This podcast episode from The Art Newspaper covers three major art stories. Ben Luke tours Kerry James Marshall's retrospective 'The Histories' at the Royal Academy of Arts in London—the largest European survey of the US artist's work—with curator Mark Godfrey, and visits a related exhibition of Marshall's graphic novel 'Rythm Mastr' at The Tabernacle in Notting Hill. The National Gallery in London announces a £400m expansion called Project Domani, the largest transformation in its 200-year history, with £375m already raised, and a shift in its collecting boundary beyond 1900. Finally, Tate Modern's centenary exhibition 'Theatre Picasso' centers on Pablo Picasso's 'The Three Dancers' (1925), discussed with co-curator Natalia Sidlina and designer Enrique Fuenteblanca.
These stories matter because they highlight significant institutional and artistic developments in the UK and Europe. Kerry James Marshall's retrospective affirms the growing recognition of Black American artists in European museums, while the National Gallery's expansion and policy change signal a major rethinking of national collection boundaries and public engagement. The Picasso exhibition at Tate Modern marks a centenary of a pivotal modernist work, demonstrating how major museums continue to recontextualize canonical art through contemporary staging and scholarship.