“If you didn’t know that David Hockney was 88, you might think he was in his prime,” said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. The veteran artist has lately been producing and exhibiting work at a prodigious rate, and less than a year after his “colossal” retrospective in Paris, he has returned to the UK for a “magical, moving” exhibition, “A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting”, at London’s Serpentine North Gallery.

The show, which is free, consists of ten new acrylic paintings – five portraits and five still lifes – and “A Year in Normandie”, a vast, 265ft-long frieze depicting the change of seasons observed in the countryside around his studio during the pandemic. Created on his iPad and printed on paper, it is a collage of dozens of images the artist dashed off in 2020 and 2021. While it contains traces of human presence – some garden furniture, a treehouse, various images of Hockney’s half-timbered farmhouse – “the prevailing impression is of nature’s unhurried, inexorable rhythms”, gradually moving from “bare-branched trees” to the “flaring blossom of spring” to summer’s “shaggy greenery”. It’s beautiful, “transporting” and “unexpectedly emotional” – irrefutable proof that Hockney’s “artistic powers haven’t deserted him”.

Hockney has never shied away from celebrating “conventional forms of beauty”, said Ben Eastham in The Guardian. Back in the 1960s, he disproved the lie that great art had to be “difficult”, specialising in paintings that were as immediately accessible as they were clever. In this show, the curators have made an “impressive” spectacle of the main frieze, which “will reproduce well on phone screens”. This was “a smart decision, because in reality it is underwhelming”. The work is “undone by the details”: the messy joins, the “clangorous” colours, the confected “painterly” atmosphere. The best things here are portraits. One depicts Hockney’s partner looking up from his phone, his expression “at once ironical and indulgent”. Another, of the artist’s nephew, is a fine example of his ability to “conjure character”.

I wasn’t previously a fan of Hockney’s iPad pictures, said Jackie Wullschläger in the Financial Times. Yet this show changed my mind. Here, he uses his device with the “confidence and nuance of experience”: placing a thin film over its screen, he has discovered, gives its surface “a resistance like paper” and produces sharper effects. “A Year in Normandie” is a thrilling hymn to the seasons, “rooted in French history and landscape”: it cites everything from the Bayeux Tapestry to Monet’s “Water Lilies”. Trees are the main protagonists, “in their prime or decaying, stark silhouettes, majestic crowns, or felled”; poplars fizz “like pop art”. It’s the “masterwork” of Hockney’s old age, and the show is “a generous celebration of contemporary art’s longest-lived, most irrepressible pleasure-giver”.

Serpentine North, London W2. Until 23 August

Hurvin Anderson has earned a well-deserved reputation “as one of Britain’s most skilful and genuinely experimental painters”, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. Born to Jamaican parents in Handsworth, Birmingham, in 1965, Anderson “is big on artistic virtues we like to think of as typically British: emotional reticence and a doggedly patient focus on what’s in front of him”. He often returns to the same subjects: Black-owned barbershops, lush Caribbean forest-scapes, drab English suburbia.

Whatever he paints, it is always characterised by a certain sense of “detachment, even alienation”. People, if they figure at all, are generally “seen from a distance or behind or deliberately blurred”. The paintings are highly atmospheric, frequently radiating a sense of menace or melancholy – they have the air of fading memories. This “fascinating” retrospective at Tate Britain is Anderson’s biggest exhibition to date, bringing together around 80 paintings from every stage of his career. It is “an absorbing survey of an undoubtedly significant figure”. Anderson is a figurative painter in the great tradition of Bacon, Freud and Auerbach. “The linking factor is a commitment to developing his craft” that is “quite humbling”.

Anderson’s work is defined by tensions, said Laura Freeman in The Times. He constantly “pulls this way and that”, between realism and romanticism, between Britain and the Caribbean, between past and present. A major presence in these pictures is Jamaica itself: he didn’t visit until he was a teenager, and says he struggles with his “romantic” conceptions of his parents’ homeland. Yet the Jamaica we see in his paintings “isn’t the Sandals fantasy of holiday adverts”. Rather, it’s “a place of rank overabundance, hot soil and hotter concrete”. Somehow, Anderson manages to conjure the humidity of the place, hitting you “with the sinister oppression” of tropical heat. But he can be uneven, too: for every “stunner” like “Wait a Moment” (2019), a virtuosic treatment of “shifting shadows on white sand”, there’s a misfire. And too often, the Tate’s “cavernous” galleries seem to dwarf the hang.

