This week: the Art Basel fair has opened in Switzerland, but are the collectors back and are they buying? We talk to Jane Morris, an editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper, about the art on show and whether the galleries’ jitters ahead of the fair have proved founded. Also, we hear from the classicist Mary Beard about her new book, Twelve Caesars, looking at representations of power across 2,000 years of art history, from Roman coins and busts, to 18th-century fakes, lost Titian masterpieces and Tudor tapestries. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, we focus on Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped—the last ever wrapping project by the late duo. Vladimir Yavachev, Christo’s nephew, who has overseen the final stages of the project in Paris, describes the technical challenges of cloaking one of Paris’s most famous monuments. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related