Should English museums charge tourists? Plus, Raphael at the Met and Senga Nengudi at the Whitechapel Gallery—podcast

Visitors approach London’s Tate Modern
Photo: philn99
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.
The UK government last week issued a response to a report ostensibly exploring the future of the funding body Arts Council England but containing an idea that has prompted much debate: that the government should consider changing its policy of free admission for all to national museums in England, and charge tourists an entry fee. Ben Luke discusses the report and the charging issue with Gareth Harris, The Art Newspaper’s chief contributing editor, and one of our London-based correspondents, Dale Berning Sawa.
Raphael, Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (1506-7)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Last weekend in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened Raphael: Sublime Poetry, amazingly the first full career survey of the Italian Renaissance master in the United States. Seven years in the making, it explores Raphael’s remarkable output across his short life, from his earliest years in his native Urbino to his work for two Popes in Rome, where he died aged just 37 in 1520. We talk to the show’s curator, Carmen Bambach.
Performance Piece (1977)
And this episode’s Work of the Week is Senga Nengudi’s Performance Piece (1977), a series of three photographs depicting one of the iterations of the US artist’s landmark sculpture and performance work RSVP. The photographs are part of a small exhibition focusing on Nengudi’s performances at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and Ben talks to the exhibition’s curator Hannah Woods.
Plus, hip hop in Baltimore and Juan de Pareja, the artist enslaved by Velázquez
In this week's episode, Ben Luke talks to the curator of a landmark new Matisse exhibition in Paris, discusses the art market in Hong Kong with our chief contributing editor Gareth Harris, and takes a closer look at a Dali painting that inspired Elsa Schiaparelli, as a show devoted to the designer opens at London's V&A
A deep dive into two London shows bringing together key works of the movement, and a spectacular series of tapestries depicting the Battle of Pavia on view in San Francisco
Plus, curator Emily Butler on Rhea Storr's video art. Produced in association with Christie's

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