Podcasts · Arts

The Week in Art

The Art Newspaper

300 episodes

From breaking news and insider insights to exhibitions and events around the world, the team at The Art Newspaper picks apart the art world's big stories with the help of special guests. An award-winning podcast hosted by Ben Luke.

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Episodes page 1 of 6

  1. Art Basel Paris opens and closes amid protests, Latin American culture wars, a Chinese celestial map

    · 1 h 07 min

    As protests engulf Paris, the Art Basel fair opened this week in the French capital and then it was announced that the fair would conclude on Friday, and not open as scheduled this weekend. The Art Newspaper’s global…

  2. Frieze in London, Tarek Atoui at Tate Modern, Sienese sculptor Francesco di Giorgio

    · 1 h 02 min

    It’s Frieze week in London, and as usual we take the opportunity to take the temperature of the market in London, and more widely, at the fair. Joining Ben Luke in the tent in Regent’s Park is The Art Newspaper’s art…

  3. Palestinian artists after the ceasefire, Robert Ryman, Katherine Hubbard

    · 1 h 15 min

    Saturday, 10 October, marks the first anniversary of the ceasefire in Gaza. It has not put an end to the bloodshed, with figures released in August by the United Nations Human Rights Office stating that more than 1,200…

  4. Renoir and Love in London, political storm around Kanal in Brussels, Ronald Moody

    · 54 min

    The French painter Auguste Renoir continues to divide critical opinion, something acknowledged by the curators of the new exhibition, Renoir and Love, at the National Gallery in London. But he remains enormously…

  5. Cezanne in Paris, Taryn Simon in New York, Magritte in London

    · 1 h 04 min

    At the Grand Palais in Paris a new exhibition explores Paul Cezanne’s influence on artists from his own time to now. In Paris, Ben Luke speaks to Xavier Rey, the director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the…

  6. Giotto restored in Florence, Biennale de Lyon, Remedios Varo

    · 1 h 12 min

    After a four-year restoration, the Bardi Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, in which Giotto depicted scenes from the life of St Francis of Assisi in the early 14th century, has reopened. Ben Luke talks…

  7. The Bayeux Tapestry, damaged heritage in Iran, Tschabalala Self’s Trafalgar Square sculpture

    · 46 min

    It is one of the museum events of the century so far: the Bayeux Tapestry has been lent from its dedicated museum in Bayeux in Normandy, France, to an exhibition at the British Museum in London, which is now open to…

  8. What did you miss? Summer art world news and what’s coming up

    · 1 h 09 min

    In this first episode of the autumn season, we are focusing on the news you might have missed in a busy couple of months in the art world in July and August. The Art Newspaper’s global editor-in-chief Ben Sutton joins…

  9. Frida Kahlo at Tate Modern, the Brexit effect, a Renaissance tarot deck

    · 1 h 02 min

    This last episode of the current season begins with Frida Kahlo. Tate Modern in London this week opened Frida: The Making of an Icon, an exhibition that began at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston earlier this year and…

  10. Art Basel in Basel, Pierre Huyghe interview, James Turrell

    · 1 h 08 min

    Kabir Jhala, The Art Newspaper’s art market editor, joins Ben Luke to discuss this year’s Art Basel, the big sales and the wider mood music. Pierre Huyghe has an exhibition at the Beyeler Foundation in Riehen, just…

  11. Pan-Africanism in London, the health benefits of art, Barbara Hepworth

    · 58 min

    The exhibition Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica began its life at the Art Institute of Chicago before travelling to Museu d’art contemporani de Barcelona (Macba) in Barcelona and now to the…

  12. Yemen heritage, US flags at the National Gallery in Washington, Felix Gonzalez-Torres

    · 45 min

    After years of civil war and continuity violence, Yemen’s heritage has suffered hugely, with buildings damaged across the country and antiquities looted. Yet across the country, there is a determination to protect and…

  13. Smithsonian Women’s Museum chaos, Oliver Beer and Rufus Wainwright, Jasper Johns in Bilbao

    · 52 min

    The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. has faced unprecedented scrutiny and government interference since President Trump came to power. Now, its long cherished plans for a Smithsonian American Women’s History…

  14. New York auctions, James McNeill Whistler at Tate Britain, Edvard Munch

    · 1 h 15 min

    This season’s much anticipated auctions in New York have brought some records and eye-popping prices, including for works by Jackson Pollock, Constantin Brancusi and Mark Rothko, and some more middling results. Ben…

  15. Frieze New York, the Cranach in Hitler’s Munich apartment, Ajamu X

    · 51 min

    The latest edition of Frieze New York is open now and we hear all about this year’s fair from The Art Newspaper’s editor-in-chief in the Americas, Ben Sutton, and our art market editor, Kabir Jhala. Cupid Complaining…

  16. Venice Biennale Special 2026

    · 1 h 56 min

    It’s Venice Biennale opening week and so, as ever, this episode is our Venice special. The Biennale comprises many aspects: an international exhibition that this year features more than 100 artists in the Central…

