Ukraine museum collections: kept safe or looted? Plus, Okwui Enwezor’s Sharjah Biennial and Ming Smith at MoMA

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.The Venice Biennale, 20 April-24 November. Listen to the interview with Adriano Pedrosa in the episode of this podcast from 2 February.The website that Giulio Bono mentions, which will present the findings of the conservation of Titian’s Assunta in detail, will go online later this year.Save Venice, savevenice.org.Subscription offer: subscribe to The Art Newspaper for as little as 50p per week for digital and £1 per week for print or the equivalent in your currency. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: after 80 years in business, Marlborough Gallery, one of the most historic commercial galleries in London, New York and beyond, has announced that it is closing. Host Ben Luke talks to Anny Shaw, a contributing editor at The Art Newspaper, about what happened and what, if anything, it tells us about the market. The New Mexico-based sculptor Rose B. Simpson revealed newly commissioned public art works in Madison Square Park and Inwood Hill Park in New York on Wednesday, called Seed. The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, Ben Sutton went to meet her. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the final painting ever made by Caravaggio: The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, made in 1610. The painting is travelling to London for an exhibition opening at the National Gallery next week, called The Last Caravaggio. Francesca Whitlum-Cooper, the gallery’s acting curator of later Italian, Spanish and 17th-century French Paintings and the curator of the exhibition, tells us more.marlborougharchive.com.Rose B. Simpson: Seed, Madison Square Park and Inwood Hill Park, New York, until 22 September. The Whitney Biennial: Even Better than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 11 August. Rose B. Simpson: Strata, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, US, 14 July-13 April 2025; Rose B. Simpson: LEXICON, De Young, San Francisco, US, 16 November-29 June 2025.The Last Caravaggio, National Gallery, London, 18 April-21 JulySubscription offer: subscribe to The Art Newspaper for as little as 50p per week for digital and £1 per week for print (or the equivalent in your currency). Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The convicted art fraudster Inigo Philbrick is out of prison and possibly seeking a return to art dealing. How is that possible? Tim Schneider, The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor, tells us about Philbrick’s story, why the art trade is a natural habitat for fraud, and why a criminal past need not lead to art-world banishment. In the wake of the first Art Basel Hong Kong art fair to take place after the newly instated Article 23 security law, our associate digital editor Alexander Morrison talks to our correspondent in China, Lisa Movius, about the law’s impact on artists, museums and others in the art world now and in the future. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a sword associated with Ranjit Singh, the Maharaja who is the subject of a major exhibition opening next week at the Wallace Collection in London. Davinder Toor, the co-curator of the show, tells us more.Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King, Wallace Collection, London, 10 April-20 October Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Richard Serra, one of the greatest artists of the past 50 years, a linchpin of the post-minimalist scene in late 1960s and early 1970s New York and later the creator of vast steel ellipses and spirals, died on Tuesday 26 March. We mark the passing of this titan of sculpture with Donna De Salvo, the senior adjunct curator of special projects at the Dia Foundation, whose Dia Beacon space has several major works by Serra on permanent view. There are a host of exhibitions focusing on expressionist art in the US and Europe in 2024 and in this episode we focus on two of them. The first ever Käthe Kollwitz retrospective in New York is taking place at the Museum of Modern Art or MoMA, while other shows dedicated to her are taking place in Frankfurt and Stockholm. We speak to Starr Figura, the curator of MoMA’s show, which opens this weekend, about Kollwitz’s extraordinary work and life. Then, we talk to Natalia Sidlina, the curator of Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider, a major survey opening at Tate Modern next month of the German Expressionist group, which looks anew at the deep friendships that formed the basis of the group, their international outlook and their multidisciplinary output.Richard Serra’s work is on long-term view across five galleries at Dia Beacon, New York, US.Käthe Kollwitz, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 31 March-20 July; Städel Museum, Frankfurt, until 9 June; SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, 7 November-25 February 2025.Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider, Tate Modern, London, 25 April-20 October 2024; Gabriele Münter: the Great Expressionist Woman Painter, Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid, 12 November-9 February 2025.Further expressionist exhibitions in 2024: The Anxious Eye: German Expressionism and Its Legacy, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, until 27 May; Munch to Kirchner: The Heins Collection of Modern and Expressionist Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, US, until 5 January 2025; Munch and Kirchner: Anxiety and Expression, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, US, until 23 June; Erich Heckel, Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, Belgium, 12 October-25 January 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: the Whitney Biennial reviewed. Host Ben Luke discusses the show with Ben Sutton, The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, and the critic Annabel Keenan. Our annual survey of visitor numbers at museums is published in the next print edition of The Art Newspaper and Lee Cheshire, the co-editor of the report, joins us to discuss the findings. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s drawing The Temptation of St Anthony (around 1556). It features in the exhibition Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings, which opens this weekend at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK. An Van Camp, the curator of the show, discusses this remarkable study.The Whitney Biennial: Even Better than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 11 August.Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK, 23 March-23 June. