The last painting made by Gustav Klimt, left on his easel when he died in 1918 of illnesses relating to the Spanish flu epidemic of that year, has sold at auction in Vienna for €35m including fees. But much remains unclear about the picture, including its sitter, its commissioner and what happened to it in the Second World War. Ben Luke talks to Catherine Hickley, The Art Newspaper’s museums editor, about whether this murky provenance contributed to its relatively low price for a Klimt in the...

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,...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

As she stages a non-stop reading of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism for five days at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Tania Bruguera reflects on growing concerns about the censorship of artists in Germany in relation to the Israel-Hamas war. She also discusses the comments made by Ai Weiwei this week that censorship in the West was now “exactly the same” as in Mao’s China. The Courtauld in London this week opened an exhibition of the monumental charcoal drawings made by Frank...

This week: Adriano Pedrosa, the artistic director of the 60th Venice Biennale, on his exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere. As he announces the themes, concepts and the list of artists in the show, we speak to the Brazilian curator about his plans. Hugely popular immersive art experiences are popping up across the world from London to Las Vegas, Tokyo and Abu Dhabi, and we discuss this phenomenon and its implications for museums and galleries with Chris Michaels—an art and technology consultant...

This week: masters week in New York—can the market for historic works be revived? Scott Reyburn, a market reporter for The Art Newspaper, has for some time been exploring the decline in the trade for Old Master paintings. He looks ahead to the auctions in Masters Week in New York, which begin this weekend. In India on Monday, the prime minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a vast temple to the Hindu god Ram in the city of Ayodhya. The temple replaces a 16th-Century mosque that was destroyed by...

This week: the astonishing civil trial in Manhattan between a Russian oligarch and Sotheby’s. The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor, Tim Schneider, witnessed the Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev’s testimony in the trial in New York in which he accuses Sotheby’s of aiding the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier in an alleged fraud. It relates to the sale of major works of art, including the controversial Leonardo painting Salvator Mundi. Tim joins us to tell us about this extraordinary...

In the first episode of 2024 we look ahead to the next 12 months. The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor Tim Schneider peers into his crystal ball to tell us what we might expect from the coming 12 months in the art market. Then, Jane Morris, editor-at-large, Gareth Harris, chief contributing editor, and host Ben Luke select the biennials and exhibitions they are most looking forward to in 2024. Events discussed: 60th Venice Biennale: Foreigners Everywhere, 20 April-24 November; Pierre...

It’s the final episode of 2023 and so, as always, it’s our review of the year. Host Ben Luke is joined by Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, based in London, and Ben Sutton, editor, Americas, based in New York, to discuss the big art and heritage news stories of the year, from rows over the Israel-Hamas war to thefts at the British Museum and the battle for art-fair supremacy between Art Basel and Frieze. Plus, we discuss the shows and works that made the biggest...

This week: the final big art market event of the year, Art Basel in Miami Beach. The Art Newspaper’s associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, talks to our acting art market editor, Tim Schneider, in Miami about the fair, as tensions rise ahead of the pivotal 2024 US election. In Athens, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, or EMST, is next week opening a months-long programme which will end up with the entire museum filled with women artists. We talk to EMST’s director, Katerina...

The tragic human cost of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip in the Israel-Hamas war is well documented. What is now becoming clear is how many historic buildings and sites have also been destroyed. We talk to Sarvy Geranpayeh, a correspondent for The Art Newspaper in the Middle East, about the fate of heritage in Gaza. As a huge exhibition of the work of Emily Kam Kngwarray, perhaps the most celebrated of all Indigenous Australian artists, opens at the National Gallery of Australia in...

This week: The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, Ben Sutton discusses redundancies and ticket price-hikes at several museums across the US, and what it tells us about the economic climate for American museums in the wake of the pandemic. After a troubled 15th edition in 2022, Documenta—the influential exhibition that takes place twice a decade in Kassel, Germany—is at the centre of another controversy. The entire committee intended to appoint its artistic director has resigned following...

This week: the New York auctions. Tim Schneider, The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor, joins us to discuss two weeks of major sales in New York and whether they have calmed a jittery art market. Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s, an exhibition exploring radical art made in six countries under communist rule in Central Eastern Europe, has just opened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, US, before travelling to Phoenix, Arizona and Vancouver. We...

This week: live art and activism. Performance art has long been used as a vehicle for protest and political activism and now, in its tenth edition, the Performa Biennial in New York has a new programme dedicated to artists exploring the subject. Protest and Performance: A Way of Life, which started as part of the 19-day festival this week, features eight events involving artists from across the world but with particular links to the Middle East, While it was programmed months ahead of the...

As global political leaders, key figures in the tech industry and academics meet at Bletchley Park in the UK for a two-day summit on artificial intelligence— discussing in particular the risks of these new technologies and how they could be mitigated—we look at a project that reflects AI’s extraordinary potential. The Vesuvius Challenge aims to use AI to unlock the texts in the papyrus scrolls that were carbonised when the Roman city of Herculaneum was covered in ash and pumice after the...

This week: the first Kyiv Biennial since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year is taking place in various locations across the wartorn country as well as a host of neighbouring European states. We talk to the co-curator, Georg Schöllhammer, about this year’s event. As refugees and displaced people continue to dominate the news, a global sound art project, Migration Sounds, aims to explore and reimagine the sounds of human migration and settlement. We speak to Stuart Fowkes, the founder of...