As the Louvre’s director admits that the museum wants to move its most famous painting away from the crowded gallery in which it is currently displayed, we ask the Leonardo specialist Martin Kemp: does the museum have a Mona Lisa problem? We also talk about the painting’s enduring allure and the continuing efforts to explain its mysteries.
Judy Chicago with our podcast host Ben Luke © David Clack
In London, remarkably, Judy Chicago has just opened her first major multidisciplinary survey in a British public gallery, at the Serpentine North. We talk to her about the show.
Christian Schad, Self-Portrait with Model (1927) © Tate: Lent from a Private Collection 1994 Photo: Benjamin Hasenclever, Munich © Christian-Schad-Stiftung Aschaffenburg/Bildrecht, Wien 2024
And this episode’s Work of the Week is Christian Schad’s Self-Portrait with Model (1927). The painting features in Splendour and Misery: New Objectivity in Germany at the Leopold Museum in Vienna. Hans-Peter Wipplinger, the director of the museum and co-curator of the show, tells us more.
• Judy Chicago: Revelations, Serpentine North, London, until 1 September.
• Splendour and Misery: New Objectivity in Germany, Leopold Museum, Vienna, until 29 September