This week: after a two-year closure, the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing reopens this week, revealing a major overhaul by the architect Annabelle Selldorf. The gallery has also rehung its entire collection and Ben Luke takes a tour of both the revamped building and the new displays with the National Gallery director, Gabriele Finaldi. Tate Modern celebrates its 25th anniversary this weekend, and Luke talks to The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent Louisa Buck and another of our regular contributors, Dale Berning Sawa, about its seismic impact in London and beyond over the past quarter of a century, its complex present circumstances and its future. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the late German artist Inge Mahn’s sculpture Balancing Towers (1989). It is a key work in an exhibition called “Are we still up to it?” – Art & Democracy at the Herrenchiemsee, the castle on an island in the Chiemsee lake, in southern Bavaria, Germany. Oliver Kase, the director of collections at the Pinakothek der Moderne, in Munich, and co-curator of the exhibition, joins Luke to discuss the sculpture.

The Sainsbury Wing and CC Land: The Wonder of Art, National Gallery, London, from 10 May. You can hear a conversation with Annabelle Selldorf about the Frick Collection on the episode of this podcast from 28 March 2025. And our interview with the architectural critic Rowan Moore reflecting on the debate about Selldorf’s alterations to the original Sainsbury Wing project is in the episode from 4 November 2022.

Tate Modern’s 25th Birthday Weekender, Tate Modern, London, 9-12 May.

“Are we still up to it?” – Art & Democracy, Herrenchiemsee Palace, Chiemsee, Germany, 10 May-12 October

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During his lifetime, the late artist Frank Auerbach never had an exhibition in Berlin, the city of his birth, which he left for the UK in 1939 to escape the Nazis. This weekend, the first show of his work in the German capital opens at the Galerie Michael Werner. Our digital editor, Alexander Morrison, went to Berlin to talk to the artist’s son, the filmmaker Jake Auerbach, about the exhibition. A new book by Dan Hicks, a curator at the Pitts River Museum in Oxford, UK, titled Every Monument Must Fall explores the origins of the fierce contemporary debates around colonialism, art, and heritage. It investigates in particular the acquisition of human remains and their ongoing place in museums and other historical institutions. Ben Luke spoke to him about the publication. And this week’s Work of the Week is Republic (1995) by Ian Hamilton Finlay, whose centenary is being celebrated this year with a new publication and a series of exhibitions in London, Edinburgh, Palma de Mallorca, Brescia, New York, Hamburg, Basel and Vienna. Luke spoke to Stephen Ban, a long-term specialist in Finley’s work, about this sculptural installation.

Frank Auerbach, Galerie Michael Werner, Berlin, 3 May-28 June

Dan Hicks, Every Monument Must Fall, is published by Hutchinson Heinemann. It is out now in the UK and priced £25. It will be published in the US in August and priced $47.99

Fragments, an exhibition of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s work, is showing at Victoria Miro, London, until 24 May. Further exhibitions are at the Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh, Kvenig Gallery in Palma de Mallorca, Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia, David Nolan Gallery in New York, the Svea Semmler Gallery in Hamburg, the Stamper Gallery in Basel and the Galleria Hubert Winter in Vienna

The book Fragments is published by ACC Art Books and edited by Pia Maria Simig. It is published on 8 May and priced £50

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Following the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday, The Art Newspaper’s managing editor, Louis Jebb, who has written an extensive obituary of the late pontiff, joins Ben Luke to talk about the late pope’s engagement with art and with the Vatican art collections. Wednesday 23 April was the 250th anniversary of the birth of JMW Turner, one of the greatest British artists. A host of exhibitions and events are marking this moment, and we speak to Amy Concannon, the senior curator of historic British art at Tate Britain, about Turner’s enduring appeal. And this episode’s Work of the Week is arguably John Singer Sargent’s most famous—and in its time, his most infamous—painting, Madame X (1883-84). A portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, it features in a major show of Sargent’s work that opens this week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, before travelling later in the year to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, discusses the picture with Stephanie L. Herdrich, a co-curator of the exhibition.

