The Week in Art

As global political leaders, key figures in the tech industry and academics meet at Bletchley Park in the UK for a two-day summit on artificial intelligence— discussing in particular the risks of these new technologies and how they could be mitigated—we look at a project that reflects AI’s extraordinary potential. The Vesuvius Challenge aims to use AI to unlock the texts in the papyrus scrolls that were carbonised when the Roman city of Herculaneum was covered in ash and pumice after the eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in 79 AD. Brent Seales, the computer scientist behind the project, discusses the technologies involved and his optimism for a positive outcome. Then, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, director of research and honorary professor of Roman Studies at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, tells us about Herculaneum and the Villa of the Papyri where the scrolls were recovered, and considers what the papyri might contain. In modern-day Italy, the country’s culture minister has designated Pietrangelo Buttafuoco—a right-wing journalist and author whose books include a literary portrait of the notorious former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi—as the next president of the Venice Biennale. It is the latest in a series of appointments that opposition politicians describe as “chilling”. We talk to The Art Newspaper’s correspondent in Italy, James Imam. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Dorothea Lange’s photograph Maynard and Dan Dixon (1930). Philip Brookman, the curator of a new exhibition dedicated to Lange’s portraiture at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, tells us more.Vesuvius Challenge, visit scrollprize.orgDorothea Lange: Seeing People, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 5 November-31 March 2024 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: the first Kyiv Biennial since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year is taking place in various locations across the wartorn country as well as a host of neighbouring European states. We talk to the co-curator, Georg Schöllhammer, about this year’s event. As refugees and displaced people continue to dominate the news, a global sound art project, Migration Sounds, aims to explore and reimagine the sounds of human migration and settlement. We speak to Stuart Fowkes, the founder of Cities and Memory, who has conceived the project with the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (Compas). And this episode’s Work of the Week is Rebirth of a Nation, a mural made for Brixton Underground Station in London by the Ethiopian-Italian artist Jem Perucchini, which is unveiled next week. Jessica Vaughan, the senior curator of Art on the Underground, tells us about the commission.The Kyiv Biennial continues to unfold into 2024, visit 2023.kyivbiennial.orgCities and Memory’s Migration Sounds project, citiesandmemory.com/migration; compas.ox.ac.ukJem Perucchini: Rebirth of a Nation, Brixton Underground Station, London, from 2 November. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: it’s the second year of Paris +, the event that has taken over from Fiac as the leading French art fair. How is Art Basel’s French flagship faring amid geopolitical turmoil and economic uncertainty, and is Paris still on the rise as a cultural hub? We speak to Georgina Adam, an editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper, and Kabir Jhala, our deputy art market editor, who are in Paris, to find out. The largest ever exhibition of the work of the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto opened last week at the Hayward Gallery in London, before travelling to Beijing and Sydney next year. We talk to its co-curator Thomas Sutton. And this episode’s Work of the Week is La femme-cheval or the Horse-Woman, a painting made in 1918 by the French artist Marie Laurencin. She is the subject of a major survey, called Sapphic Paris, opening this week at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia in the US. Cindy Kang, who co-curated the exhibition, tells us more about this landmark work in Laurencin’s life.Paris +, 20-22 October.Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine, Hayward Gallery, London, until 7 January 2023; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 23 March-23 June 2024; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, 2 August-27 October 2024.Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, US, 22 October-21 January. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Frieze art fair has turned 20 this week, and is only growing in its ambitions, having acquired the Armory Show fair in New York and Expo Chicago. So what should we make of Frieze’s continuing expansion and what’s the mood at Frieze London and Frieze Masters this year? We talk to Tim Schneider, The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor, who is over from New York for the fairs. In Reykjavik in Iceland, the artist-run Sequences Biennial opens on Friday. A former curator of the event is Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir, who will represent Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 2024. Tom Seymour went to the Icelandic capital to talk to her about Venice, Sequences and the Icelandic scene. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Open Window, Collioure (1905) by Henri Matisse. The painting is a highlight of the exhibition Vertigo of Colour: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. We speak to Dita Amory, co-curator of the show, about this landmark painting in Matisse’s career.Frieze London and Frieze Masters, Regent’s Park, London, until 15 October.The Sequences Biennial, entitled Can’t See, begins on 13 October and continues until 22 October 2023.Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 13 October-21 January 2024; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 25 February-27 May 2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The looted Ethiopian icon, AI copyright debate in US, the end of China’s museum boomThis week: The Art Newspaper’s London correspondent Martin Bailey tells us about the Kwer’ata Re’esu, a European painting of Christ that became a revered icon in Ethiopia before being looted by an agent for the British Museum in the 19th century. Martin’s colour photographs of the work—which has been stored in a vault in Portugal—might help us to identify its maker and prompt new calls for the icon’s return to Ethiopia. On Monday this week, campaigners in the US staged an AI Day of Action, amid mounting concerns over the exploitation of artists’ work by corporations behind powerful artificial intelligence tools. We talk to our reporter Daniel Grant about renewed calls for the US Congress to enact a law that would ban corporations from copyrighting art made by AI. And as China’s economy struggles, some museums in the country are closing or scaling down their ambitions. We talk to our correspondent in China, Lisa Movius, about how the end of the Chinese economic miracle has hastened the end of its museum boom. