NewsMedia & broadcast
BBC Four—UK's specialist arts TV channel—saved from the chop
Critics say new strategy means station will become a home for repeats with less investment in arts programming
FeatureHenri Matisse
Sophie Matisse retraces her great-grandfather's footsteps for emotional BBC film
In an interview for The Week in Art Podcast, Sophie reveals how the support of Henri Matisse's wife Amélie became a central theme of Becoming Matisse
NewsAppointments
BBC head Tony Hall joins London's National Gallery to lead board of trustees
Hall will leave his top media job in the summer to take up the unpaid position at the museum
NewsFake or Fortune?
Sculpture knocked over by cat revealed as authentic Giacometti, which sold for £500,000 at Christie's
Featured on the BBC's Fake or Fortune TV show, the sculptor's Tête qui regarde was badly repaired after it was felled by a family feline
NewsObituaries
Tributes for the art historian Sister Wendy Beckett who has died, aged 88
Her unscripted commentaries on Rembrandt, Monet and Leonardo da Vinci turned her into an unlikely television star
BlogDiary of an art historian
Do not allow art to cleanse crimes
The art world has yet to tackle issues around works like Picasso’s $115m child-prostitute portrait
FeatureMarcel Duchamp
What was it like to conduct Marcel Duchamp's only live television interview?
Fifty years on, Joan Bakewell remembers speaking to the pioneering artist for the BBC, shortly before his death
FeatureMedia & broadcast
Civilisations: how the BBC's new series takes on Kenneth Clark's legacy
Documentary breaks with many of the assumptions in the art historian’s seminal series, but it also owes a great deal to it
ArchiveDecorative arts
BBC and V&A collaborate on decorative arts programme
“Handmade in Britain”
ArchiveBBC
Art in the media: Alastair Sooke inspires, Matthew Collings takes a swipe at Tracey Emin and Martin Creed fails to enlighten
Plus, Stephen Fry as Pope Innocent X
ArchiveDrawings
Drawing in the age of the pickled shark: BBC's new programme on drawing from the Renaissance to today
Surgeons and contemporary artists are still inspired by the draughtsmanship of Leonardo and Turner
ArchiveLeonardo da Vinci
Arts in broadcasting and television: Leonardo on BBC 3
Four million viewers tuned in to Alan Yentob’s three-part series on the wonders of Da Vinci
ArchiveBBC
Judith Bumpus on the launch of the BBC’s new digital arts channel BBC4
Here’s hoping that they keep their trousers
ArchiveOpinion
James Hall argues in defence of iconoclastic art
A response to critic Andrew Graham-Dixon’s opinions on the power of images as expounded in his current BBC tv series
ArchiveArtist interview
Interview with Marcel Duchamp: Buried in the BBC archives since 1959, and published here for the first time
Talking about his readymades and his most complicated work “The large glass”, now in Philadelphia, Duchamp reflects on how little he meant to people in the late Fifties, when the painterliness of Abstract Expressionism ruled
Commentcoronavirus
The BBC fights back with 'Culture in Quarantine' against the UK government’s plan to destroy it
A leading Italian art critic says that it is dictators and populists who fear culture and that the BBC’s creativity will be vital to coronavirus Britain, now and in the aftermath
Franco Fanelli