Tag Archives: London Museums

Literature: Shakespeare’s First Folio At 400 Years

Royal Collection Trust (November 8, 2023) – Today, November 8, 2023, marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio. Around 235 copies of the First Folio survive today, including a copy in the Royal Library.

Watch our film to learn more about it. The First Folio is the first printed collection of William Shakespeare’s plays. It was produced in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, and contains 36 of Shakespeare’s works. Without this book we may not have had texts of 18 of Shakespeare’s plays, including Macbeth, Twelfth Night and The Tempest.

Find out more about the First, Second and Third Folios in the Royal Library and which kings owed them. Find out what Charles I wrote in the Second Folio shortly before his execution…

Exhibitions: Hans Holbein At The Court Of Henry VIII

Royal Collection Trust (October 30, 2023) – Explore the art of the image-maker of the Tudor court in the Royal Collection. Watch the film to discover the importance of the drawings, paintings and miniatures in the Royal Collection.

Discover how Holbein rose to become Henry VIII’s court painter and find out more about the techniques he used. See a rare moment where Holbein’s preparatory drawing and finished painting were reunited. Hans Holbein was one of the most talented artists of the 16th century. 

From his arrival in England in search of work he rose to royal favor, chosen to paint the portraits of Henry VIII, his family and leading figures, among them Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas More. By his death, Holbein’s work was as admired by his contemporaries as it is today. His portraits inspired the next generation of artists in their depictions of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Art Newspaper (June 29, 2023): In the final episode of this season, James Goodwin, a specialist on the art market and its history, tells us about what high inflation and interest rates mean for the art market and what lies ahead.

As Spain heads to the polls in July, we talk to Emilio Silva, president of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory in Madrid. What could the election mean for the controversial Spanish laws of Historical Memory and Democratic Memory relating to the Civil War of 1936 to 1939 and the period of Francisco Franco’s fascist dictatorship?

And this episode’s Work of the Week is a project by the Swedish duo Goldin + Senneby. The work, called Quantitative Melencolia, involves recreating the lost plate for Albrecht Dürer’s famous engraving Melencolia I. It is part of the exhibition Economics: The Blockbuster, which opens this week at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, UK.

Economics the Blockbuster: It’s not Business as Usual, Whitworth Art Gallery, until 22 October. The Manchester International Festival, until 16 July.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Art Newspaper (June 22, 2023): The Art Newspaper’s editor, Alison Cole, and London correspondent, Martin Bailey, join our host Ben Luke to review the National Portrait Gallery after its £41m revamp.

We talk to Nancy Ireson at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia about the exhibition William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision. Edmondson was the first African American artist to have a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the 1930s, but has rarely been shown in museums on the US East Coast since.

And this episode’s Work of the Week marks the 75th anniversary of the arrival in the UK of the Empire Windrush, a boat carrying passengers from the Caribbean. Zinzi Minott, the choreographer and artist, has made a film called Fi Dem about the Windrush on this anniversary every year since 2017. She tells us about the latest iteration, which is at the heart of a new exhibition at Queercircle in London.

The National Portrait Gallery is open now. Yevonde: Life and Colour, until 15 October.

William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, 25 June-10 September.

Zinzi Minott’s Fi Dem VI is part of her exhibition Many Mikl Mek Ah Mukl, Queercircle, London, until 27 August.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Art Newspaper (June 16, 2023): As her new series for the BBC, Africa Rising, takes Afua Hirsch to Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa, we talk to her about the artists and art scenes she encountered and what she took away from her experiences.

The Liverpool Biennial’s latest edition opened last weekend and has a South African curator, Khanyisile Mbongwa, and an IsiZulu title, uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things. The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, Louisa Buck, visited the biennial and reviews it for us. And it is Art Basel this week, in its original Swiss location, so this episode’s Work of the Week is one of the most notable works for sale at the fair.

Valentine was painted by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1984 and given to his then girlfriend, Paige Powell, on Valentine’s Day. Jeffrey Deitch, who is selling the work at Art Basel, tells us its story.

Africa Rising: Morocco is on the BBC iPlayer now. The Nigeria episode is on BBC Two on 20 June at 9pm for UK viewers and on BBC iPlayer, and South Africa is broadcast on BBC Two at 27 June at 9pm. For listeners outside the UK, check your local listings.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Art Newspaper (June 8, 2023): Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood on their collaborative art, Wayne McGregor on his new choreographic work—a collaboration with the late Carmen Herrera—and Whistler’s Mother returns to Philadelphia.