  17. Zurbarán in London, the Carnegie International, Walter Sickert’s Ennui

    · 1 h 05 min

    The largest career survey of the great 17th-century Spanish master Francisco de Zurbarán since the 1980s opens this weekend at the National Gallery in London. It presents a more rounded perspective on an artist best…

  18. Chernobyl 40 years on, Paula Rego at Munch in Oslo, Gluck’s flower painting

    · 57 min

    This Sunday, 26 April, marks the 40th anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Soviet Ukraine. It is the most serious disaster ever to occur in the nuclear power industry, with widespread effects…

  19. Museum openings: V&A East and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Plus, William Blake in Dublin

    · 1 h 01 min

    Two museum openings feature on this week’s podcast—V&A East in London and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In our 300th episode in 2024, Gus Casely Hayford, the director of the V&A East, told us about the…

  20. Marcel Duchamp at MoMA, Dorothea Tanning book, Leonora Carrington at the Freud Museum, London

    · 1 h 13 min

    Three artists who in different ways connect to the Surrealist movement are the subject of this week’s podcast. At the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first major US survey of the full career of Marcel Duchamp…

  21. Should English museums charge tourists? Plus, Raphael at the Met and Senga Nengudi at the Whitechapel Gallery

    · 1 h 09 min

    The UK government last week issued a response to a report ostensibly exploring the future of the funding body Arts Council England but containing an idea that has prompted much debate: that the government should…

  22. Matisse’s explosive finale and a new chapter for Hong Kong? Plus, Schiaparelli and Dalí

    · 54 min

    The Grand Palais in Paris this week unveiled an enormous exhibition focusing on the final 13 years of Henri Matisse’s life and work, a project conceived by the Centre Pompidou. The show includes abundant examples of…

  23. New Museum extension opens, NextGen collectors, a Wardian Case in Oxford

    · 59 min

    The New Museum in New York opens its new extension, designed by Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas of the architectural practice OMA, this week. Ben Luke talks to Massimiliano Gioni, the New Museum’s artistic director,…

  24. Iran war: art communities and heritage in Iran, moderate recovery in the art market, Cannupa Hanska Luger at the Sydney Biennale

    · 53 min

    As the war in the Middle East continues to rage, Ben Luke speaks to The Art Newspaper’s reporter on Iran and other countries in the region, Sarvy Geranpayeh, about the response of cultural communities in Iran and…

  25. Iran war and culture in the Gulf, the Whitney Biennial, Rembrandt discovery

    · 55 min

    As the war against Iran instigated last week by Israel and the United States continues to spread through the Middle East, we explore how it affects tourism in the Arabian Gulf, of which art and culture more generally…

  26. Venice Biennale details revealed, Beatriz González, Tracey Emin

    · 1 h 09 min · Explicit

    Following the tragic death of Koyo Kouoh last May, the details of her final project—In Minor Keys, the international exhibition of the 2026 Venice Biennale—were unveiled this week by the collaborative team that will…

  27. National Gallery’s deficit bombshell, Simon Schama on birds and art, Vilhelm Hammershøi

    · 1 h 02 min

    After opening a major building project in May last year and announcing the details of another in September, which is due to open in the early 2030s, the National Gallery in London has revealed, quite unexpectedly, that…

  28. The US struggles with history, Stephen Friedman Gallery closes, Tudor Heart pendant acquired by the British Museum

    · 52 min

    On 4 July 2026 the US will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s founding document. But huge divisions in US society and culture are symbolised in a number of disputes relating to…

  29. Art Basel Qatar, Dürer portrait debate, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Edvard Munch

    · 56 min

    The first Art Basel Qatar art fair is now open in Qatar’s capital, Doha, and The Art Newspaper’s art market editor, Kabir Jhala, joins Ben Luke to discuss its impact, as well as reflecting on the wider artistic outlook…

  30. Venice Biennale: South African pavilion scandal, Marian Goodman remembered, Paul Cezanne in Basel

    · 57 min

    The South African culture minister, the right-wing populist Gayton McKenzie, is attempting to cancel the project for South Africa’s pavilion at the forthcoming Venice Biennale, proposed by the artist Gabrielle Goliath…

  31. Smithsonian’s African LGBTQ+ exhibition, art and the Iran crisis, Louise Nevelson at the Pompidou Metz

    · 1 h 07 min

    The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. this week opens Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art, a new exhibition focusing on LGBTQ+ artists from across Africa and its diaspora. Ben Luke…

  32. Hawai’i at the British Museum, a Venice palazzo for sale, Joseph Beuys’s Bathtub

    · 1 h 09 min

    As the British Museum opens Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans, Ben Luke takes a tour of the exhibition with the museum’s head of Oceania, Alice Christophe. We also hear about the museum’s fresh approach to the…

  33. The Year Ahead 2026: the big shows and the key openings

    · 1 h 13 min

    It is the first episode of 2026. So we look ahead at the next 12 months with a guide to big museum openings, biennials and exhibitions. Ben Luke is joined by Jane Morris, editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper and…

  34. 2025: our review of the year

    · 1 h 21 min

    As always, the final episode of The Week in Art of the year is a review of the past 12 months. To look at the top stories, the big issues and the best art in 2025, host Ben Luke is joined by The Art Newspaper’s…