“Quality control could have been tighter,” said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. A number of Anderson’s best paintings have been omitted in favour of “sludgy, hesitant” smaller works. Even so, there’s no shortage of “striking compositions”: “Maracas III” (2004), for instance, sees “a hazy Caribbean vista”, painted as if it were “the crystallisation of a memory”, in which tiny figures “are dwarfed by sinuous palm trees”. His complex feelings about his heritage are clear in a series of Trinidadian landscapes interrupted by barriers “such as security grilles and wire fencing, so that the viewer feels excluded”. All in all, this is a “transfixing” show. I left it “enchanted by the pensive, yearning atmosphere that’s peculiar to Anderson’s art”.

Tate Britain, London SW1. Until 23 August

‘Banky’s anonymity is what gives — gave? — his art its power’

Allison Schrager at Bloomberg

The “revelation that the artist Banksy is a 50-something man from Bristol, England, named Robin Gunningham” might “be the ultimate test of what actually determines value in contemporary art,” says Allison Schrager. Art insiders “are speculating that the news will increase the value of Banksy’s work. That line of thinking tracks with the fact that markets hate uncertainty, and now there is more clarity.” But Banksy’s “art is not like a stock option or any other commodity.”

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‘The farm bill, in its current state, is a public health failure’

Lyndon Haviland at The Hill

Congress is “trying to pass a long-overdue farm bill as lawmakers debate where, and how, billions in taxpayer resources should be allocated,” says Lyndon Haviland. But “those involved in shaping the current legislation seem to be more interested in protecting special interests than advancing the bill’s primary objectives: establishing a healthy food system, supporting a wide group of farmers who supply it and ensuring all Americans have access to a safe and nutritious food supply.”

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‘Great powers can learn from small island states’

José Ulisses de Pina Correia e Silva at Newsweek

Small island countries are “uniquely placed to navigate today’s changing world,” says Cape Verde Prime Minister José Ulisses de Pina Correia e Silva. Their “size and focused economies, rather than making them vulnerable, have made many capable of addressing global economic shocks and thrive as the shift occurs from the ‘globalization generation’ to a new arena of great power play.” Small size “also means economic expansion is focused on the practical,” with “no room for overpromising.”

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‘Medical students and doctors aren’t supposed to do invasive exams on surgery patients without permission. My research found it’s still happening. Here’s what should be done.’

Phoebe Friesen at the Toronto Star

The “practice of medical students performing pelvic exams on anesthetized patients without their consent has had a lot of press in recent years — at least in the United States,” says Phoebe Friesen. But in Canada “nonconsensual educational sensitive exams” are “alive and well.” It is “time for Canada to get clear on consent for educational sensitive exams under anesthesia,” and “time for medical schools across the country to implement policies ensuring explicit consent takes place before each educational exam.”

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Though optimism “can feel out of reach right now,” said Holland Cotter in The New York Times, the art in the latest Whitney Biennial seems to want to keep the mindset alive. Breaking from the recent tradition of gathering works that address a single theme, this 82nd showcase of contemporary art is “something broader and looser.” The exhibition’s inventive curators focus on American artists but also on artists from countries that have been subject to U.S. intervention, and the result is a show “shaped by references to forces now ever-present in the cultural air: climate disaster, border policing, and technological dominance.” Even so, the strongest thread may be the idea of community, in all forms, as a source of shared respect and care.

That makes for an odd show, said Ben Davis in Artnet. “At a time when the political news is as alarming as it has been at any moment in my life, the consensus appears to be that ‘political art’ is washed.”

