Tag Archives: Exhibitions

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (May 24, 2024): As the Louvre’s director admits that the Paris museum wants to move its most famous painting away from the crowded gallery in which it is currently displayed, we ask the Leonardo specialist Martin Kemp: does the museum have a Mona Lisa problem?

We also talk about the painting’s continuing allure and the ongoing efforts to explain its mysteries. In London, remarkably, Judy Chicago has just opened her first major multidisciplinary survey in a British public gallery, at the Serpentine North. We talk to her about the show. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Christian Schad’s Self-Portrait with Model (1927). The painting features in Splendour and Misery: New Objectivity in Germany at the Leopold Museum in Vienna. Hans-Peter Wipplinger, the director of the museum and co-curator of the show, tells us more.

Judy Chicago: Revelations, Serpentine North, London, until 1 September.

Splendour and Misery: New Objectivity in Germany, Leopold Museum, Vienna, until 29 September.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (May 10, 2024): We talk to The Art Newspaper’s reporter Sarvy Geranpayeh about her conversations with six Palestinian artists about their daily lives amid Israel’s ongoing military offensive in Gaza.

Frank Stella, one of the key artists in the history of American abstraction, has died, aged 87. We speak to Bonnie Clearwater, the director and chief curator of the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who worked with Stella on two landmark shows. And as Spring finally arrives in London, this episode’s Work of the Week is, fittingly, Vanessa Bell’s View into a Garden (1926). It features in an exhibition opening next week at the Garden Museum in London, called Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors. Emma House, the curator at the museum, tells me more.

Glory of the World: Color Field Painting (1950s to 1983), NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, US, until 25 August. Frank Stella: Recent Sculpture, Deitch Projects, New York, until 24 May.

Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors, Garden Museum, London, 15 May-29 September.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (May 3, 2024): After years of decreasing public funding, the lingering effects of the Covid pandemic and enduring questions around the ethics of corporate sponsorship, UK museums are facing unprecedented financial pressures.

Some commentators are suggesting that the time has come to abandon the policy of free admission to museums that is viewed by many as key to the cultural fabric of the UK. Among those arguing for charging is the critic and broadcaster Ben Lewis, who joins Ben Luke to discuss the issue.

This week, the British Museum opened the exhibition Michelangelo: the Last Decades. It focuses on the period after 1534, when Michelangelo left his native Florence for Rome, never to return, and embarked on many of his most ambitious projects. We take a tour of the show with its curator, Sarah Vowles.

And this episode’s Work of the Week is Maria Blanchard’s Girl at Her First Communion (1914). The painting features in a new exhibition at the Museo Picasso in Málaga. Its curator, José Lebrero Stals, tells us more about this underappreciated Spanish artist, who was at the heart of the Parisian avant garde in the 1910s and 20s.

Michelangelo: the Last Decades, British Museum, until 28 July.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (April 19, 2024): We are back in Venice for the latest edition of the biggest biennial in the world of art. The 60th Venice Biennale comprises an international exhibition featuring more than 300 artists, dozens of national pavilions in the Giardini—the gardens at the eastern end of the city—and the Arsenale—the historic shipyards of the Venetian Republic—and host of official collateral exhibitions and other shows and interventions across Venice.

The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, Louisa Buck, editor-at-large Jane Morris and host Ben Luke review the international exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere/Stranieri Ovunque, curated by the Brazilian artistic director, Adriano Pedrosa. We talk to artists and curators behind five national pavilions—Jeffrey Gibson in the US pavilion, John Akomfrah in the British pavilion, Romuald Hazoumè in the Benin pavilion, Gustavo Caboco Wapichana, the curator of the Hãhãwpuá or Brazilian pavilion, and Valeria Montii Colque in the Chilean pavilion—about their presentations.

And we like to end our Venice specials by responding to an example of the historic work that made la Serenissima one of the world’s great centres for art. So for this episode’s Work of the Week, Ben Luke gained exclusive access to one of the most significant paintings in Venetian history: the Assunta or Assumption of the Virgin made between 1516 and 1518 by Titian. Since the last Biennale in 2022, the Assunta has been unveiled after a four-year conservation project, funded by the charity Save Venice. We spoke to the man who restored this incomparable masterpiece, Giulio Bono, right beneath Titian’s painting.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (March 8, 2024): To coincide with International Women’s Day on 8 March, the South London Gallery is opening the exhibition Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest.

Activism and photography have long gone hand in hand but this collaborative exhibition, organised with the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), attempts to capture a new chapter in this distinguished history, with a particular focus on feminism across the world. We talk to Sarah Allen, the head of programme at the South London Gallery, and Fiona Rogers, the V&A’s Parasol Foundation curator of women in photography, about the show. The financier, philanthropist, collector and leader of cultural organisations Jacob Rothschild died last week at the age of 87.