Ahead of an exhibition of their work in London in September, we talk to Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood—who has created the artwork with Yorke for every Radiohead album since 1994, as well the visuals accompanying Thom’s solo records and side projects including the recent records by The Smile—about their collaboration.

A new work for the UK’s Royal Ballet by the choreographer Wayne McGregor premieres at the Royal Opera House in London on 9 June. Untitled, 2023 is a collaboration with the Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera, developed before Herrera’s death last year at the age of 106. We talk to McGregor about the piece and the intersection between visual art and choreography.

And this episode’s Work of the Week is one of the most famous pictures in the world: Arrangement in Grey and Black, better known as Whistler’s Mother, by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. It’s part of an exhibition called The Artist’s Mother: Whistler and Philadelphia, curated by Jenny Thompson, and we speak to Jenny about the work and the show.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Art Newspaper May 25, 2023: This week: the first ever museum show of Keith Haring’s work in Los Angeles. We talk to Sarah Loyer, the curator of Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody at the Broad in Los Angeles. Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain in London, has led the complete rehang of the museum’s collection, including a vastly expanded presence of women and artists of colour across 500 years of British art.

He tells us about the project. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Room, Part 1 (1975) by the late San Francisco-born painter Joan Brown. The painting is part of the touring survey that opens this week at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, and Liz Park, the curator of the Pittsburgh show, tells us more about it.

Keith Haring: Art Is For Everybody, The Broad, Los Angeles, 27 May-8 October; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 11 November-17 March 2024; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 27 April-8 September 2024.The rehang of Tate Britain is open now.Joan Brown, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 27 May-24 September. Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California, 7 February–1 May 2024. Joan Brown: Facts & Fantasies, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, until 17 June. 

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Art Newspaper May 18, 2023: This week: the Frieze art fair and spring auctions in New York. As the Frieze Art Fair returns to The Shed in Manhattan, coinciding with the season’s big auctions.

The Art Newspaper’s live editor, Aimee Dawson, and our contributing editor Anny Shaw take the temperature of the market in New York. 

Just as we completed the episode, the US Supreme Court ruled that Andy Warhol infringed on the photographer Lynn Goldstein’s copyright when he created a series of silkscreens based on her photograph of the late rock singer Prince. Coincidentally, we had already recorded an interview with our New York correspondent Laura Gilbert about the fact that a Manhattan judge last week refused to throw out two photographers’ long-running copyright lawsuits against the artist Richard Prince, for his New Portraits series, which appropriated their original images. 2021.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Art Newspaper May 11, 2023: This week: the Sudan crisis. How are artists responding to another war in the East African country?

The photographer Ala Kheir joins us from Khartoum to tell us about the conflict in Sudan and how it is affecting him and other artists. We talk to Alyce Mahon, the co-curator of Sade: Freedom or Evil, a new exhibition at the Centre Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) in Barcelona about the 18th-century writer and libertine the Marquis de Sade and his artistic and literary influence, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries.

And this episode’s Work of the Week is Gwen John’s La Chambre sur la Cour (1907-08), a painting of John herself in a Parisian interior. The picture is one of the highlights of an exhibition dedicated to John at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, UK.Ala Kheir on Instagram @ala.kheir.Sade: Freedom or Evil, Centre Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, until 15 October.

Alyce Mahon, The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde, Princeton University Press, $47/£40.Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, 13 May-8 October. Alicia Foster, Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris, Thames and Hudson, $39.95/£30. Out now in UK, published in the US on 18 July. 

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Art Newspaper May 4, 2023: Featuring the coronation in the UK. As Charles III is crowned at Westminster Abbey this weekend, Anna Somers Cocks, founder of The Art Newspaper and a former assistant keeper of metalwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, tells us about the objects involved in the coronation and the monarchical history they convey.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York this week opens Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, the latest in the hugely successful Costume Institute exhibitions. The German designer, who died in 2019, was also the inspiration for this year’s Met Gala, the museum’s star-studded fundraiser.

We talk to Stephanie Sporn, a fashion historian and arts and culture writer, about the exhibition, the gala and the controversy around Lagerfeld’s offensive comments about a range of issues. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Good Housekeeping III (1985/2023) by the British artist Marlene Smith. She was part of the Blk Art Group, a collective of young Black British artists active in the late 1970s and 1980s, which is the subject of The more things change…, an exhibition at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery in the UK.

Smith has re-created the work, first made in 1985, for the show, and tells us more about its making, its context, and the history of the Blk Art Group. Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 16 July.The more things change…, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, UK, until 9 July.