The Week in Art

This week: are stolen Cambodian statues hidden in the world’s great public collections? We discuss Cambodia’s looted heritage with Celia Hatton, Asia Pacific editor and presenter at the BBC World Service, whose documentary for BBC TV and radio Cambodia: Returning the Gods exposes the connections between looters, smugglers and, allegedly, some of the world’s most famous encyclopaedic museums. Plus, the dark truth behind the art and antiques assembled by the Marcos family in the Philippines as they return to power. We talk to the Filipino artist Pio Abad—who’s made art about Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and their collections for more than a decade—about Bongbong Marcos’s presidential election victory in the Philippines and what that means for the country and the art and antiquities seized by its government after the Marcoses were deposed in the 1980s. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, we discuss a sculpture by Ruth Asawa—Untitled (S.266, Hanging Seven-Lobed, Multi-Layered Interlocking Continuous Form within a Form) (1961)—a highlight of a new exhibition at Modern Art Oxford in the UK, with Emma Ridgway, the show’s co-curator. Remarkably, the solo exhibition is the first in a European institution dedicated to the Japanese-American artist.

You can read Celia’s report on Cambodian antiquities online at bbc.co.uk. Cambodia: Returning the Gods (radio version) is on the BBC website and the BBC Sounds app—under The Documentary Podcast stream for the World Service and the Crossing Continents podcast stream in the UK—and on other podcast platforms.

Cambodia: Returning the Gods (television version) is on iPlayer in the UK and will be shown again on the BBC World news channel, broadcast date tbc—check listings.Pio Abad: Fear of Freedom Makes Us See Ghosts, Ateneo Art Gallery, Ateneo de Manila University, until 30 July, pioabad.com.

Ruth Asawa: Citizen of the Universe, Modern Art Oxford, UK, 28 May-21 August; Stavanger Art Museum, Norway, 1 October-22 January 2023.

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We explore the Serpentine Galleries’ new report into Future Art Ecosystems: with existing art industry models under threat, can new ones emerge in the post-coronavirus era? We talk to Ben Vickers, the Serpentine Galleries’ chief technology officer, about art and advanced technologies. As his BBC radio series Great Gallery Tours continues, we hear from a Simon Schama, who is marooned in Trump’s America yet yearns for a sunlit morning on the Thames in London: his choice for our Work of the Week is J.M.W. Turner’s Mortlake Terrace: Early Summer Morning in the Frick in New York. And as unemployment in the US surges past Great Depression-era levels, we look at a historic cultural programme that may have pointers for this moment: the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act or CETA, a response to the economic crisis of the 1970s.

Links:

The Art Newspaper: theartnewspaper.com

The Serpentine Galleries' Future Art Ecosystems report: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/future-art-ecosystems/

Simon Schama's BBC radio series Great Gallery Tours: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kw4t

Turner's Mortlake Terrace: Early Summer Morning: https://collections.frick.org/objects/267/mortlake-terrace-early-summer-morning

CETA: ceta-arts.com

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This week, in our last episode of this series, we look at the top exhibitions you can see this summer in the UK, Europe and the US, with Anna Brady and Gareth Harris joining Ben Luke in London, and Helen Stoilas, Nancy Kenney and Jillian Steinhauer in New York. We also reflect on the anxieties and ethics of visiting galleries as Covid-19 remains widespread.

And we have our usual Work of the Week, this time chosen by the artist Hassan Hajjaj, who looks at an album cover, Doctor Alimantado’s 1978 debut The Best Dressed Chicken in Town, and discusses how it influenced his own photography.

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This week, as the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown hit museums, we’re seeing unprecedented layoffs on both sides of the Atlantic. We ask: are museums doing all they can to save their staff? We look at the latest developments in the UK and US, where hundreds of museum workers are losing their jobs.

Our museums editor, Hannah McGivern sets the scene in the US and Europe, our senior editor Margaret Carrigan speaks to Dana Kopel, the New Museum Union’s unit chair, and Frankie Altamura, one of the union’s stewards, both of whom lost their jobs at the museum this week, about the growing movement for museum workers’ rights across the US and whether institutions can care for their workers. And we speak to Steven Warwick of the Public and Commercial Services union about the effect of the job cuts in UK museums on his members.

This week’s Work of the Week is chosen by Emily Butler, a curator at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, about Rhea Storr’s film Junkanoo Talk (2017). You can see the full film here.

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This week, we look at two great women artists: at last, we visit the postponed Artemisia exhibition at the National Gallery in London, taking a tour with its curator Letizia Treves, and picking out some of the extraordinary highlights of the show. And we also explore a new biography of Frida Kahlo with its author, Hettie Judah.

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