You can explore the Turner Bequest at tate.org.uk—the full collection will be online later this year. Cataloguing Turner’s Bequest: Sketchbooks, Drawings, Watercolours, Tate Britain, London, ongoing. Full list of the Turner 250 events: tate.org.uk/art/turner-250

Sargent and Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 21 April-3 August; Sargent: The Paris Years, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 22 September 22-11 – January 2026.

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ollowing on from opening her exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which continues until August, the US-born, Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim this week opened a show in London in collaboration with Thomas Mader. The exhibition, 1880 THAT, uses a notorious historic conference in Milan in 1880, which effectively outlawed sign language in Deaf education, as a springboard to explore languages and stigma in Deaf and hearing cultures today. Ben Luke discusses the show with Kim and Mader. In Abu Dhabi, the latest museum devoted to the interactive art of the Japanese collective teamLab opens this week in the Saadiyat Cultural District. The Art Newspaper’s reporter in the Middle East, Melissa Gronlund, has visited the museum and tells us more about teamLab’s newest immersive experience. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Young Woman seated at a Virginal (1670-75), a painting by Jan Vermeer that may be the very last picture he ever made. Our special correspondent, Martin Bailey, tells us how new conservation of the picture has revealed that 17th-century pollution may hold the key to dating the painting.

1880 THAT: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, Wellcome Collection, London, until 16 November; Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night is at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 6 July.

teamLab: Phenomena, Abu Dhabi, opens 18 April.

From Rembrandt to Vermeer: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection, H’ART Museum, Amsterdam, until 24 August.

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In two-and-a-half months since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, a series of executive orders and other initiatives have attempted systematically to eliminate and defund some of the federal agencies responsible for the distribution of federal money to museums, libraries and other organisations. The Art Newspaper’s editor-in-chief in the Americas, Ben Sutton, joins Ben Luke to discuss what is being seen as an authoritarian and ideologically driven attempt to control cultural activities in taxpayer-funded institutions, restrict free speech and—to use the administration’s own term—“rewrite history”. We also discuss the effect of the economic chaos caused by President Trump’s seesawing on trade tariffs in the past week. That same topic is discussed by Clare McAndrew of Arts Economics, the writer of the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025. The report’s key finding is that global art sales declined by 12% in 2024 and McAndrew discusses this stark statistic and other aspects of the survey. And this episode’s Works of the Week are by Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, the two artists in an exhibition subtitled The Art of Friendship at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. Jellett and Hone were key figures in Irish Modernism, and we talk to one of the curators of the exhibition, Brendan Rooney, about Jellett’s painting, Decoration (1923) and Hone’s stained-glass image of a chalice (1948-52), a study for her most famous piece, the East Window of Eton College Chapel in Berkshire, UK.

The Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025, theartmarket.artbasel.com.

Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, until 10 August.

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he Art Newspaper’s annual report on museum visitor figures is out and shows that the slow build-back after the Covid-19 closures is over, and museums are back at what we might consider their “natural level”. Host Ben Luke talks to the co-editor of our report, Lee Cheshire, about what that means, and who were last year’s big winners and losers. A new exhibition at the museum in the former London home of the 19th-century designer, socialist activist and writer, William Morris, looks at his ubiquity in the 21st century. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, visits Morris Mania, as the show is called, and talks to the William Morris Gallery’s director Hadrian Garrard. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a painting made in the winter of 1906 to 1907 by Henri Matisse. It depicts his daughter, Marguerite, and is a highlight of a show at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, called Matisse and Marguerite: Through her Father’s Eyes. Ben Luke discusses the painting and its subject with Charlotte Barat-Mabille, one of the curators of the exhibition.

Morris Mania, William Morris Gallery, London, 5 April-21 September

Matisse and Marguerite: Through Her Father’s Eyes, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, until 24 August 2025

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After a five-year closure, the Frick Collection in New York will reopen to the public on 17 April and this week opened its doors to the press. The Gilded Age mansion, created on Fifth Avenue for the industrialist Henry Clay Frick, has been restored and enhanced by Selldorf Architects, with the executive architect Beyer Blinder Belle. It is the biggest upgrade to the building since it first became a museum in 1935. Ben Luke talks to the architect Annabelle Selldorf. Then, Cabelle Ahn, a contributor to The Art Newspaper who is a specialist in 18th-century art, joins us to review the transformed museum. This episode’s Work of the Week is A woman abalone diver wrestling with an octopus (around 1870), a woodblock print by the Japanese artist Taiso Yoshitoshi. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, discusses the work with James Russell, the curator of a new exhibition, Undersea, at Hastings Contemporary in the UK.