  35. Frank Gehry remembered, Serpentine and FLAG Art Foundation prize, Joan Semmel

    · 57 min

    Frank Gehry, the architect behind the Guggenheim Bilbao, Geffen Contemporary at MoCA, Los Angeles, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, among other museums and art spaces, died last Friday at his home in Santa…

  36. Art Basel Miami Beach, Louvre crisis deepens, Helene Schjerfbeck

    · 53 min

    The Art Newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Americas, Ben Sutton, and art market editor, Kabir Jhala, are in Miami Beach for Art Basel’s latest edition and discuss the top sales and the wider mood at the fair. As staff at the…

  37. The US Venice Biennale saga, Queer Islamic art in Oslo, Duane Linklater in Ottawa

    · 56 min

    After a delayed application process and an aborted initial commission, the US has at last appointed its artist for next year’s Venice Biennale: the Utah-born, Mexico-based artist Alma Allen. The Art Newspaper’s…

  38. The $236m Klimt, Cop 30 and the art world, Caravaggio’s Victorious Cupid

    · 49 min

    Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16) sold for the second highest price ever realised at auction at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday. It was the most notable of several big sales in the sold-out (or…

  39. Studio Museum in Harlem, Grand Egyptian Museum, Stanley Spencer

    · 1 h 08 min

    Studio Museum in Harlem, Grand Egyptian Museum, Stanley Spencer As the Studio Museum in Harlem opens in its first ever purpose-built space, a new building by the architects Adjaye Associates, The Art Newspaper’s…

  40. MFA Boston returns enslaved artist’s work to his heirs, Wifredo Lam, Ghirlandaio’s Adoration of the Magi

    · 1 h 10 min

    The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston, US, has agreed to return two works from 1857 by the enslaved 19th-century potter David Drake to his present-day descendants. By the terms of the contract, one vessel will remain…

  41. Gauguin “fake” is real, Mrinalini Mukherjee and her circle, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt’s head piece

    · 59 min

    The authenticity of the final self-portrait by Paul Gauguin, made in 1903 and housed in the Kunstmuseum in Basel, was earlier this year called into question. Now, the museum has completed its promised analysis, and…

  42. Louvre heist: the fallout, RoseLee Goldberg on the Performa Biennial, Wayne McGregor on his new installation

    · 1 h 15 min

    It is an event that has shocked the world and prompted a national reckoning in France: the robbery of eight jewels from the Apollo Gallery of the Louvre last Sunday. Ben Luke talks to Anaël Pigeat, editor-at-large of…

  43. Frieze in London, Hypha Studios and Renoir’s drawing for The Great Bathers

    · 55 min

    Amid much debate about the health of the art market, Frieze is back in London, with its two fairs, Frieze London and Frieze Masters. Ben Luke talks to The Art Newspaper’s art market editor, Kabir Jhala, about the mood…

  44. Nigerian Modernism, Tehran’s art scene after the war, Wayne Thiebaud’s Cakes

    · 1 h 06 min

    Tate Modern continues to explore the histories of Modern art beyond the European and North American canons that were once its focus. This week it opened the exhibition Nigerian Modernism, and The Art Newspaper’s…

  45. Who made ancient Egyptian art? Plus, Michaelina Wautier, Robert Rauschenberg’s Bed

    · 1 h 14 min

    A new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, called Made in Ancient Egypt, reveals untold stories of the people behind a host of remarkable objects, and the technology and techniques they used. The Art…

  46. Museums and ethics, Fra Angelico in Florence, Cornelia Parker’s PsychoBarn

    · 1 h 09 min

    The Art Newspaper’s chief contributing editor, Gareth Harris, has just published a new book, Towards the Ethical Art Museum, which explores a range of issues affecting museums in the 21st century, from questions of…

  47. Kerry James Marshall, National Gallery expansion, Picasso’s Three Dancers

    · 1 h 27 min

    Kerry James Marshall: The Histories at the Royal Academy of Arts in London is the largest ever European retrospective of the work of the US artist and has been greeted with universal critical acclaim. Ben Luke takes a…

  48. David Bowie Centre, Bukhara Biennial, Hilton Als on Jean Rhys, Hurvin Anderson and Kara Walker

    · 1 h 05 min

    Earlier this year, we took a tour of the V&A East Storehouse, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s vast new complex in East London. This week, it opens the David Bowie Centre, a dedicated space to the music icon. It is the…

  49. Smithsonian under fire from Trump, Frieze Seoul, Dara Birnbaum and Quantum

    · 59 min

    Since we were last on air in June, the US government has announced what it calls a comprehensive internal review of activities at eight of the 21 museums under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution. Meanwhile,…

  50. Arthur Jafa and Mark Leckey, Cecilia Alemani on SITE Santa Fe, Trisha Brown and Robert Rauschenberg

    · 1 h 09 min · Explicit

    An exhibition opens this weekend at Conditions, the low-cost studio programme for artists in Croydon, on the outskirts of south London, featuring two of the great works of art of recent decades: Mark Leckey’s Fiorucci…

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