We talk to Anna Somers Cocks, the founder of The Art Newspaper, who interviewed Lord Rothschild on numerous occasions, about his impact on the visual arts and heritage. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Adelphi, made in 1967 by Robert Ryman. It is one of around 50 pieces by Ryman in the exhibition The Act of Looking, which opened this week at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. Guillaume Fabius, the co-curator of the show, joins us to discuss the painting.

Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest, South London Gallery, London, 8 March-9 June.

Robert Ryman: The Act of Looking, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, until 1 July.

Art Exhibitions: ‘Matthew Wong & Vincent Van Gogh – Painting As A Last Resort’

Van Gogh Museum (March 4, 2024): The work of the Chinese-Canadian artist Matthew Wong (1984-2019) is dynamic, colourful, and expressive. Of the many artists who inspired him, Vincent van Gogh was the most significant.

The exhibition ‘Matthew Wong l Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort’ invites you to discover more about Wong’s work and his artistic connection with Van Gogh. On view at the Van Gogh Museum from 1 March until 1 September 2024.

Exhibits: ‘Medieval Money, Merchants, And Morality’ At The Morgan Library NYC

The Morgan Library & Museum (December 18, 2023) – Diane Wolfthal, David and Caroline Minter Chair Emerita in the Humanities and Professor Emerita of Art History, Rice University, and Dei Jackson, Assistant Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts here at the Morgan, discuss their current exhibition “Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality,” which charts the economic revolution that took place at the end of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance.

“Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality” is open to the public November 10, 2023 through March 10, 2024.

Trade was conducted on an unprecedented scale, banks were established, and coinage proliferated like never before. The widespread use of money in everyday life transformed every aspect of European society, including its values and culture. Bringing together some of the most acclaimed manuscripts in the Morgan’s collection and other exceptional objects including a renaissance purse, a brass alms box, and a hoard of coins, this exhibition will explore the fate of the avaricious, attitudes towards the poor, contentious lending practices, and money management.

The famous Hours of Catherine of Cleves, the Hours of Henry VIII, and the Prayer Book of Queen Claude de France will be presented from a decidedly new angle, combining economic and art history to consider the early history of capitalism and the crisis in values that it sparked. These will feature alongside lesser known treasures, including an Italian account book in its original binding and a stunning leaf from a register of creditors made in Bologna, Italy, in 1394–95. As people today reflect on fluctuating markets, disparities in wealth, personal values, and morality, the themes addressed in this exhibition are as relevant as ever.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (December 8, 2023): This week: the final big art market event of the year, Art Basel in Miami Beach. The Art Newspaper’s associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, talks to our acting art market editor, Tim Schneider, in Miami about the fair, as tensions rise ahead of the pivotal 2024 US election.

In Athens, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, or EMST, is next week opening a months-long programme which will end up with the entire museum filled with women artists. We talk to EMST’s director, Katerina Gregos, about the programme, called What if Women Ruled the World? And this episode’s Work of the Week is two objects: the 15th-century Florentine artist Francesco Pesellino’s panels telling the story of David and Goliath, made for a luxurious cassone or chest for the Medici family.

The panels belong to the National Gallery in London and have just been restored for a new exhibition there, Pesellino: A Renaissance Master Revealed. We talk to Jill Dunkerton, who did the restoration, about these extraordinary paintings.

Art Basel in Miami Beach, Miami Beach Convention Center, until Sunday, 10 December.

What if Women Ruled the World? begins at EMST, Athens, on 14 December.Pesellino: A Renaissance Master Revealed, National Gallery, London, until 10 March 2024.

Paris Exhibitions: Gustave Eiffel ‘Higher And Higher’

RFI English (December 7, 2023) – 2023 marks the death centenary of Gustave Eiffel. To mark the occasion, an exhibition titled ‘Eiffel Higher and Higher is being held at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Savin Yeatman-Eiffel, who is exhibition’s curator and a descendant of Gustave Eiffel, spoke to RFI on this occasion.

The sheet of stamps in honor of Gustave Eiffel

Graphic design Patte&Besset, stamp “Fêtes du cinquantenaire de la tour Eiffel”, 1939, creation by Henri Cheffer (c) adagp Paris ; Stamp “Gustave Eiffel 1832 – 1923” creation by Marie-Noëlle Goffin.

Design Fairs & Exhibitions: “Design Miami 2023” Tour

VernissageTV (December 6, 2023) – The 18th edition of Design Miami/, curated by Curatorial Director, Maria Cristina Didero. This year’s program explores the theme of The Golden Age: Looking to the Future, celebrating a tomorrow of our own creation.

The Golden Age is a metaphorical concept shared across cultures through time and space, whether applied to utopian futures or idealized histories.

Often invoked as an imaginary, past time of prosperity, The Golden Age also epitomizes hope for the future, lighting the path towards our highest aspirations. As the curatorial theme for the 18th edition of Design Miami, The Golden Age: Looking to the Future will celebrate a tomorrow of our own creation.

In a time when human beings are challenged in unprecedented ways, The Golden Age could become a source of inspiration to imagine and shape a brighter future for human beings and our planet.