The Whitney’s curators have followed the direction of the wind and chosen work that’s light on message but big on feelings. The first piece viewers come upon on the exhibition’s main floors “signals a sincerity-first credo,” because it’s a tribute to a deceased seeing-eye dog featuring hand-molded dog-toy facsimiles arranged by artist Emilie Louise Gossiaux to invoke a canine heaven. With a few exceptions, much of the rest of the work is “defined by its small-scale-ness, by being little bits of things halfway between sculptural statement and personal talisman.” Too meek to demand change in the world or to even offer escape, the show is left summoning “whatever can be felt when you don’t believe in either.” For me, such bids for emotion succeeded brilliantly, said William Van Meter, also in Artnet. “More than once,” as I examined individual works, “I found myself holding back tears.”

“Mourning, shrines, grief—they run through both floors of the show,” said Aruna D’Souza in Hyperallergic. Kelly Akashi’s Monument (Altadena), is a “ghostly” glass-brick reconstruction of the chimney of the home she lost to Los Angeles’ 2025 wildfires. Oswaldo Maciá’s Requiem for the Insects is a chapel-like installation that calls attention to the bugs we share our planet with. On the museum’s sixth floor, visitors are drawn to Michelle Lopez’s Pandemonium, a tornado of discarded plastic, faded U.S. flags, and other detritus that’s projected on a circular screen overhead. “It’s not subtle, but it’s effective; the polycrisis sublime.” And for every piece that’s sorrowful, there’s another that’s “charming and joyful.” All in all, walking the galleries “felt like the world as I experience it these days: no clear path in front of me but enough moments of beauty and joy to convince me to put one foot in front of the other.”

The world-famous graffiti artist Banksy has finally been unmasked as Robin Gunningham from Bristol, following a months-long exposé by Reuters, which took investigators from Ukraine to London to New York.

His identity has been “debated, and closely guarded, for decades”, but the news agency said its story was in the public interest because it was vital to understand “the identity and career of a figure with his profound and enduring influence on culture, the art industry and international political discourse”.

‘The police could find him and arrest him easily’

The only problem is that Banksy’s real identity has been an open secret for nearly two decades, with Gunningham’s name first linked to the artist in the Mail on Sunday in 2008.

“If you google Banksy and Gunningham you get something like 43,500 hits”, said Steve Le Comber, co-author of a 2016 study at Queen Mary University of London that used geographic profiling to cross-reference 140 Banksy artworks in London and Bristol with the 10 names most commonly associated with the artist.

Because Gunningham’s name has been linked with Banksy for so long, there may be a temptation to respond to the Reuters report “with a shrug”, said The Telegraph. But his outing, and revelations he legally changed his name to the more common David Jones, “may have more serious consequences than providing titillation for the arts crowd”.

This is in part because his “uniqueness stems from the fact that his work is often done using subterfuge, under cover of night or with a team of operatives equipped with fake filming permits or disguised as builders”.

Much of his work could be considered as acts of criminal damage, said Will Ellsworth-Jones, the author of two books on Banksy and his work. This revelation “makes it much more difficult for him… He’d be easy to find now and easy to be charged,” he told The Telegraph. “The police could, if they wanted to, find him and arrest him easily.”

‘People want him to be anonymous’

It may not be new news but it’s still “big news, because Banksy is big news”, said Eddy Frankel in The Times. His work may not appear in any major art institutions but “his influence is pervasive”. The “fascinating thing” is that despite his true identity being public knowledge for close to two decades, “the public want him to be anonymous, covert, secretive”.

“They would rather believe his identity is a mystery than admit that their favourite anti-establishment art rebel is a shortsighted bloke from Bristol called Robin.”

Banksy’s lawyer Mark Stephens has said the Reuters investigation “would violate the artist’s privacy, interfere with his art and put him in danger”, as “working anonymously or under a pseudonym serves vital societal interests.”

The artist has chosen to keep his identity unknown as “a way of continuing to work without the constraints of fame” and “an anonymity which also served as a means of protection from police prosecution”, said David Mouriquand on Euronews. Additionally, “part of the appeal resides in the riddle” so once it is solved “you inadvertently dent the artist’s tantalising elusiveness and his/her/their sense of unpredictability, as well as endanger his freedom of movement and expression”.

