National Gallery building row; contemporary art in Lagos; Chagall’s Falling Angel

11/04/22 • 67 min

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This week: uproar over the National Gallery in London’s building plans—is it a sensitive makeover or like “an airport lounge”? We talk to the director of the National Gallery, Gabriele Finaldi, about the gallery’s controversial plans for changes to its Sainsbury Wing, and to Rowan Moore, architecture critic at the Observer, about his views on the designs by the architect Annabel Selldorf, and how they respond to Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s original Post-Modern building. Tokini Peterside-Schwebig, the director of Art X Lagos, tells us about the contemporary art scene in Nigeria’s most populous city, and how the fair is addressing the climate emergency, as devastating floods wreak havoc in West Africa. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Marc Chagall’s The Falling Angel (1923/1933/1947), the centrepiece of a new exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany.

Art X Lagos, Federal Palace, Lagos, Nigeria, 5-6 November

Chagall: World in Turmoil, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany, until 19 February 2023

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Art X Lagos, Federal Palace, Lagos, Nigeria, 5-6 November

Chagall: World in Turmoil, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany, until 19 February 2023

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Edward Hopper controversy; The Horror Show in London; a masterpiece in Bruges

This week: the recent opening of Edward Hopper’s New York at the Whitney Museum has reignited a controversy over the provenance of some of his works. We talk to the leading Hopper scholar Gail Levin about the story of Arthayer R. Sanborn, a Baptist Minister who befriended the Hopper family and eventually amassed a vast collection of memorabilia and art, some of which is in the Whitney Museum’s exhibition. In London, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard tell us about The Horror Show!, their exhibition looking at British culture over the past 50 years, and how artists, film-makers and musicians have used horror and fantasy as a means of exploring the political and social realities of the UK in that time. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the newly restored Death of the Virgin by the Flemish primitive painter Hugo van der Goes, which is the centrepiece of a new exhibition in Bruges.

Edward Hopper’s New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 5 March 2023.

Gail Levin’s website: gaillevin.commons.gc.cuny.edu

The Horror Show! A Twisted Tale of Modern Britain, Somerset House, London, until 19 February 2023

Face to Face with Death: Hugo van der Goes, Old Masters and New Interpretations, Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges, Belgium, until 5 February 2023.

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Next Episode

Artists and climate action; US National Gallery of Art’s women artists fund; Paula Modersohn-Becker

This week: as the UN’s climate emergency summit, Cop27, continues in Egypt, Ben Luke talks to Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent—and the author of our online column about art and climate change—about international art initiatives responding to the crisis. Kaywin Feldman, the director of the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, tells us about the museum’s new $10m endowment fund for purchases of works by women artists. The historic gift, from the family of the gallery’s first female president, Victoria P. Sant, will help the NGA fill gaps in its collection. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Mother with Child on her Arm, Nude II (1906) by the German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker. The work is a highlight of Making Modernism, a show of German women artists that opens this weekend at the Royal Academy in London. The exhibition’s curator, Dorothy Price, discusses this late painting in Modersohn-Becker’s short but productive life.

Making Modernism: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Käthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 12 November-12 February 2023.

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