The Image of the Black archive at The Warburg Institute comprises more than 30,000 images documenting representations of people of African descent from antiquity to the civil rights era. In 2025, images from this collection were shown in public for the first time as part of 'Black Atlas', an exhibition and moving-image essay directed by Edward George and produced by Matthew Harle – Arturo Galansino's guests on the third episode of the Frieze Masters Podcast 2025. Together, they discuss the legacy of Black imagery and its ability to reveal more than the creator's intention. The archive has its 'an infinite potential because of its unfinishedness,' says Harle, 'it has its own energy.'

The Frieze Masters Talks programme and the Frieze Masters Podcast are brought to you by Frieze in collaboration with dunhill.

'Black Atlas' is on view at The Warburg Institute, London, 10 October 2025 – 17 January 2026

About the speakers

Edward George is a writer, broadcaster and the founder of Black Audio Film Collective. Matthew Harle is a writer, curator and The Warburg Institute's curator of artistic programmes. They are joined by their host Arturo Galansino, art historian, curator, director general of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence and this year's curator of the Frieze Masters Talks programme.

About the Frieze Masters Podcast

The Frieze Masters Podcast is back for 2025, bringing you seven conversations across art history curated by Arturo Galansino (Director General of Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence).

Entitled 'Woven Histories' and recorded live at Frieze Masters 2025, this year's series features artists, curators and thinkers, whose conversations weave together geographies and chronologies, and challenge us to look at history in new and unexpected ways.

Topics range from the evolving relationship between fashion and art to the role of the archive in Black history, the last Mughals and their cultural influence in India and the enduring inspiration of the old masters and renaissance art on contemporary making. Speakers include artists Tracey Emin, Glenn Brown and Antony Gormley, museum directors and curators Nicholas Cullinan, Émilie Hammen, Elizabeth Way and Carl Strehlke, and writers Edward George, Matthew Harle, Christopher Rothko and William Dalrymple.

Listen now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The Frieze Masters Talks programme and the Frieze Masters Podcast are brought to you by Frieze in collaboration with dunhill.