“Giving a name to the most famous street artist of our time also means taking something away from the myth – reducing the distance between the work and its creator, transforming a nearly symbolic figure into a person that can be debated, mocked, or judged,” said Anna Frattini on culture website Collater.al.

The painter Rose Wylie “is one of the great personalities” of the British art world, said Lucy Davies in the Financial Times – but until she was in her late-70s, “she was barely known”. Although she trained at art school in the 1950s, Wylie (b.1934) gave up painting while she raised her children; it was only once they were grown up that she took to the easel again.

In recent years, her giant canvases with bold colours, naive cartoon-like images, painted texts and wild juxtapositions – she paints football players, film stars, Old Testament prophets, totalitarian symbols, chocolate biscuits – have captivated audiences young and old.

This show is her biggest yet, a thorough retrospective of her painting since 1989, since when she has been producing canvases at a prodigious rate from “her ramshackle cottage in Kent”. The colours alone make it a worthwhile experience: “ballerina pink”, “marzipan yellow”, “zingy, toothpastey green”. Viewers fall for her paintings “because they are so full of self and energy”, but it’s the “collisions” she creates between “wildly different things” that make them so memorable. This show is a fascinating insight into her “magnificent, unruly inner world”.

Wylie is “unstuffy, funny and forthright”, said Laura Freeman in The Times. She paints exactly what she likes. At best, her works exist in a “larky” universe of their own, borrowing from film stills or press cuttings and accessorising them with “arrows, annotations and titles”, often painted in bold capital letters. 2015’s “Pink Skater (Will I Win, Will I Win)”, for instance, radiates a sense of “gliding elation”; the four canvases of “Park Dogs & Air Raid”, meanwhile, capture a unique child’s-eye view of a wartime dogfight over Kensington Gardens. The subject matter – dogs, ducks, propeller planes – seems exactly the sort of thing that might attract the eye of a little girl.

Yet the “duds” here are numerous. “Often, there’s a sense that a Christmas cracker has been pulled. The painting goes off with a bang… then nothing falls out. There’s an immediate visual impact but little lasting reward.”

The “wilful roughness” of Wylie’s approach gets up some people’s noses, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph: her paintings can resemble “graffiti in a public toilet”. Yet when Wylie is good, she’s really good. She can summon art “from almost anything”: from a photo of Nicole Kidman on the red carpet to “berries on a bowl of porridge”; and her seemingly childlike style belies a wealth of complexity, erudition and art-historical reference. Her paintings frequently call out misogyny with “subtle, cunning wit”: one here sees the disembodied bust of an actress splayed out next to an axe; “she could be a victim on the chopping block”.

At her best, Wylie is “irreverent, irrepressible, anarchic” and “intensely charismatic”. “It’s rare to find yourself inside a gallery having this much fun while being made to think.”

Royal Academy, London W1, until 19 April.

A fresh perspective on Marilyn Monroe, a celebration of Edmonia Lewis’ intricate marble sculptures and a first-of-its-kind Raphael retrospective are a small sampling of the absorbing museum exhibitions opening across the U.S. this spring. Here are six not to miss.

‘Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World,’ Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

Bronze sculptures, amulets, wands, gems, curse tablets and other artifacts on display in “Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World” offer fascinating insights into the supernatural technologies and rituals of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome between 2000 BCE and 300 CE. About 75 objects are part of the exhibition, including items on loan from the Louvre, British Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Visitors can expect to learn more about the “remarkable similarities between the magical practices of the ancient world and perceptions of magic today,” said guest curator Dr. Jeffrey Spier. “Magicians, witches and ghosts like those in our fairy tales and movies have roots in the ancient world.” (March 21 through July 5)

‘Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone,’ Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts

Edmonia Lewis, a Black and Indigenous sculptor from New York, “achieved improbable mobility and international fame” during the 19th century, said The New York Times. Her neoclassical marble sculptures of “emancipated African Americans” and “powerful historical women like Cleopatra” were displayed around the world. She is finally getting her first — and long overdue — major retrospective at the Peabody Essex Museum, an exhibition a “decade in the making.”

