Giotto's Obedience, after the restoration of the Bardi Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence
Courtesy Opera di Santa Croce
From breaking news and insider insights to exhibitions and events around the world, the team at The Art Newspaper picks apart the art world’s big stories with the help of special guests. An award-winning podcast hosted by Ben Luke.
After a four-year restoration, the Bardi Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, in which Giotto depicted scenes from the life of St Francis of Assisi in the early 14th century, has reopened. Ben Luke talks to Emanuela Daffra, superintendent of the Opficio delle Pietre Dure, which conserves Italian heritage, and Donata Grossoni, art historian at the Opera di Santa Croce, about the work and the project to restore it.
The restored Giotto frescoes on the walls and the vault of the Bardi Chapel
Courtesy Opera di Santa Croce
The 18th edition of the Biennale de Lyon called To pass from one dream to another, opens on Saturday, across France’s third largest city. This edition has been devised by the Australian-born, Berlin-based curator Catherine Nichols, and Ben speaks to her about the show.
Laure Prouvost's Hovering Caress Amère (2022-2026) at the Grandes Locos at the 18th Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon
Courtesy of the artist and Horst Arts & Music. © ADAGP, Paris, 2026; Photo ©Blandine Soulage
And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Juggler (The Magician) by Remedios Varo, made in Mexico City in 1956. The painting is one of more than 70 works by the Spanish-born Surrealist in the first major survey of her work in Europe, which begins this week at the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk in Denmark, and travels to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm next year. Ben speaks to Tere Arcq, the co-curator of the exhibition, about the painting.
Remedios Varo's The Juggler (1956)
© 2025 Digital image. The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence © 2026 Remedios Varo/VISDA
Celebrating the “negative joy” of the American artist Kelley in a new Tate retrospective, a period of change in India explored at the Barbican, and a conversation about a work once owned by the pioneering woman gallerist Berthe Weill
What’s behind the troubles facing auction houses and galleries? Plus, Sasha Skochilenko recounts her experience of being arrested—and incarcerated—in Russia, and the story behind a 1937 Surrealist painting by Ernst
Plus, a protest-themed tenth edition of the Performa Biennial and a restored portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger
