This week's art roundup from The Guardian features a major exhibition at Towner Eastbourne titled 'Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism,' which examines how artists, poets, and intellectuals used their work to resist the rise of extremism in 1930s Europe, drawing on the history of the Artists International Association (AIA). Other highlights include 'Hidden: Photography and Displacement Under the Khmer Rouge' at The Wiener Holocaust Library in London, a show of early Netherlandish drawings at the British Museum, Katharina Grosse's colorful installations at White Cube, and a flower-themed survey at Kettle's Yard. The image of the week is Sylvia Sleigh's 1963 portrait 'The Bridge (Johanna Lawrenson),' part of a new exhibition of the Welsh artist's work. The article also covers news items such as Lydia Ourahmane's Venice Biennale installation, a Holbein portrait mystery, a restored stained-glass window by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, and Anish Kapoor's call to exclude the US from the Venice Biennale due to 'politics of hate.'
This roundup matters because it captures the breadth of current visual art discourse, from historical political resistance and cultural memory to contemporary debates about national representation at major international exhibitions. The inclusion of restitution-adjacent topics (Khmer Rouge displacement), institutional politics (Kapoor's statement), and market-adjacent news (Gagosian recreating a Christo work) reflects the interconnected nature of the art world. The article also serves as a practical guide for readers interested in upcoming exhibitions and ongoing conversations about art's role in society, censorship, and historical reckoning.