Curators from Peabody Essex and co-organizer Georgia Museum of Art traveled the country to find some of Lewis’ lost treasures, including “Forever Free,” an 1867 depiction of a man and woman with broken shackles. In total, 30 sculptures, “almost half of Lewis’ known output,” are part of the exhibition, which is rounded out by photographs, Indigenous objects, correspondence from friends and artwork by her contemporaries. (through June 7 at Peabody Essex; Aug. 8 through Jan. 3, 2027, at Georgia Museum of Art)

‘Kawai Kanjiro: House to House,’ Japan Society, New York City

Kawai Kanjiro, a co-founder of Japan’s mingei (folk art) movement, had a long and storied career, crafting pottery and poetry until his death in 1966. In this exhibition, Kawai’s first U.S. retrospective, the artist’s story and his contributions to the ceramics world are told through wooden sculptures, masks, calligraphy and poetry. These works are from his personal collection, rarely seen outside the Kawai Kanjiro House museum in Kyoto (March 10 through May 10)

‘Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon,’ Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles

You might think you know Marilyn Monroe, but this exhibition, timed to coincide with what would have been her 100th birthday, promises to give new insight into her life and how she became one of Hollywood’s most enduring stars. The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures invites visitors to examine the “many facets” of Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson, and how she “created and shaped her public image in the context of the classical Hollywood studio system.”

Hundreds of posters, photographs, letters and personal effects will shed light on how Norma became Marilyn, and how Marilyn became a global phenomenon still in the spotlight more than 60 years after her death. The exhibition also features several of her most famous costumes, including the gorgeous (and rarely displayed) fuchsia dress she wore in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” (May 31, 2026 through Feb. 28, 2027)

‘Raphael: Sublime Poetry,’ The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

This “monumental” display of Raphael’s work “reconstructs” the artist’s entire career, with a special emphasis on his “depictions of women” and “mastery across media,” said Artforum. Raphael, born Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, has long been revered as one of the greatest artists in history, and “Sublime Poetry” includes more than 200 of his most renowned drawings, paintings and tapestries from both public and private collections. Works on loan include “The Virgin and Child with Infant Saint John the Baptist in Landscape (The Alba Madonna)” from the National Gallery of Art and “Portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione” from the Louvre. (March 29 through June 28)

‘Timeless Mucha,’ The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

The striking graphics of Czech painter and illustrator Alphonse Mucha still resonate today, more than a century after his posters for Sarah Bernhardt productions catapulted him to fame. “Timeless Mucha” is a “sprawling revisit” of more than 100 of his “iconic” works that “captured the look and spirit” of French Art Nouveau, said Artnet. Several of his Bernhardt designs will be displayed, along with “Japanese manga, psychedelic rock posters from the 1960s and Marvel comics” that “borrowed and built” on Mucha’s “bold visual language.” (April 18 through Aug. 30)

‘The US World Cup is facing two crises: a financial mess — and ICE.’

Nellie Pou at The Guardian

The “final match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup will be played in East Rutherford, New Jersey,” but if the U.S. “doesn’t get its act together, we risk turning a generational opportunity into an international embarrassment,” says Nellie Pou. The “first problem is money.” Every “day of delay makes an already complex logistical challenge harder.” The games “also face a second threat: ICE.” When an “immigration enforcement agency signals it may be at our stadiums and public events, it raises legitimate fears.”

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‘Ballet isn’t dead, but Timothée Chalamet might have a point’

Chloe Angyal at Time

Timothée Chalamet recently “spoke about the vibrancy of cinema,” and “went on to claim that ‘no one cares’ about ballet or opera,” says Chloe Angyal. To many, “Chalamet sounded like an ignorant bully.” Ballet is “too often the butt of the joke,” often relying on the “shared assumption that ballet is feminine, frivolous and a little gay.” While Chalamet “did not make such insults himself, his comments fit into this broader context of disparagement and dismissal.” In the US, “ballet is starved for state resources, which reflects a widespread lack of respect.”

