Front Row

Painter, sculptor, architect and engineer- Leonardo da Vinci is regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. To mark the 500th anniversary of his death, 144 of his drawings from the Royal Collection are to be exhibited in 12 galleries and museums nationwide. Senior curator Natasha Howes, and Mark Roughley, medical illustrator and Art in Science lecturer at Liverpool School of Art and Design discuss the Renaissance master's anatomical work on show at Manchester Art Gallery.Green Book - a film about an Italian-American bouncer turned chauffeur for an African-American concert pianist, driving through the Deep South in Jim Crow America, arrives in the UK garlanded with awards and Oscar and Bafta nominations. Al Bailey, Co-founder and Director of Programming at Manchester International Film Festival, reviews.As Sian Edwards prepares to conduct Opera North’s latest production of Janáček’s Katya Kabanova, she discusses the appeal of the Czech composer’s music, and what she plans to bring to his dark tale of a woman in search of love but trapped by convention.Earlier this month, the Department for Education announced plans for a new model music curriculum with the aim of stopping the decline in the number of pupils studying music at GCSE and A Level. The plan has faced criticism including thirty academics with backgrounds in music and education signing an open letter to the DfE. The Right Honourable Nick Gibb, Minister for School Standards, and Dr Jonathan Savage from Manchester Metropolitan University, and former Chair of Expert Subject Advisory Group for Music 2013, join Gaylene to discuss if the proposed new curriculum is the right answer to the right question.

Moon and Me is the new CBeebies programme by Andrew Davenport, creator of the award-winning shows Teletubbies and In the Night Garden. He discusses how his story of a doll, Pepi Nana, and the baby in the moon who travels to her doll house to tell stories and have adventures, was inspired by tales of toys that come to life when nobody is looking.Why are some musicians and writers labelled 'the voice of a generation'? Kate Mossman from The New Statesman and books journalist Sarah Shaffi discuss what characteristics earn artists this label, if it’s a blessing or a curse, and who they think represent generations today or in the past.As English National Opera chief Stuart Murphy says opera has a problem with diversity and announces a strategy for nurturing BAME talent, Opera Now editor Ashutosh Khandekar and composer Shirley Thompson discuss the issue of representation in opera.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Jerome WeatheraldMain image: Moon and Me Photo credit: BBC

Live daily magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music

As she turns 80, Germaine Greer reflects on her career as a Shakespeare academic, public intellectual, feminist and provocateur.Germaine Greer discusses her passion for Shakespeare and how reading his comedies influenced her thinking for The Female Eunuch; her work championing the work of female writers and painters; how much things have really changed for women; and she shares her thoughts on censorship and pornography and why being outspoken is the best way to provoke change.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Hannah Robins

Clint Eastwood is the director and star of The Mule, about a cantankerous 90 year-old horticulturist who decides to become a drug mule. Mark Eccleston reviews. The UK's biggest contemporary art prize, the £40,000 Artes Mundi prize, was won last night in Cardiff by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, known for his dream-like films such as Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. He talks to Front Row.In new novel When All is Said, 84 year-old Maurice Hannigan props up the hotel bar in a small town in Ireland and, by toasting the five people important in his life, he tells of his path from poverty to becoming a rich landowner. Debut novelist Anne Griffin explains her real-life inspiration and how she got into her narrator’s head.There have been calls by Leave campaigners for London's Photographers' Gallery to be stripped of its funding in the wake of their exhibition of a fully functioning office tasked with reversing Brexit. In the continued uncertainty surrounding the future of arts funding post-Brexit, cultural historian Robert Hewison discusses what organisations such as Arts Council England may need to consider when funding projects in the future. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser

