The Week in Art

• Trump’s assault on museums and libraries, the art market’s 12% fall, Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett

  In two-and-a-half months since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, a series of executive orders and other initiatives have attempted systematically to eliminate and defund some of the federal agencies responsible for the distribution of federal money to museums, libraries and other organisations. The Art Newspaper’s editor-in-chief in the Americas, Ben Sutton, joins Ben Luke to discuss what is being seen as an authoritarian and ideologically driven attempt to control cultural activities in taxpayer-funded institutions, restrict free speech and—to use the administration’s own term—“rewrite history”. We also discuss the effect of the economic chaos caused by President Trump’s seesawing on trade tariffs in the past week. That same topic is discussed by Clare McAndrew of Arts Economics, the writer of the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025. The report’s key finding is that global art sales declined by 12% in 2024 and McAndrew discusses this stark statistic and other aspects of the survey. And this episode’s Works of the Week are by Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, the two artists in an exhibition subtitled The Art of Friendship at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. Jellett and Hone were key figures in Irish Modernism, and we talk to one of the curators of the exhibition, Brendan Rooney, about Jellett’s painting, Decoration (1923) and Hone’s stained-glass image of a chalice (1948-52), a study for her most famous piece, the East Window of Eton College Chapel in Berkshire, UK.The Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025, theartmarket.artbasel.com.Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, until 10 August.Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app, including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Subscribe here.https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Museum visitor figures—highs and lows, William Morris mania, Marguerite Matisse, the unsung hero of her father’s art

  he Art Newspaper’s annual report on museum visitor figures is out and shows that the slow build-back after the Covid-19 closures is over, and museums are back at what we might consider their “natural level”. Host Ben Luke talks to the co-editor of our report, Lee Cheshire, about what that means, and who were last year’s big winners and losers. A new exhibition at the museum in the former London home of the 19th-century designer, socialist activist and writer, William Morris, looks at his ubiquity in the 21st century. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, visits Morris Mania, as the show is called, and talks to the William Morris Gallery’s director Hadrian Garrard. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a painting made in the winter of 1906 to 1907 by Henri Matisse. It depicts his daughter, Marguerite, and is a highlight of a show at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, called Matisse and Marguerite: Through her Father’s Eyes. Ben Luke discusses the painting and its subject with Charlotte Barat-Mabille, one of the curators of the exhibition.Morris Mania, William Morris Gallery, London, 5 April-21 SeptemberMatisse and Marguerite: Through Her Father’s Eyes, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, until 24 August 2025Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app, including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Subscribe here: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  1:00:51
• The Frick: Annabelle Selldorf interview and our review. Plus, Taiso Yoshitoshi

  After a five-year closure, the Frick Collection in New York will reopen to the public on 17 April and this week opened its doors to the press. The Gilded Age mansion, created on Fifth Avenue for the industrialist Henry Clay Frick, has been restored and enhanced by Selldorf Architects, with the executive architect Beyer Blinder Belle. It is the biggest upgrade to the building since it first became a museum in 1935. Ben Luke talks to the architect Annabelle Selldorf. Then, Cabelle Ahn, a contributor to The Art Newspaper who is a specialist in 18th-century art, joins us to review the transformed museum. This episode’s Work of the Week is A woman abalone diver wrestling with an octopus (around 1870), a woodblock print by the Japanese artist Taiso Yoshitoshi. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, discusses the work with James Russell, the curator of a new exhibition, Undersea, at Hastings Contemporary in the UK.The Frick Collection opens on 17 April.Undersea, Hastings Contemporary, 29 March-14 September.Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app, including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Subscribe here.https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  1:00:55
• Jack Whitten at MoMA, New York, Paris Noir at the Pompidou, Arpita Singh at the Serpentine

  The largest ever exhibition of the work of Jack Whitten opens this weekend at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Ben Luke speaks to Michelle Kuo, the curator of the show, about the political and experimental commitment that drove Whitten’s remarkable body of work. In Paris, one of the final exhibitions to open at the Centre Pompidou before it closes for five years was unveiled this week. Paris Noir brings together more than 150 artists from across the African diaspora who were based in, or had notable stays in, the French capital between the 1950s and 2000. Ben went to Paris to speak to Alicia Knock, the lead curator on the show. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Arpita Singh’s Searching Sita Through Torn Papers, Paper Strips and Labels (2015). It features in a new exhibition of the Indian artist’s work at the Serpentine North in London. The Art Newspaper’s associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, spoke to the Serpentine Galleries’ artistic director, Hans Ulrich Obrist, about the painting.Jack Whitten: The Messenger, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 23 March-2 August. You can hear Jack Whitten talking about his life and work in the show’s audioguide at moma.org.Paris Noir: Artistic Circulations and Anti-colonial Resistance, 1950-2000, Centre Pompidou, Paris, until 30 June.Arpita Singh: Remembering, Serpentine North, London, until 27 July.Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app, including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Subscribe here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  1:09:01
• The big art slowdown, Dutch funding crisis, Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow

  After a challenging year in which international galleries, auction houses and museums have been forced to scale back their operations and make redundancies on an alarming scale, a slower, more considered approach to business seems to be emerging. So are we into an era of longer, more in-depth exhibitions and bespoke events concerned more with authentic connection than flashy spectacle? Ben Luke talks to Anny Shaw, a contributing editor at The Art Newspaper. In the Netherlands, just as in the US, cuts by far-right politicians to international development seem likely to have a huge impact on arts projects. As Tefaf, the major international art fair opens in the Dutch city of Maastricht, we talk to Senay Boztas, our correspondent based in Amsterdam, about fears of a funding crisis. And this episode’s Work of the Week is one of the greatest paintings ever made: The Hunters in the Snow (1565) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It is part of an exhibition called Arcimboldo – Bassano – Bruegel: Nature’s Time, which opened this week at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The museum’s director, Jonathan Fine, tells us more.Arcimboldo–Bassano–Bruegel: Nature’s Time, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, until 29 JuneSubscription offer: enjoy 3 issues of The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3—subscribe before 21 March to start your subscription with the April bumper issue including our Visitor Figures 2024 report and an EXPO Chicago special. Subscribe here. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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