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‘Trump wants the Kurds to wage war in Iran. They should beware.’

Stephen Kinzer at The Boston Globe

As the “war against Iran intensifies, an old Middle East impulse has suddenly reemerged: Arm the Kurds,” says Stephen Kinzer. For “decades, the United States has used Kurdish militias as proxies.” Now President Donald Trump “wants them to enter Iran and try to set off an ethnic uprising. They should beware.” Even “with American air support, the few thousand Iranian Kurds who might launch an insurgency inside their country would have no realistic chance to advance against Iran’s military.”

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‘Russia’s use of poison: a reality Europe has been slow to confront.’

Marie Jégo at Le Monde

Eliminating opponents “by poisoning them is embedded in the DNA of Russian power,” says Marie Jégo. The “advantage of poison is that it is not easily detected.” The “fact that Russia, a signatory to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, could so brazenly use poisons is a reality Europe has been slow to address.” It was “not until 2023 that Moscow lost its seat on the organization's executive council and 2026 before the criminal state was called out.”

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The Hollywood star Timothée Chalamet is facing the surprisingly hostile wrath of the ballet and opera communities after suggesting that “no one cares” about the genres.

“I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this anymore,’” he said in a live conversation with his “Interstellar” co-star Matthew McConaughey on Variety and CNN. “All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there.”

‘Disappointing take’

Ballet and opera fans “seem pretty pissed off about Chalamet’s tongue-in-cheek comments”, said William Hughes on AV Club. He’s “facing some fairly stiff punishments”, including “the possibility of actually having to go see an opera himself”, because the English National Opera gave him “an open offer of tickets” to “help change his mind on the artform”.

Some ballet and opera folk were not very “live-and-let-live”, with “many reminding” Chalamet that “their craft is insanely hard work” and it “doesn’t get any easier when film actors start punching down”.

The US opera singer Isabel Leonard said she was “shocked that someone so seemingly successful can be so ineloquent and narrow-minded in his views about art while considering himself as [an] artist”, said The Hollywood Reporter. Only a “weak person/artist feels the need to diminish” the “very arts that would inspire those who are interested in slowing down, to do exactly that”.

Deepa Johnny, the Canadian opera star, called Chalamet’s remark a “disappointing take” and said “we should be trying to uplift these art forms, these artists and come together across disciplines to do that”.

‘Clear-sighted’ and ‘practical’

“Of course, everyone threw a fit because everyone gets offended over every little thing”, said Sasha Stone on Awards Daily, but Chalamet is “100% right”. The actor “doesn’t want to see movies become a niche cultural event”.

I “hope” he just “lets it roll off his back” because “when they decide to come for you”, there’s “no fixing that. Don’t apologise. Be yourself. Be unique.”

Chalamet “isn’t the person you would expect to put down ballet and opera – especially ballet”, said Gia Kourlas in The New York Times. His mother and his sister “studied at the School of American Ballet” and “he wore a New York City Ballet baseball cap in Paris”.

His point “wasn’t that ballet and opera don’t matter”, rather that they aren’t “really part of mainstream culture”. The “value” of ballet and opera, and “people’s perception around their value”, are “two different things”. What Chalamet said “wasn’t untrue” – it was “clear-sighted” and “practical”.

“Still,” said Hughes, “at least people are talking about ballet and opera now, right?”

What does France’s nuclear policy shift mean for Europe? Why is the dinosaur market booming? And can North Korea regain its place at the top of women’s football?

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

A podcast for curious, open-minded people, The Week Unwrapped delivers fresh perspectives on politics, culture, technology and business. It makes for a lively, enlightening discussion, ranging from the serious to the offbeat. Previous topics have included whether solar engineering could refreeze the Arctic, why funerals are going out of fashion, and what kind of art you can use to pay your tax bill.

You can subscribe to The Week Unwrapped wherever you get your podcasts:

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In 1972, the artist L.S. Lowry, then in his 80s and a “reluctant celebrity”, sat down in his living room for an interview with a young fan, said James Jackson in The Times. It was meant to be a one-off encounter, but it turned into an ongoing “four-year project”.

