We are back in Venice for the latest edition of the biggest biennial in the world of art. The 60th Venice Biennale comprises an international exhibition featuring more than 300 artists, dozens of national pavilions in the Giardini—the gardens at the eastern end of the city—and the Arsenale—the historic shipyards of the Venetian Republic—and host of official collateral exhibitions and other shows and interventions across Venice. The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, Louisa Buck, editor-at-large Jane Morris and host Ben Luke review the international exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere/Stranieri Ovunque, curated by the Brazilian artistic director, Adriano Pedrosa. We talk to artists and curators behind five national pavilions—Jeffrey Gibson in the US pavilion, John Akomfrah in the British pavilion, Romuald Hazoumè in the Benin pavilion, Gustavo Caboco Wapichana, the curator of the Hãhãwpuá or Brazilian pavilion, and Valeria Montii Colque in the Chilean pavilion—about their presentations. And we like to end our Venice specials by responding to an example of the historic work that made la Serenissima one of the world’s great centres for art. So for this episode’s Work of the Week, Ben Luke gained exclusive access to one of the most significant paintings in Venetian history: the Assunta or Assumption of the Virgin made between 1516 and 1518 by Titian. Since the last Biennale in 2022, the Assunta has been unveiled after a four-year conservation project, funded by the charity Save Venice. We spoke to the man who restored this incomparable masterpiece, Giulio Bono, right beneath Titian’s painting.

The Venice Biennale, 20 April-24 November. Listen to the interview with Adriano Pedrosa in the episode of this podcast from 2 February.

The website that Giulio Bono mentions, which will present the findings of the conservation of Titian’s Assunta in detail, will go online later this year.

Save Venice, savevenice.org.

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This week: after 80 years in business, Marlborough Gallery, one of the most historic commercial galleries in London, New York and beyond, has announced that it is closing. Host Ben Luke talks to Anny Shaw, a contributing editor at The Art Newspaper, about what happened and what, if anything, it tells us about the market. The New Mexico-based sculptor Rose B. Simpson revealed newly commissioned public art works in Madison Square Park and Inwood Hill Park in New York on Wednesday, called Seed. The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, Ben Sutton went to meet her. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the final painting ever made by Caravaggio: The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, made in 1610. The painting is travelling to London for an exhibition opening at the National Gallery next week, called The Last Caravaggio. Francesca Whitlum-Cooper, the gallery’s acting curator of later Italian, Spanish and 17th-century French Paintings and the curator of the exhibition, tells us more.

marlborougharchive.com.

Rose B. Simpson: Seed, Madison Square Park and Inwood Hill Park, New York, until 22 September. The Whitney Biennial: Even Better than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 11 August. Rose B. Simpson: Strata, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, US, 14 July-13 April 2025; Rose B. Simpson: LEXICON, De Young, San Francisco, US, 16 November-29 June 2025.

The Last Caravaggio, National Gallery, London, 18 April-21 July

Subscription offer: subscribe to The Art Newspaper for as little as 50p per week for digital and £1 per week for print (or the equivalent in your currency). Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more.

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The convicted art fraudster Inigo Philbrick is out of prison and possibly seeking a return to art dealing. How is that possible? Tim Schneider, The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor, tells us about Philbrick’s story, why the art trade is a natural habitat for fraud, and why a criminal past need not lead to art-world banishment. In the wake of the first Art Basel Hong Kong art fair to take place after the newly instated Article 23 security law, our associate digital editor Alexander Morrison talks to our correspondent in China, Lisa Movius, about the law’s impact on artists, museums and others in the art world now and in the future. And this episode’s Work of the Week is a sword associated with Ranjit Singh, the Maharaja who is the subject of a major exhibition opening next week at the Wallace Collection in London. Davinder Toor, the co-curator of the show, tells us more.

Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King, Wallace Collection, London, 10 April-20 October

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