February 19, 2023: Emma Nelson, Isabel Hilton and Stephen Dalziel discuss this weekend’s biggest talking points. We also get the latest from Tyler Brûlé, our editorial director, in St Moritz and we speak to our Oslo correspondent Lars Bevangar.
Audio
Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’
February 17, 2023: Turkey and Syria. As the countries reel from the devastation of the 6 February earthquake, how can communities and agencies protect damaged heritage?
We talk to Aparna Tandon from Iccrom, the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property about culture’s significance in the humanitarian response to the crisis. As Alice Neel: Hot off the Griddle arrives at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, we take a tour of the show’s key moments with its curator, Eleanor Nairne.
And this episode’s Work of the Week is a Germantown “eye-dazzler” blanket, made between 1895 and 1905 by a Diné weaver from the Navajo Nation. It’s part of a new show at the Bard Graduate Center in New York,
Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest. Hadley Jensen, the curator of the exhibition, tells us more.Disasters Emergency Committee’s Turkey-Syria Earthquake: dec.org.uk; a PDF of Aparna Tandon’s handbook First Aid To Cultural Heritage In Times Of Crisis is available for free at iccrom.org.Alice Neel: Hot off the Griddle, Barbican Art Gallery, London, until 21 May.
The book accompanying the exhibition is published by Prestel, priced £24.99 or $29.95.Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest, Bard Graduate Center, New York, until 9 July. An online exhibition featuring an interactive catalogue has approximately 250 items from the American Museum of Natural History’s collection of Navajo textiles will be available later this month at bgc.bard.edu.
News: Xi Jinping Pledges Support For Iran, Finland-NATO, Museum Openings
February 16, 2023: China’s president, Xi Jinping, has promised to give support to Iran. How will that affect relations between the two countries and the West? Also in the programme, we discuss whether Finland will join Nato before Sweden and look at India’s first new museum opening in a decade.
News: China Balloons In U.S. And Taiwan, Moldova Destabilized By Russia
February 14, 2023: China’s expanding military balloon program, Russia plans to ‘destroy’ Moldova, Britain admits to failures in Afghanistan.
Opinion: Searching With Chatbots, Adani & India’s Capitalism, Lazy In France
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, how chatbots will influence the lucrative business of internet search, the parable of Adani (11:25) and why France is arguing about work, and the right to be lazy (19:50).
News: Nationwide Strikes In Israel, Italy Elections, Nicaragua Prisoners
February 13, 2023 – Protest leaders in Israel call for a nationwide strike. Plus: President Daniel Ortega releases 222 political prisoners in Nicaragua, the latest urbanism news with Kat Hanna and China’s new “floating feather” airport design.
Sunday Morning: Stories From London & Bangkok
February 12, 2023: Emma Nelson, Lynne O’Donnell and Dipo Faloyin on the weekend’s biggest talking points. We also get the latest from our editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, in Bangkok and speak to Guy De Launey, Monocle’s man in the Balkans.

Saturday Morning: News And Stories From London
Georgina Godwin and guests set the tone for the weekend. Simon Brooke reviews the day’s newspapers and Andrew Mueller recaps what we learned this week.
Reviews: The Week In Art “Vermeer Exhibition 2023”
February 10, 2023: In this special episode, we are in Amsterdam for one of the shows of the year: Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum.
As an unprecedented 28 of the 37 surviving Vermeer paintings are gathered in the Dutch capital, Ben Luke talks to several people involved in the project: Gregor Weber, one of the exhibition’s curators, tells us about his new biography that reveals the depth of influence of the Jesuits and Catholicism on the artist.

In the exhibition itself, we talk to Pieter Roelofs, Weber’s co-curator; Ige Verslype, a conservator who led an extensive research project on Vermeer paintings in the Rijksmuseum, Mauritshuis and Frick collections; and Taco Dibbits, the Rijksmuseum’s director. Plus, we bump into the artist Alvaro Barrington in the exhibition and he tells us what he makes of Vermeer as an artist working today.
In this episode’s Work of the Week, we explore a debate around the attribution of a painting: Betsy Wieseman, Curator and Head of the Department of Northern European Paintings at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington DC, discusses Girl with a Flute (around 1669-75). Wieseman and her NGA colleagues now regard the painting as a work by Vermeer’s studio, even though it appears in the Rijksmuseum show as an authentic work by the master.Vermeer, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, until 4 June. Gregor Weber, Johannes Vermeer: Faith, Light, Reflection, Rijksmuseum, €25 (pb)
News: Turkey Earthquake Deaths Top 20,000, Anger At Leaders, Nigeria Elections
February 10, 2023: After the quakes: what is the role of mayors in times of disaster? Plus: a look ahead to the forthcoming Nigerian election, the latest fashion news and Andrew’s Mueller’s What We Learned.