In this one-hour BBC2 programme, Ian McKellen appears as “the great Mancunian observer of ordinary lives”, lip-syncing to the freshly unearthed audio from those meetings. This takes some “getting used to”, but after a while it is “impossible to look away”.

We learn about Lowry’s relationship with his parents, “how he found his niche painting Pendlebury’s townscapes after his family were forced to downsize from their middle-class neighbourhood”, and his bachelorhood. But the film is not just about him; it also serves as “an epitaph” for his subject: “an industrial Manchester obliterated by the slum clearances”, a place “of hurrying crowds and tightly bonded communities. A vanished North.”

“Lip-syncing can be toe-curling to witness,” said Chitra Ramaswamy in The Guardian. But McKellen’s “is a thing of bleak and beautiful northern wonder, all obfuscating harrumphs and carefully placed blows on his hankie”. The show tells a “fascinating” story, about the artist and our “attitudes to art and heritage”, said Nick Curtis in The Independent. When he died, Lowry’s estate was valued at less than £300,000; in 2022, one of his works sold for £7.8 million. The factories he painted are gone; and he “couldn’t have imagined… the sparkling Lowry gallery” that now stands in their place.

During her lifetime, Gwen John’s achievements were rather overshadowed by those of her younger brother Augustus, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. Today, though, she is arguably Wales’ most famous artist – and, to mark the 150th anniversary of her birth in 1876, she is now the subject of this “superb, daunting” retrospective in Cardiff. It does not give us a blow by blow biography of the artist, who grew up in Haverfordwest and followed her brother to the Slade art school, before moving to France. Instead, the show plunges us straight into her “spiritual, austere existence”.

We meet John in Paris, painting cats, the sparse rooms she rented “and women alone in moments of calm thought”. In a series started in the early 1910s, a young woman in a blue dress – a convalescent – sits “weakly in an armchair”. The brilliance of these canvases lies in what they do not show; there are no “chatting crowds”, no gaudy hats, no omnibuses. In her work, John cut out the “social flab”, to focus on the inner experience – in this case, a woman’s “sorrow, illness, despair, recovery”. It is not that she is an artist without passion or desire (she had a decade-long affair with the sculptor Auguste Rodin); it’s simply that in her quest to escape the repressive dishonesty of the world into which she was born, she stripped it all back, and painted only what was essential.

John’s subject matter never deviated far from those paintings, but her style developed over the years, said Alastair Smart in The Telegraph. In 1897’s “Young Woman Playing a Violin”, “attention is paid even to the strings” on the bow. A couple of decades later, influenced by James McNeill Whistler, John’s work has become more ethereal. Aided by the pioneering application of a mix of chalk and animal glue to her canvases, figures such as the praying woman in “The Pilgrim” “seem weightless, almost levitating off the canvas towards us”. But though these latter works are “riveting”, they are not enough to sustain a show of this size. Of the 200 pieces here, too many are rarely shown works on paper – dreary watercolours of nuns, cats and flowers. Their inclusion reinforces the sense that John was a limited artist, a little of whom “goes a long way”.

Some of these works are admittedly weak, said Laura Cumming in The Observer, but the focus of the show is John’s method: how she created, for instance, atmosphere and a sense of presence in empty rooms. One of her best-loved paintings, “A Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris” (c.1907-09), has light filtering in through a curtain and a parasol leaning “against a chair drawn comfortingly close” to a table that is bare save for some flowers, it’s “still, quiet, calm” – a sanctuary for the viewer, too. But then we see a second painting of the same corner. Now the curtain is part open; John has taken a step back; the tones are sharper. This painting feels active. The room is not changed; what has altered is the state of her mind, or of her heart.

National Museum Cardiff. Until 28 June.

