Newspaper’s magazine The Year Ahead 2024, an authoritative guide to the world’s must-see art exhibitions and museum openings—many of which were discussed on our podcast from 12 January. Get a print and digital subscription to The Art Newspaper at theartnewspaper.com before the 15th of this month to receive a copy of The Year Ahead with your next printed issue. Or you can buy the magazine on its own on the website for just £9.99 or $13.69. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: Adriano Pedrosa, the artistic director of the 60th Venice Biennale, on his exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere. As he announces the themes, concepts and the list of artists in the show, we speak to the Brazilian curator about his plans. Hugely popular immersive art experiences are popping up across the world from London to Las Vegas, Tokyo and Abu Dhabi, and we discuss this phenomenon and its implications for museums and galleries with Chris Michaels—an art and technology consultant and former director of digital, communications and technology at the National Gallery, London. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Forever), an installation first made in 2017 and now on view in the Serpentine South gallery in London, where Kruger’s career survey arrived this week after spells in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Hans Ulrich Obrist, the Serpentine Galleries’ artistic director, explores the installation.The 60th Venice Biennale: Foreigners Everywhere, Giardini and Arsenale, Venice, Italy, 20 April-24 November.Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You, Serpentine South, London, until 17 March.Offer: you can still buy The Art Newspaper’s magazine The Year Ahead 2024, an authoritative guide to the world’s must-see art exhibitions and museum openings—many of which were discussed on our podcast from 12 January. Get a print and digital subscription to The Art Newspaper at theartnewspaper.com before the 15th of this month to receive a copy of The Year Ahead with your next printed issue. Or you can buy the magazine on its own on the website for just £9.99 or $13.69. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: masters week in New York—can the market for historic works be revived? Scott Reyburn, a market reporter for The Art Newspaper, has for some time been exploring the decline in the trade for Old Master paintings. He looks ahead to the auctions in Masters Week in New York, which begin this weekend. In India on Monday, the prime minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a vast temple to the Hindu god Ram in the city of Ayodhya. The temple replaces a 16th-Century mosque that was destroyed by Hindu mobs in 1992, an event that provoked riots in which nearly 2,000 people died, most of them Muslim people. Our deputy art market editor and regular correspondent in India, Kabir Jhala, is in Mumbai, and joins us to discuss this pivotal issue in modern Indian history, what it means ahead of India’s general election in the spring, and whether it is affecting the Indian art market. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Madame déménage (1867), a political cartoon by the French artist Honoré Daumier that was deemed so provocative in its time that it was not published. The lithograph is part of an exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt that features 120 Daumier works from the Hellwig Collection. Hans-Jürgen Hellwig, the who is donating the collection to the Städel, joins us to discuss this incendiary image.Honoré Daumier: The Hellwig Collection, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany, until 12 May.Offer: to get The Art Newspaper’s magazine The Year Ahead 2024, an authoritative guide to the world’s must-see art exhibitions and museum openings, get a print and digital subscription to The Art Newspaper at theartnewspaper.com before 15 February. Your copy of The Year Ahead will arrive with your next printed issue. You can buy the magazine on its own on the website for just £9.99 or $13.69. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.sgZanele Muholi: Eye Me, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, US, until 11 August. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.