On Thursday 4 July, the UK will hold a general election, with the Labour party currently far ahead in the opinion polls. Dale Berning Sawa, a contributor to The Art Newspaper who is also commissioning editor at the online news site The Conversation, joins Ben Luke to reflect on the effects on culture of 14 years of Conservative or Conservative-led governments, and what they and the other parties are promising regarding culture in their manifestos. In Florence, Italy, the former director of the Uffizi galleries, the German Eike Schmidt, has lost the race to be mayor of the city. We speak to our correspondent in Italy, James Imam, to find out what happened. And this episode’s Work of the Week is All Power to All People by Hank Willis Thomas. This huge public sculpture depicting an Afro pick with a Black Power salute is at the Glastonbury festival, in a new initiative organised by the non-profit Level Ground, and we talk to Thomas about it.

Hank Willis Thomas: All Power to All People, West Holts Stage, Glastonbury Festival, until 30 June.

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This week: Just Stop Oil’s Stonehenge protest. On Wednesday, two activists sprayed orange powder paint made from cornflour on to three of the boulders at Stonehenge, prompting outrage and some support. Before this latest action, in an article for the July/August print edition of The Art Newspaper, John Paul Stonard had argued that Just Stop Oil’s museum-based protests add up to “one of the most successful campaigns of civil disobedience in history”. He reflects on whether the latest protests reinforce this conviction. At the Hayward Gallery in London, the Bahamian-born, US-based artist Tavares Strachan has just opened his first major survey exhibition. We go to the gallery to talk to him. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Janus Fleuri by Louise Bourgeois, made in 1968. It is one of the highlights of Unconscious Memories, a show in which Bourgeois’s sculptures and installations are installed alongside the historic works in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. We speak to Cloé Perrone, the co-curator of the exhibition.

Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere, Hayward Gallery, London, until 1 September.

Louise Bourgeois: Unconscious memories, Galleria Borghese, Rome, 21 June-15 September.

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This week: it’s arguably the best loved of the major art fairs among collectors and dealers, but what have we learned about the art market at this year’s Art Basel, in its original Swiss home? The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor, Tim Schneider, tells us about the big sales in Switzerland amid the wider market picture. The journalist Lynn Barber has a new book out, called A Little Art Education, in which she reflects on her encounters with artists from Salvador Dalí to Tracey Emin. We talk to her about the highs and lows of several decades of artist interviews. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Woman Leaning on a Portfolio (1799) by Guillaume Lethière. Lethiére was born in Guadeloupe in the Caribbean to a plantation-owner father and an enslaved mother, but eventually became one of the most notable painters of his period in France and beyond. We talk to Esther Bell and Olivier Meslay, the curators of a major survey of Lethière’s work opening this week at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, US, and travelling later in the year to the Louvre in Paris.

Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland, until Sunday, 16 June.

A Little Art Education by Lynn Barber, Cheerio, £15 (hb).

Guillaume Lethière, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, US,

15 June-14 October; Musée du Louvre, Paris, 13 November-17 February 2025

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