The Week in Art

• Frank Auerbach’s Berlin homecoming, human remains and museums, Ian Hamilton Finlay’s ‘Republic’

  During his lifetime, the late artist Frank Auerbach never had an exhibition in Berlin, the city of his birth, which he left for the UK in 1939 to escape the Nazis. This weekend, the first show of his work in the German capital opens at the Galerie Michael Werner. Our digital editor, Alexander Morrison, went to Berlin to talk to the artist’s son, the filmmaker Jake Auerbach, about the exhibition. A new book by Dan Hicks, a curator at the Pitts River Museum in Oxford, UK, titled Every Monument Must Fall explores the origins of the fierce contemporary debates around colonialism, art, and heritage. It investigates in particular the acquisition of human remains and their ongoing place in museums and other historical institutions. Ben Luke spoke to him about the publication. And this week’s Work of the Week is Republic (1995) by Ian Hamilton Finlay, whose centenary is being celebrated this year with a new publication and a series of exhibitions in London, Edinburgh, Palma de Mallorca, Brescia, New York, Hamburg, Basel and Vienna. Luke spoke to Stephen Ban, a long-term specialist in Finley’s work, about this sculptural installation.Frank Auerbach, Galerie Michael Werner, Berlin, 3 May-28 JuneDan Hicks, Every Monument Must Fall, is published by Hutchinson Heinemann. It is out now in the UK and priced £25. It will be published in the US in August and priced $47.99Fragments, an exhibition of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s work, is showing at Victoria Miro, London, until 24 May. Further exhibitions are at the Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh, Kvenig Gallery in Palma de Mallorca, Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia, David Nolan Gallery in New York, the Svea Semmler Gallery in Hamburg, the Stamper Gallery in Basel and the Galleria Hubert Winter in ViennaThe book Fragments is published by ACC Art Books and edited by Pia Maria Simig. It is published on 8 May and priced £50 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Pope Francis and art, JMW Turner’s 250th birthday, John Singer Sargent’s Madame X

  Following the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday, The Art Newspaper’s managing editor, Louis Jebb, who has written an extensive obituary of the late pontiff, joins Ben Luke to talk about the late pope’s engagement with art and with the Vatican art collections. Wednesday 23 April was the 250th anniversary of the birth of JMW Turner, one of the greatest British artists. A host of exhibitions and events are marking this moment, and we speak to Amy Concannon, the senior curator of historic British art at Tate Britain, about Turner’s enduring appeal. And this episode’s Work of the Week is arguably John Singer Sargent’s most famous—and in its time, his most infamous—painting, Madame X (1883-84). A portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, it features in a major show of Sargent’s work that opens this week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, before travelling later in the year to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, discusses the picture with Stephanie L. Herdrich, a co-curator of the exhibition.You can explore the Turner Bequest at tate.org.uk—the full collection will be online later this year. Cataloguing Turner’s Bequest: Sketchbooks, Drawings, Watercolours, Tate Britain, London, ongoing. Full list of the Turner 250 events: tate.org.uk/art/turner-250Sargent and Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 21 April-3 August; Sargent: The Paris Years, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 22 September 22-11 – January 2026.Last chance! 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. Offer ends on 30 April. 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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• Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, teamLab in Abu Dhabi, Vermeer’s final painting?

  ollowing on from opening her exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which continues until August, the US-born, Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim this week opened a show in London in collaboration with Thomas Mader. The exhibition, 1880 THAT, uses a notorious historic conference in Milan in 1880, which effectively outlawed sign language in Deaf education, as a springboard to explore languages and stigma in Deaf and hearing cultures today. Ben Luke discusses the show with Kim and Mader. In Abu Dhabi, the latest museum devoted to the interactive art of the Japanese collective teamLab opens this week in the Saadiyat Cultural District. The Art Newspaper’s reporter in the Middle East, Melissa Gronlund, has visited the museum and tells us more about teamLab’s newest immersive experience. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Young Woman seated at a Virginal (1670-75), a painting by Jan Vermeer that may be the very last picture he ever made. Our special correspondent, Martin Bailey, tells us how new conservation of the picture has revealed that 17th-century pollution may hold the key to dating the painting.1880 THAT: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, Wellcome Collection, London, until 16 November; Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night is at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 6 July.teamLab: Phenomena, Abu Dhabi, opens 18 April.From Rembrandt to Vermeer: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection, H’ART Museum, Amsterdam, until 24 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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• 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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