The Frick Collection opens on 17 April.

Undersea, Hastings Contemporary, 29 March-14 September.

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The largest ever exhibition of the work of Jack Whitten opens this weekend at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Ben Luke speaks to Michelle Kuo, the curator of the show, about the political and experimental commitment that drove Whitten’s remarkable body of work. In Paris, one of the final exhibitions to open at the Centre Pompidou before it closes for five years was unveiled this week. Paris Noir brings together more than 150 artists from across the African diaspora who were based in, or had notable stays in, the French capital between the 1950s and 2000. Ben went to Paris to speak to Alicia Knock, the lead curator on the show. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Arpita Singh’s Searching Sita Through Torn Papers, Paper Strips and Labels (2015). It features in a new exhibition of the Indian artist’s work at the Serpentine North in London. The Art Newspaper’s associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, spoke to the Serpentine Galleries’ artistic director, Hans Ulrich Obrist, about the painting.

Jack Whitten: The Messenger, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 23 March-2 August. You can hear Jack Whitten talking about his life and work in the show’s audioguide at moma.org.

Paris Noir: Artistic Circulations and Anti-colonial Resistance, 1950-2000, Centre Pompidou, Paris, until 30 June.

Arpita Singh: Remembering, Serpentine North, London, until 27 July.

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After a challenging year in which international galleries, auction houses and museums have been forced to scale back their operations and make redundancies on an alarming scale, a slower, more considered approach to business seems to be emerging. So are we into an era of longer, more in-depth exhibitions and bespoke events concerned more with authentic connection than flashy spectacle? Ben Luke talks to Anny Shaw, a contributing editor at The Art Newspaper. In the Netherlands, just as in the US, cuts by far-right politicians to international development seem likely to have a huge impact on arts projects. As Tefaf, the major international art fair opens in the Dutch city of Maastricht, we talk to Senay Boztas, our correspondent based in Amsterdam, about fears of a funding crisis. And this episode’s Work of the Week is one of the greatest paintings ever made: The Hunters in the Snow (1565) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It is part of an exhibition called Arcimboldo – Bassano – Bruegel: Nature’s Time, which opened this week at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The museum’s director, Jonathan Fine, tells us more.

Arcimboldo–Bassano–Bruegel: Nature’s Time, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, until 29 June

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It seems absurd that more than a year ahead of the next Venice Biennale, one of the major pavilions in the Giardini might be empty for next year’s event. But that is the dilemma facing Creative Australia, which is responsible for that country’s Biennale presentation. Last month, it announced the team comprising the Lebanese-born Sydney-based artist Khaled Sabsabi and the curator Michael Dagostino as its selection for the 2026 event—and then, within days, rescinded the invitation. An almighty row has engulfed the Australian art world to the extent that the pavilion has been thrown into doubt. So what happened? The Art Newspaper’s Australian correspondent, Elizabeth Fortescue, tells Ben Luke about the debacle. A controversial auction of AI art concluded this week on Christie’s website. It prompted an open letter signed by thousands of artists and creative people asking Christie’s to cancel the sale and accusing the auction house of incentivising the “mass theft of human artists’ work”. We talk to Louis Jebb, The Art Newspaper’s managing editor, who oversees our technology coverage, about the sale and the latest developments in art and AI. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Tired (1946), a terracotta sculpture made by the American-Mexican artist Elizabeth Catlett. It is part of the touring exhibition Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist, which arrived this week at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, after premiering at the Brooklyn Museum in New York last year. We discuss the sculpture with Catherine Morris, a senior curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, who co-curated the exhibition, and Lynn Matheny, the National Gallery of Art’s deputy head of interpretation and curator of special projects.

Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist, National Gallery of Art, 9 March-6 July; Art Institute of Chicago, 30 August-4 January 2026.

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