The Week in Art

• 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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• 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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• Censorship and Australia’s Venice Biennale pavilion, a controversial AI auction, and Elizabeth Catlett in Washington

  It seems absurd that more than a year ahead of the next Venice Biennale, one of the major pavilions in the Giardini might be empty for next year’s event. But that is the dilemma facing Creative Australia, which is responsible for that country’s Biennale presentation. Last month, it announced the team comprising the Lebanese-born Sydney-based artist Khaled Sabsabi and the curator Michael Dagostino as its selection for the 2026 event—and then, within days, rescinded the invitation. An almighty row has engulfed the Australian art world to the extent that the pavilion has been thrown into doubt. So what happened? The Art Newspaper’s Australian correspondent, Elizabeth Fortescue, tells Ben Luke about the debacle. A controversial auction of AI art concluded this week on Christie’s website. It prompted an open letter signed by thousands of artists and creative people asking Christie’s to cancel the sale and accusing the auction house of incentivising the “mass theft of human artists’ work”. We talk to Louis Jebb, The Art Newspaper’s managing editor, who oversees our technology coverage, about the sale and the latest developments in art and AI. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Tired (1946), a terracotta sculpture made by the American-Mexican artist Elizabeth Catlett. It is part of the touring exhibition Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist, which arrived this week at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, after premiering at the Brooklyn Museum in New York last year. We discuss the sculpture with Catherine Morris, a senior curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, who co-curated the exhibition, and Lynn Matheny, the National Gallery of Art’s deputy head of interpretation and curator of special projects.Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist, National Gallery of Art, 9 March-6 July; Art Institute of Chicago, 30 August-4 January 2026.Subscription 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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  1:08:37
• Leigh Bowery at Tate Modern, Ukraine and art—three years on, Max Beckmann and the Gothic Modern

  Tate Modern this week opened a vast exhibition exploring the life and work of the maverick Australian-born performance artist, fashion designer and self-styled “club monster”, Leigh Bowery, as well as the variety of cultural figures in his orbit in London. It coincides with other related London shows: one analysing the fashion work of Bowery and his collaborators and peers at the Fashion and Textile Museum, and another at the National Portrait Gallery about the style and culture magazine The Face, which emerged around the same time as Bowery set foot in the UK capital in the early 1980s. Ben Luke reviews the shows with Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent. Three years on from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and amid fraught international diplomacy following the US’s abrupt shift in approach to the war under President Trump, we speak to Sophia Kishkovsky, our international correspondent who has widely reported on Russia and Ukraine, about how Ukraine’s art world is responding to this new era. And this episode’s Work of the Week is actually a pair of works made more than 400 years apart called The Women’s Bath. The first is a woodcut based on a drawing by Albrecht Dürer from around 1500; the second a painting responding to it, made by the German artist Max Beckmann in 1919. They feature in an exhibition opening this week at the National Museum in Oslo, Gothic Modern: From Darkness to Light. Cynthia Osiecki, a curator at the museum, tells us more.Leigh Bowery!, Tate Modern, until 31 August; Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London, Fashion and Textile Museum, London, until 9 March; The Face Magazine: Culture Shift, National Portrait Gallery, London, until 18 May.Gothic Modern: From Darkness to Light, National Museum, Oslo, 28 February-15 June.Subscription 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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  1:10:38
• Gee’s Bend quiltmakers, “Degenerate” Art in Paris, and Mel Bochner remembered

  Shows opening in Washington and Dublin this month explore quiltmaking by African American women. Ben Luke talks to Raina Lampkins-Fielder, chief curator for the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, and the organiser of the exhibition Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), about the history of quiltmaking in this small part of Alabama, and the growing recognition of its artistic importance. The Musée Picasso in Paris this week unveiled its exhibition “Degenerate” art: Modern art on trial under the Nazis, which looks back not just at the infamous 1937 exhibition in Munich but also the years-long campaign to attack modern art and artists in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. We speak to the exhibition’s co-curator, Johan Popelard. And this episode’s Work of the Week marks the death last week of Mel Bochner, a leading figure in the development of conceptual art. We speak to his gallerist, Peter Freeman, who knew and worked with Bochner for more than 50 years. We look in particular detail at the 1969 work, 48" Standards (#1).Last chance: The Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency, until Sunday, 23 February. Buy it here. https://account.theartnewspaper.com/subscribe?sourcecode=year_ahead&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=theyearaheadKith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, IMMA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, from 28 February-27 October; We Gather at the Edge: Black Women and Contemporary Quilts, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, 21 February-22 June; Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, US, 27 June-12 October“Degenerate” art: Modern art on trial under the Nazis, Musée Picasso, Paris, until 25 May. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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