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Four years after Tate Britain closed its restaurant because Rex Whistler’s murals on its walls contained racist imagery, it has unveiled the work it commissioned in response to Whistler’s painting by the artist Keith Piper. We talk to Piper about the work. The annual Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report was published on Wednesday and, as ever, reviews the status of the international art market. We speak to its author, the cultural economist and founder of the company Arts Economics, Clare McAndrew. And this episode’s Work of the Week is With Verticals, one of Anni Albers’s pictorial weavings, made in 1946. It is a key piece in the exhibition Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, which arrived this week at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. We discuss the weaving with the show’s curator, Lynne Cooke.Keith Piper: Viva Voce, Tate Britain, until at least 2025.Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2024, theartmarket.artbasel.com.Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 17 March-28 July; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 25 October-2 March 2025; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 20 April 2025-13 September 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.New subscription offer for The Art Newspaper: up to 50% off our annual subscription packages. Subscribe at theartnewspaper.com before 14 March to receive our bumper April issue, with a Venice Biennale Guide, the Art of Luxury magazine, our annual Attendance Figures report and a supplement on the Expo Chicago fair. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Frieze Los Angeles opens its fifth iteration, The Art Newspaper’s associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, talks to our correspondent in LA, Jori Finkel about the changing landscape of the city’s art scene. In London, the Royal Academy has finally opened an exhibition dedicated to the 18th-century painter Angelica Kauffman, a show that was threatened with cancellation as Covid ravaged the plans and finances of museums. We take a tour of the exhibition with its co-curator, Annette Wickham. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Space Between Trees (2019), the late Canadian-Chinese painter Matthew Wong’s direct response to a lost masterpiece by Vincent van Gogh, The Painter on the Road to Tarascon (1888). The connection between the two artists is explored in a new exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Painting as a Last Resort. Its curator, Joost van der Hoeven, tells us more.Frieze Los Angeles, until Sunday, 3 March, Santa Monica Airport, Los Angeles.Angelica Kauffman, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1 March - 30 June.Matthew Wong | Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 1 March-1 September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The exhibition The Time Is Always Now, featuring 22 artists from the African diaspora whose work takes the Black figure as its starting point, is now open at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and will tour to Philadelphia later in the year. We explore the show with its curator Ekow Eshun. 2024 marks the centenary of the the first Surrealist manifesto by André Breton, and the first of a series of exhibitions focusing on the movement this year opened at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels this week, before travelling to the Centre Pompidou later in the year and Hamburg, Madrid and Philadelphia (again) next year. But what did that first manifesto contain and how did it influence the course of the movement? Alyce Mahon, a Surrealism specialist and professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Cambridge, tells us more. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Eagle Dance (1934) by Tonita Peña, one of the leading Native American Pueblo artists of the 20th century. It features in a new exhibition, Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection, at the Saint Louis Art Museum in the US. Alexander Brier Marr, the associate curator of Native American art at the museum, joins us to discuss the painting.The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, National Portrait Gallery, London, 22 February-19 May; The Box, Plymouth, UK, 29 June-29 September; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 9 November-9 February 2025.Alyce Mahon is the co-editor of a new International Journal of Surrealism, published by Minnesota University Press; Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World, by Alyce Mahon, Yale University Press, published in September. IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, 21 February-21 July; Centre Pompidou, Paris, 4 September-13 January 2025; Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, 4 February–11 May 2025; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, 12 June 2025-12 October 2025; Philadelphia Museum of Art, US, autumn 2025–spring 2026.Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection, Saint Louis Art Museum, US, until 14 July.Last chance: buy The Art Newspaper’s magazine The Year Ahead 2024, an authoritative guide to the world’s must-see art exhibitions and museum openings at theartnewspaper.com until 1 March for just £9.99 or $13.69. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A vast survey covering seven decades of art by Yoko Ono has just opened at Tate Modern, and we take a tour of the show with Juliet Bingham, its curator. The collection from Elton John’s home in Atlanta in the US is up for auction at Christie’s and ahead of its big Opening Night auction next week, The Art Newspaper’s associate digital editor Alexander Morrison spoke to Tash Perrin, Christie’s deputy chairman in the Americas, about the works and John’s particular taste in art and objects. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a reconstructed and reimagined statue of the fourth-century Roman emperor, Constantine the Great. The colossus has been remade from the 10 known fragments of the original sculpture by the Madrid-based Factum Foundation, and was installed last week in a garden in Rome’s Capitoline Museums. Adam Lowe, the founder of the Factum Foundation, tells me more.Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, Tate Modern, until 1 September; K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, 28 September-16 March 2025The Collection of Sir Elton John: Goodbye Peachtree Road auctions begin at Christie’s New York on 21 February; online sales are now open.The Colossus of Constantine, Capitoline Museums, Rome, until at least the end of 2025.Get The Art Newspaper’s magazine The Year Ahead 2024, an authoritative guide to the world’s must-see art exhibitions and museum openings—many of which were discussed on our podcast from 12 January—at theartnewspaper.com for just £9.99 or $13.69. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.