New York auctions, James McNeill Whistler at Tate Britain, Edvard Munch—podcast

Oliver Barker, Sotheby's Chairman, Europe, fields bids during Robert Mnuchin: Collector at Heart Evening Auction
Courtesy of Sotheby's
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.
This season’s much anticipated auctions in New York have brought some records and eye-popping prices, including for works by Jackson Pollock, Constantin Brancusi and Mark Rothko, and some more middling results. Ben Luke talks to Judd Tully, who has been reporting on some of the sales for The Art Newspaper.
Constantin Brancusi's Danaïde (1913)
Courtesy of Christie's
The largest show of the art of James McNeill Whistler in Europe for more than 30 years has just opened at Tate Britain in London, and travels later in the year to the Netherlands, where it forms two shows, at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and The Mesdag Collection in The Hague. Ben takes a tour of the Tate show with its lead curator Carol Jacobi.
James McNeill Whistler at Tate Britain
Photo © Tate (Larina Fernandes)
And this episode’s Work of the Week is the frieze made by Edvard Munch in 1922 for the women’s canteen of the Freia Chocolate Factory in Oslo. The frieze remains in the collection of the Freia chocolate company today, but is on temporary loan to Munch, the museum in the Norwegian capital for the exhibition Edvard Munch and the Chocolate Factory. Our digital editor, Alexander Morrison, went to Oslo to speak to the curator of the exhibition, Ana María Bresciani, about the frieze.
Installation of Edvard Munch's 1922 Freia frieze at Munch in Oslo
Photo: Ove Kvavik / Munchmuseet
Plus, experimental art from the Eastern Bloc and a sculptural installation by Terry Adkins
Ben Luke talks to art market editor Kabir Jhala about the inaugural fair in Doha, explores the debate surrounding a painting of Dürer’s father, and we hear about the synergies between two 20th-century painters
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

source