The Week in Art

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

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.

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.

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

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.