The Smithsonian Establishment in Washington, D.C. has confronted unprecedented scrutiny and authorities interference since President Trump got here to energy. Now, its lengthy cherished plans for a Smithsonian American Girls’s Historical past Museum on the Nationwide Mall in D.C. have been dealt a blow as a result of the US Home of Representatives has struck down a invoice to construct the museum. Ben Luke talks to Elena Goukassian, The Artwork Newspaper’s senior editor of museums and heritage in New York, concerning the partisan rift that led to failure of the invoice, in addition to different developments referring to the Smithsonian.
Oliver Beer, Resonance Portray (On and Ever Onward) (2026)
© Oliver Beer. Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London · Paris ·Salzburg · Milan · Seoul. Photograph: Prudence Cuming Associates
As a part of London Gallery Weekend, which begins on 5 June, the British artist Oliver Beer will present new work and associated sound and video works in an exhibition, The Sky within the Cave, at Thaddaeus Ropac. The present pertains to Beer’s opus Resonance Undertaking: The Cave, during which he introduced eight singers right into a prehistoric painted cave within the Dordogne in France to reply to its explicit acoustic frequencies. Amongst them was the singer songwriter Rufus Wainwright, and Ben speaks to Oliver and Rufus about their collaboration.
Jasper Johns, Portray with Two Balls (1960)
© Jasper Johns, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2026
And this episode’s Work of the Week is Portray with Two Balls by Jasper Johns. It’s a part of a brand new retrospective of the American artist’s work on the Guggenheim Bilbao, Night time Driver. Ben talks to the exhibition’s curator, Enrique Juncosa.









