Who made ancient Egyptian art? Plus, Michaelina Wautier, Robert Rauschenberg’s Bed

The Week in Art

A new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, called Made in Ancient Egypt, reveals untold stories of the people behind a host of remarkable objects, and the technology and techniques they used. The Art Newspaper’s digital editor, Alexander Morrison visits the museum to take a tour with the curator, Helen Strudwick. One of the great revelations of the past two decades in scholarship about women artists is Michaelina Wautier, the Baroque painter active in what is now Belgium in the middle of the 17th century. The largest ever exhibition of Wautier’s work opened this week at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and travels to the Royal Academy of Arts in London next year. Ben Luke speaks to the art historian who rediscovered this extraordinary painter, Katlijne Van der Stighelen, who has also co-edited the catalogue of the Vienna show. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Robert Rauschenberg’s Bed (1955), one of the most important works of US art of the post-war period. It features in the exhibition Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, which this week arrives at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. We speak to Yilmaz Dziewior, the co-curator of the exhibition.

Made in Ancient Egypt, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK, 3 October-2 April 2026

Michaelina Wautier, Painter, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

30 September-22 February 2026; Royal Academy of Arts, London

27 March – 21 June 2026.

Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany,

3 October-11 January 2026

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