The Week in Art

• 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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• Anselm Kiefer, Hoor al Qasimi on Sharjah, a Picasso Blue Period mystery

  Next month, the German artist Anselm Kiefer will be 80, and the first of a number of shows internationally to mark this landmark moment opened this week at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK. It focuses on his early works, and Ben Luke visits Oxford to discuss this pivotal moment in his career with Lena Fritsch, the curator of the exhibition. The latest edition of the biennial in the United Arab Emirate of Sharjah opened earlier this month. The Art Newspaper’s correspondent Dale Berning Sawa visited during opening week and spoke to Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, the president and director of Sharjah Art Foundation, which runs the biennial, about this year’s edition, her journey in art, and her role in establishing the biennial as a leading art world event. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto (1901) by Pablo Picasso, a painting from the artist’s Blue Period. Conservators at The Courtauld Institute in London have discovered an image of a mystery woman hidden beneath this portrait of De Soto, Picasso’s friend and fellow artist. We talk to Barnaby Wright, deputy head of The Courtauld Gallery, about the painting and the image beneath it. The work features in a new exhibition at the gallery, Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection.Anselm Kiefer: Early Works, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK, 14 February-15 June; Anselm Kiefer: Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 7 March-9 June; Kiefer / Van Gogh, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 28 June-26 October; Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Ocean, Saint Louis Art Museum, US, 18 October 2025-25 January 2026To carry, the 16th Sharjah Biennial, until 15 June 2025.The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 14 February-26 May.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 still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Trump tariffs and Zona Maco in Mexico, India Art Fair, and American photography at the Rijksmuseum

  Last weekend, the US President Donald Trump signed executive orders placing 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which were due to take effect on Tuesday. But at the last minute, the tariffs were postponed, at least for a month. Inevitably, though, the talk of a trade war set nerves jangling at Zona Maco, the art fair in Mexico City, which opened on Wednesday. Ben Luke speaks to Ben Sutton, The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, who is in the Mexican capital, about the prevailing mood, and about the effect on the art world more generally of some of Trump’s executive orders. It is also the India Art Fair in Delhi this week. Our art market editor, Kabir Jhala, is there and tells us more about the fair amid the wider social and political climate in India. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Henry Fitz Jr’s self-portrait, a daguerreotype, made in January or February 1840. It is thought to be the first photograph of a person made in the United States. It features in a major show at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, American Photography. We speak to Mattie Boom, Rijksmuseum’s curator of Photography, about the work, and the wider show.Zona Maco, Mexico City, until 9 February.The India Art Fair, Delhi, until 9 February.American Photography, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, until 9 June. Carrie Mae Weems’s 2021 series Painting the Town, Rijksmuseum, until the same date.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 still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Peter Hujar, Gregg Bordowitz and Rotimi Fani-Kayode: art and the Aids struggle

  Peter Hujar, Gregg Bordowitz and Rotimi Fani-Kayode are three artists whose work reflects in different ways on the Aids crisis that has devastated communities across the world since the 1980s. Hujar, who died from Aids-related pneumonia in 1987, is the subject of a new show at Raven Row in London, the largest to date at a UK gallery. Host Ben Luke takes a tour of the show with its curators, the writer John Douglas Millar, and the artist, master printer and model for some of Hujar’s photographs, Gary Schneider. The artist Gregg Bordowitz was a member of The Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, founded in New York in the 1980s. Bordowitz has lived with HIV since the late 1980s, and it has fuelled his art and activism ever since, as a new show at Camden Art Centre in London demonstrates. We spoke to him about his life and work. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s Abiku (Born to Die) (1988), a photograph in The 80s: Photographing Britain, a show at Tate Britain in London. Fani-Kayode was a key figure in the UK’s burgeoning avant-garde photography scene in the late 1980s, but died in his early 30s in 1989 from complications relating to Aids. We talk to Jasmine Kaur Chohan, co-curator of the Tate Britain show, about the work.Peter Hujar—Eyes Open in the Dark, Raven Row, London, 30 January-6 AprilGregg Bordowitz—There: a Feeling, Camden Art Centre, London, until 23 MarchThe 80s: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain, until 5 MayThe 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 still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Artists in Gaza respond to the ceasefire, Cimabue at the Louvre, a Baroque printmaking family

  The Art Newspaper’s correspondent for the Middle East, Sarvy Geranpayeh, has been reporting on the effect of Israel’s military bombardment of Gaza on artists and art workers there since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict in 2023. In the wake of the three-stage ceasefire that began last Sunday, she has returned to those she has spoken to over the past 16 months to hear their views on the agreement and what happens next. The Musée du Louvre in Paris this week opened a show of the great 13th-century Italian painter Cimabue. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, spoke to Thomas Bohl, the exhibition’s curator. And this episode’s Work of the Week is actually three works produced in a family business of printmakers in 17th-century Netherlands. The works, by Hendrick Goltzius, and his grandsons Theodor and Adriaen Matham, are part of a new show, A Family Affair: Artistic Dynasties in Europe (Part I, 1500–1700), at the Blanton Museum of Art, part of The University of Texas, Austin. The curator of the exhibition, Holly Borham, tells me more about this printmaking dynasty.A New Look at Cimabue: At the Origins of Italian Painting, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 22 January – 12 May 2025A Family Affair: Artistic Dynasties in Europe (Part I, 1500–1700), Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas, Austin, US, 25 January-15 June; the second part of this exhibition, covering the period 1700 to 1900, opens in June.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 still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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