Karen Krizanovich explains the appeal of three of the biggest recent hit TV releases still provoking discussion: Bird Box and Sex Education on Netflix, and Bros: After the Screaming Stops on BBC iPlayer.The contemporary video artist Bill Viola has been paired with the Renaissance master Michelangelo in the Royal Academy’s new exhibition, Bill Viola/Michelangelo: Life, Death, Rebirth. It sets out to show the preoccupation of both artists with the nature of human experience and existence. Critic Waldemar Januszczak gives his response to the exhibition and its thesis.The Art Fund, the charity that raises money to acquire art for the nation, has revealed that it is to disband its volunteer network by the end of the year. Its director Stephen Deuchar explains the decision.The death has been announced of the great literary editor and writer Diana Athill. She worked with many celebrated authors including Jean Rhys, Molly Keane and VS Naipaul. In recent decades she became known as a brilliant and unsentimental writer of memoir. The writer Damian Barr was a close friend, and reflects on Athill's life and work.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Edwina PitmanMain image: Bros

The nominations for the 91st Academy Awards were announced earlier today with Roma and The Favourite leading the list, with Black Panther the first superhero film to be nominated for best picture. Kirsty Lang is joined by film critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Jason Solomons to consider the winners and losers, and assess whether there is a better representation of BAME talent than in previous years.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Dymphna FlynnMain image: Oscars Photo credit: Getty Images

Nicole Kidman discusses her first lead role for some time as she plays a tortured detective in the grimy LA-set thriller, Destroyer.John Cleland’s 18th century novel Fanny Hill has become known as 'the most famous banned book in the country'. Written in 1749, it tells the story of Frances ‘Fanny’ Hill who, after her parents' death, travels from the countryside to London earning money as a sex worker. As one of the oldest-known copies is set to go under the hammer, literary critic Sarah Ditum discusses if it still has the power to excite and shock us.Netflix's Tidying Up with Marie Kondo has caused a stir for suggesting that we should hang on to only 30 books that ‘spark joy’. Stig visits the author Linda Grant in her living room to ask her about famously culling the book collection that she'd built up from childhood.As Sotheby's prepare their auction The Female Triumphant, a selection of works by female Old Masters from the 16th to 19th centuries, including Artemisia Gentileschi, Sotheby's specialist Chloe Stead and critic Charlotte Mullins consider the role of - and the struggles faced by - women artists from that period and today.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Jerome Weatherald

The Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright MP, who today gave his ‘Value of Culture’ speech, in which he set out the government’s plans for a multi-million-pound investment in the arts and culture in the UK, discusses his plans to ‘unleash creativity across the nation’.This week the BBC radio schedules saw sweeping change with new presenters at the helm of two breakfast shows. Lauren Laverne takes over from Shaun Keaveny at 6 Music, and Zoe Ball fills the shoes of Chris Evans on the UK’s largest breakfast show on Radio 2. Radio critic Susan Jeffreys reviews both shows, as well as BBC Sounds new true crime style drama podcast, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma has followed his Man Booker shortlisted novel, The Fisherman, with an epic story narrated by the central character’s guardian spirit, or Chi. He tells Alex how he wanted An Orchestra of Minorities to explore the Igbo belief system in the way that Milton’s Paradise Lost does for Christianity.Presenter: Alex Clark Producer: Sarah JohnsonMain image: Jeremy Wright MP Photo credit: Getty Images

The impact of Brexit on the creative industries. Today a letter from the Business for People’s Vote Campaign, was published in the Times, signed by names including leaders of the creative industries, like Norman Foster, Terence Conran, and the bosses of Aardman Animation and Endemol Shine. We speak to John Kampfner, formerly of the Creative Industries Federation and who helped coordinate the letter, about the impact of proposals on the sector.Bestselling author of The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield, on her third novel, Once Upon A River – a mystery set in the 19th century around the Thames.The Government has created something called the ‘Building Better, Building Beautiful commission’, led by philosopher Roger Scruton. It will be shortly hosting public debates about the aesthetics of architecture. Architectural designer and presenter of Building the Dream, Charlie Luxton, discusses beauty in architecture. Composer, multi-instrumentalist, performance artist, and Pulitzer Prize winner Du Yun is one of the featured artists in SoundState, an international festival of new music which in on at the Southbank Centre in London this week. She discusses her love of making music that breaks boundaries.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Rebecca Armstrong