After years of decreasing public funding, the lingering effects of the Covid pandemic and enduring questions around the ethics of corporate sponsorship, UK museums are facing unprecedented financial pressures. Some commentators are suggesting that the time has come to abandon the policy of free admission to museums that is viewed by many as key to the cultural fabric of the UK. Among those arguing for charging is the critic and broadcaster Ben Lewis, who joins Ben Luke to discuss the issue. This week, the British Museum opened the exhibition Michelangelo: the Last Decades. It focuses on the period after 1534, when Michelangelo left his native Florence for Rome, never to return, and embarked on many of his most ambitious projects. We take a tour of the show with its curator, Sarah Vowles. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Maria Blanchard’s Girl at Her First Communion (1914). The painting features in a new exhibition at the Museo Picasso in Málaga. Its curator, José Lebrero Stals, tells us more about this underappreciated Spanish artist, who was at the heart of the Parisian avant garde in the 1910s and 20s.

Michelangelo: the Last Decades, British Museum, until 28 July.

María Blanchard: A Painter in Spite of Cubism, Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain, until 29 September.

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