Henri Matisse’s landmark painting “The Red Studio” documented the artworks displayed in his workspace just outside Paris as it existed in 1911. For the first time since then, almost all the individual pieces depicted in his painting have been reunited for an installation at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Correspondent Rita Braver reports.
Category Archives: Museums
Reviews: The Week In Art
This week: our associate editor, Kabir Jhala, and editor-at-large, Jane Morris, have been in Kassel, Germany, to see Documenta, the quinquennial international art exhibition.
They review the show and respond to the escalation of a long-running row over antisemitism and broader racism, which has resulted in a work being removed from the exhibition. Virginia Rutledge, an art historian and lawyer, discusses the dispute over Andy Warhol’s appropriation of a photograph by Lynn Goldsmith of the pop icon Prince. The case will be heard in the US Supreme Court this autumn and has potentially huge implications for artistic freedom. And this episode’s Work of the Week is An Outpost of Progress (1992), a drawing by the late Spanish artist Juan Muñoz, inspired by Joseph Conrad’s short story of the same name.
Documenta 15, Kassel, Germany, until 25 September.
Juan Muñoz: Drawings 1982-2000, Centro Botín, Santander, Spain, 25 June-16 October.
Previews: American Indian Magazine – Summer 2022

American Indian Magazine – Summer 2022
Highlights:
Watching Over the Past: Virgil Ortiz’s Futuristic Creations Are Perpetuating Cochiti Pueblo Pottery-Making Traditions
Virgil Ortiz still remembers the outings he took as a 6-year-old boy with his mother to creeks throughout their Pueblo of Cochiti in New Mexico. There, they would gather clay to mold into pots and storytellers—seated comical human or animal figures. His father was a drum maker and his mother and grandmother were both potters. He remembers giving prayers of thanks to Mother Earth for providing clay, a medium through which they could express themselves. “I was surrounded by art every day,” says Ortiz.
Views: The New National Museum Of Norway, Oslo
The Norwegian capital Oslo is getting a new national museum for classical and modern art, architecture and design. The museum’s collection includes around 100,000 objects, ranging from medieval tapestries to modern design classics and contemporary artworks.
There will be rooms dedicated to, among others, the works of Edvard Munch , including “The Scream,” 19th-century landscape painting, royal robes worn by the Norwegian queens, as well as works by prominent artists, such as Gustav Vigeland, Hannah Ryggen, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh and Ida Ekblad.
Ceramics: Ancient Athens Red-Figure Vase Painting
In this five-minute animated video, journey back to the 6th-century BCE workshop of the Athenian master Andokides and witness an ancient artist’s moment of creative ingenuity. For generations Athenian vase painters had employed black-figure technique, in which the figure is painted in a mixture of clay and water called slip and details are incised with a sharp tool.
At some point—we don’t know precisely when or why—a vase painter had the idea to reverse the scheme, leaving the figures the color of the clay and painting details with a brush. We now call this red-figure technique. Learn how ancient vase painters created vases in both styles and marvel at the technical virtuosity of the multi-step firing process that contributed to their distinctive, high-contrast look.
Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’
We talk to the writer and critic Amy Castor about what effect the tumbling crypto markets might have on the until-now booming world of non-fungible tokens or NFTs.
As Norway’s vast new National Museum opens, we speak to its director Karin Hindsbo. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Folding Screen with Indian Wedding, Mitote, and Flying Pole, made in Mexico in the late 17th century. It is one of the major pieces in a new show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, called Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. Ilona Katzew, the curator of the exhibition, talks in depth about the meanings and purpose of the work.
You can read Amy Castor’s thoughts on crypto and NFTs at amycastor.com.
The National Museum in Oslo opens on 11 June.
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 12 June-30 October.
Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’
This week, Picasso and the Old Masters: as shows pairing the Spaniard with Ingres and El Greco open in London and Basel respectively.
Ben Luke talks to Christopher Riopelle (curator of Picasso Ingres: Face to Face at the National Gallery) and Carmen Giménez (curator of Picasso-El Greco at the Kunstmuseum in Basel) about the profound influence of historic artists on Picasso’s rupturing of tradition. In this episode’s Work of the Week, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, Louisa Buck, talks to Chris Levine, the creator of Lightness of Being, one of the best known recent portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, as the British monarch celebrates 70 years on the throne. And as the Polish government replaces yet another museum director, what can be done about political interference in museum governance? Ben talks to Goranka Horjan, director of Intercom, the International Committee for Museum Management, and Bart De Baere, chair of the Museum Watch programme at the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (Cimam).
Picasso Ingres: Face to Face, National Gallery, London, until 9 October. Picasso-El Greco, Kunstmuseum, Basel, 11 June-25 September.
Exhibits: ‘Antoni Gaudí’ At The Musée d’Orsay In Paris
The Musée d’Orsay is hosting the first major exhibition devoted to Antoni Gaudí organized in France in Paris in fifty years. In an immersive museographic experience, it will show the spectacular creations of this unique artist, in particular, presenting sets of furniture never before exhibited in France. It will offer a new vision of the artist as a unique and singular figure, a non-isolated genius who practiced in a Catalonia in the midst of social, political and urbanistic upheaval.
Until July 17th, 2022

©Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona / Marc Vidal i Aparicio
The exhibition will focus on showing the architect’s creative process at a time of an exceptional local artistic profusion linked to “Modernism” or the Art Nouveau movement in Spain, supported by distinguished patrons, anxious to distinguish Catalonia, a land of Mediterranean identity. Gaudí’s workshop, his many collaborators, and his sophisticated working techniques will be the guiding line of the exhibition to make the public understand the extraordinary inventive capacity of the architect who defied all the creation of the moment.
Walking Tours: Musée Rodin In Paris, France
The Musée Rodin in Paris, France, is a museum that was opened in 1919, primarily dedicated to the works of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. It has two sites: the Hôtel Biron and surrounding grounds in central Paris, as well as just outside Paris at Rodin’s old home, the Villa des Brillants at Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine.
Louvre Exhibits: ‘Pharaoh Of The Two Lands, African Kings of Napata’ In Paris
PHARAOH OF THE TWO LANDS – The African Story of the Kings of Napata
28 April – 25 July 2022
OVERVIEW
In the 8th century BC, a kingdom grew up around the Nubian capital, Napata. In about 730 BC, the Nubian king Piankhy conquered Egypt and founded the 25th Dynasty of Kushite kings, who ruled for more than fifty years over a kingdom stretching from the Nile Delta to the confluence of the White and Blue Niles. The most famous of those kings is the pharaoh Taharqa.
The exhibition highlights the importance of this vast kingdom, located in what is now northern Sudan. It is organised in connection with the Louvre’s archaeological campaign in Sudan, which focused for ten years on the site of Muweis before moving some 30 kilometres northwards to El-Hassa, not far from the pyramids of Meroe.