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The Week in Art
podcast

Is Saudi Arabia the next big cultural powerhouse?

Plus, Michelangelo at the Albertina in Vienna and Julianknxx at the Barbican in London

Sponsored by
Hosted by Ben Luke. Produced by David Clack, Julia Michalska and Alexander Morrison
15 September 2023
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The ancient region of AlUla is being developed into a tourist destination by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia  © Richard Hargas

The ancient region of AlUla is being developed into a tourist destination by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia © Richard Hargas

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.

A Unesco conference and archeological summit in Saudi Arabia are the latest examples of the country’s increasing focus on culture as part of the so-called Vision 2030 programme.

We look at Saudi Arabia’s unprecedented and lavishly funded focus on contemporary and ancient culture and how that relates to ongoing concerns about artistic freedom and human rights abuses in the kingdom.

Alia Al-Senussi, a cultural strategist, and senior advisor at Art Basel and to the Saudi ministry of culture, joins host Ben Luke to discuss the contemporary art scene, and Melissa Gronlund, a reporter on the Middle East for The Art Newspaper, tells us about the push to reveal hitherto underexplored Saudi heritage.

Julianknxx, a production still from Chorus in Rememory of Flight (2023) © Studioknxx


The Sierra Leone-born, London-based artist and poet Julianknxx this week unveiled a new project at London’s Barbican Centre, Chorus in Rememory of Flight. The multi-screen installation features performers and choirs from the African diaspora who Julianknxx met on a 4,000-mile trip around European cities with colonial histories, from Lisbon via Marseille, Rotterdam and Berlin to London. We talk to him about this epic endeavour.

Michelangelo Buonarroti, Studies for the Libyan Sibyl (around 1510–11) © Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest (1924) Photo: bpk/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

And this episode’s Work of the Week is among the greatest works on paper ever made: Michelangelo’s studies in red chalk for the Libyan Sibyl, one of the most distinctive figures on his Sistine Chapel ceiling. The drawing features in Michelangelo and Beyond at the Albertina in Vienna and one of its curators, Constanze Malissa, tells us more about it.

• Art in Saudi Arabia: A New Creative Economy? by Rebecca Anne Proctor, with Alia Al-Senussi, published 30 November, Lund Humphries, £19.99.

• Julianknxx: Chorus in Rememory of Flight, The Curve, Barbican Centre, London, and online on WePresent, until 11 February 2024; Julianknxx is in A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, Tate Modern, until 14 January 2024.

• Michelangelo and Beyond, Albertina, Vienna, 15 September-14 January 2024.

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