American sculpture—race and racism, Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art, Jusepe de Ribera in Paris

The Week in Art

Shortly after the US election on 5 November, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington opens The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, a radical new perspective on the history of the discipline from 1792 to now. Ahead of its opening, Ben Luke speaks to Karen Lemmey, a curator of sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and co-curator of the exhibition. In Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art—a project 20 years in the making—has partially opened. We speak to its director, Joanna Mytkowska, about the long road to the unveiling and the upheavals in Polish politics along the way. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (early 1620s) by Jusepe de Ribera. It features in the first survey of the Spanish-born Baroque artist ever staged in France, at the Petit Palais in Paris. The museum’s director, Annick Lemoine, tells us more.

The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 8 November-14 September 2025.

The Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw is open now; its full programme will be unveiled in February 2025.

Ribera: Shadows and Light, Petit Palais, Paris, until 23 February 2025.

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