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The Week in Art
podcast

Trump turns on museums and libraries, the art market’s 12% fall, Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett—podcast

What are the implications of the US president’s attempts to gut and transform arts organisations? Plus, discussions about the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025 and works by two leading Irish modernists

Hosted by Ben Luke. Produced by Julia Michalska, David Clack and Alexander Morrison
11 April 2025
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Left: Trump at a rally in 2024. Right: Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery

Trump: Photo: Gage Skidmore. Smithsonian: Photo: Zack Frank (Adobe Stock)

Left: Trump at a rally in 2024. Right: Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery

Trump: Photo: Gage Skidmore. Smithsonian: Photo: Zack Frank (Adobe Stock)

The Week in Art

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.

In two-and-a-half months since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, a series of executive orders and other initiatives have attempted systematically to eliminate and defund some of the federal agencies responsible for the distribution of federal money to museums, libraries and other organisations.

The Art Newspaper’s editor-in-chief in the Americas, Benjamin Sutton, joins Ben Luke to discuss what is being seen as an authoritarian and ideologically driven attempt to control cultural activities in taxpayer-funded institutions, restrict free speech and—to use the administration’s own term—“rewrite history”. We also discuss the effect of the economic chaos caused by President Trump’s seesawing on trade tariffs in the past week.

Visitors at Art Basel, Basel in 2024

Courtesy of Art Basel

That same topic is discussed by Clare McAndrew of Arts Economics, the writer of the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025. The report’s key finding is that global art sales declined by 12% in 2024 and McAndrew discusses this stark statistic and other aspects of the survey.

Mainie Jellett, Decoration (1923) and Evie Hone, Evie Hone, Study for Part of the East Window of Eton College Chapel: Chalice, (around 1949-52)

Jellett: Photo: National Gallery of Ireland; Hone: Reproduced by permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College

And this episode’s Works of the Week are by Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, the two artists in an exhibition subtitled The Art of Friendship at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. Jellett and Hone were key figures in Irish Modernism, and we talk to one of the curators of the exhibition, Brendan Rooney, about Jellett’s painting, Decoration (1923) and Hone’s stained-glass image of a chalice (1948-52), a study for her most famous piece, the East Window of Eton College Chapel in Berkshire, UK.

  • The Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025 can be downloaded here
  • Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, until 10 August.
The Week in ArtDonald TrumpArt Basel Art Market ReportArt marketEvie HoneMainie JellettNational Gallery of Ireland Irish art
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