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: three big London shows, in depth. As Marina Abramović draws huge crowds to the Royal Academy of Arts in London, we interview her about the exhibition—the first ever dedicated to a woman artist in the Royal Academy’s main galleries. At the National Gallery, meanwhile, is a remarkable survey of the paintings of the 17th-century Dutch master Frans Hals, which will tour next year to Amsterdam and Berlin. We take a tour with Bart Cornelis, curator of the National’s incarnation of the show. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Peter Paul Rubens’s Three Nymphs with a Cornucopia of around 1625 to 1628 (painted with Frans Snyders). In the collection of the Prado in Madrid, it is one of a number of major loans to the exhibition Rubens and Women at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. Amy Orrock, one of the curators of the exhibition, tells us more.Marina Abramović, Royal Academy of Arts, London, until 1 January 2024. You can hear our interview with Marina during the Covid lockdown in our episode from 8 May 2020, and a conversation with Tate Modern’s Catherine Wood about Ulay, following his death in 2020, in the episode from 6 March that year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: the latest controversies prompted by the Unesco World Heritage Committee. As we mentioned last week, the 45th session of the committee is taking place in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, and continues until 25 September. The founder of The Art Newspaper, Anna Somers Cocks, joins host Ben Luke to look at the latest sites granted World Heritage status and at the Committee’s decision not to add Venice to the organisation’s endangered list. We ask: is Unesco so mired in politics that it cannot adequately perform its role? The Colombian artist Fernando Botero died last week, aged 91, and we talk to the gallerist Stéphane Custot, of Waddington Custot galleries in London, about this painter and sculptor who drew ire from many critics but achieved widespread public acclaim. And this episode’s Work of the Week is October’s Gone . . . Goodnight (1973) by Barkley L. Hendricks. As a group of paintings by Hendricks goes on display among the masters at Frick Madison in New York, Aimee Ng, co-curator of the exhibition, tells us about the painting.Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick, Frick Madison, New York, until 7 January 2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A Unesco conference and archeological summit in Saudi Arabia are the latest examples of the country’s increasing focus on culture as part of the so-called Vision 2030 programme. We look at Saudi Arabia’s unprecedented and lavishly funded focus on contemporary and ancient culture and how that relates to ongoing concerns about artistic freedom and human rights abuses in the kingdom. Alia Al-Senussi, a cultural strategist, and senior advisor at Art Basel and to the Saudi Ministry of Culture, joins host Ben Luke to discuss the contemporary art scene, and Melissa Gronlund, a reporter on the Middle East for The Art Newspaper, tells us about the push to reveal hitherto underexplored Saudi heritage. The Sierra Leone-born, London-based artist and poet Julianknxx this week unveiled a new project at London’s Barbican Centre, Chorus in Rememory of Flight. The multi-screen installation features performers and choirs from the African diaspora who Julianknxx met on a 4,000-mile trip around European cities with colonial histories, from Lisbon via Marseille, Rotterdam and Berlin to London. We talk to him about this epic endeavour. And this episode’s Work of the Week is among the greatest works on paper ever made: Michelangelo’s studies in red chalk for the Libyan Sibyl, one of the most distinctive figures on his Sistine Chapel ceiling. The drawing features in Michelangelo and Beyond at the Albertina in Vienna and one of its curators, Constanze Malissa, tells us more about it.Art in Saudi Arabia: A New Creative Economy? by Rebecca Anne Proctor, with Alia Al-Senussi, published 30 November, Lund Humphries, £19.99.Julianknxx: Chorus in Rememory of Flight, The Curve, Barbican Centre, London, and online on WePresent, until 11 February 2024; Julianknxx is in A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, Tate Modern, until 14 January 2024.Michelangelo and Beyond, Albertina, Vienna, 15 September-14 January 2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leading figures in the art world, including Max Hollein, discuss hopes and concerns for the visual arts. Topics covered include the significance of museums, restitution of cultural heritage, autonomy in the arts, diverse narratives, and building a society based on love and joy. The importance of diversity, fair pay, and democracy in museums is highlighted. Ethical concerns of collaborating with Saudi Arabia and climate change in the art world are explored. Updates on the art market and the impact of activist art are discussed. The need for transparency and support for artists is emphasized.

In the first episode of this new season of The Week in Art, we talk to Martin Bailey, The Art Newspaper’s London correspondent, about the thefts scandal at the British Museum and its implications for the museum in the future. The artist Grada Kilomba is one of four curators of this year’s Sāo Paulo biennial, called Choreographies of the Impossible, and she joins our host Ben Luke to discuss the show. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Village Square at Céret, a painting made in 1920 by Chaïm Soutine. It features in the exhibition Against the Current, which opens this week at K20 in Düsseldorf, Germany. The exhibition’s co-curator, Susanne Meyer-Büser, tells us about the picture.The Sāo Paulo biennial: Choreographies of the Impossible, Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, Sāo Paulo, Brazil, 6 September-10 December.Chaïm Soutine: Against the Current, K20 Düsseldorf, 2 September until 14 January next year; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, 9 February-14 July 14 2024; Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland, 16 August-1 December 2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.