We think of samurai as fearsome warriors – and they were, said Neil Fisher in The Sunday Times. Yet if you visit Nomura Residence, an “elegant” house in the Japanese city of Kanazawa where generations of samurai lived, you’ll find it has delightful features, including an exquisite garden. Inside, you can see a fine piece of calligraphy – a letter written in 1566 to a samurai from his liege lord. “We appreciate that you worked so hard to kill one high-ranked soldier on the fourth of last month at the Yokokitaguchi Battle,” it says. “We are very happy that you brought us his head.”

The story of the samurai is, you realise, a “bundle of contradictions” – “elegance and formality, banality and butchery” – and that is how it is presented in the British Museum’s “blockbuster” show. It explores the role of the samurai and their pop-cultural afterlife – and in so doing, it clears up a few misapprehensions. The biggest is that the samurai were a “military sect”, when for centuries they were more “a privileged tier of society” that helped ensure the smooth running of the state. During the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868), “about 10% of the population counted as samurai class”, half of whom were women.

The show takes you on a “scintillating journey” through “a world of gore, power and artistic beauty”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. The samurai were not the first to believe that, in battle, the warrior is transformed into something other. The Vikings had their berserkers, for instance. “But no culture has ever put quite as much creativity into blood-lust” as this one. When the samurai donned their armour – “so vital, so electric”, with their grimacing black masks – they would have seemed truly demonic. Even empty, the suits here “pulse with menace and mystery”.

There are lots of weapons on show too, and images of samurai in bloody battle – but also a painting of a warrior stopping to smell the blossom he is riding past, and another of a samurai making love to a courtesan while two other women “caress the blade of his unsheathed sword”. That perhaps encapsulates the appeal of this exhibition: the samurai were lethal but sexy, their warfare violent yet theatrical.

For samurai, who “aspired to be sophisticated courtiers and held the arts in high regard, beauty and brutality were intertwined”, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. Some of their armour was positively dandyish; a 19th century quiver here glitters like a disco floor. The show is in three parts. The first covers the rise of the warriors as a fighting force in medieval times; the second – and most engrossing, in my view – is about the peaceful Tokugawa shogunate, when they morphed into bureaucrats; the third explores their impact on popular culture. The effect of this section, which includes comic books and an effigy of Darth Vader, whose helmet was modelled on samurai armour, is bathetic, as if you’ve walked into a teenager’s bedroom. It’s a disappointing climax to an otherwise “riveting” exhibition.

British Museum, London WC1. Until 4 May

Forty years ago, the American photographer Nan Goldin published what became “one of the most influential photo books ever made”, said Jacqui Palumbo on CNN. Entitled “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”, it documented life in New York City’s East Village in the 1970s and 1980s, with excursions to Chicago, London and Mexico City. The “searingly intimate” pictures showed Goldin and her “predominantly queer” friends in a variety of locations, from “darkened nightclubs” to “daylit bedrooms”. Their gazes are variously “bright, or disaffected, or longing”, and cigarette smoke hangs in the air.

Goldin conceived the series “as a slideshow timed to songs by ‘The Velvet Underground’ and Dionne Warwick”, which was played in nightclubs. The photos were rarely displayed together. Now, though, they have come to the UK for the first time, and are being shown as framed prints at the Gagosian gallery in Mayfair.

Goldin, who was born in 1953, “was a teenage runaway”, said India Block in The London Standard: after her beloved sister died by suicide, she fled the “stifling” Boston suburb she’d grown up in and moved to New York, where she threw herself into the city’s gritty underground scene. She originally started photographing her friends’ exploits when she discovered drinking (then heroin), “and wanted a record unaltered by mind-altering substances”.

Named after a song by Bertolt Brecht, the “Ballad” series is “glamorous, engrossing and gross (in a good way)”: hyper-saturated images show a heavily pregnant woman in “a sparkly bikini”, a friend masturbating, someone else urinating, “a vulva framed by a surgery scar from an ectopic pregnancy”. Given the rawness of the images, “there’s something rather punk” about seeing them “gussied up and gorgeous” in a gallery; though you do long to see them “in a darkened room with pulsing music”. Still, “with each photograph occupying the same size frame”, your eye is left free to alight on whichever moment it chooses; and all these years on, the pictures are “as fresh, exciting, comforting and confronting” as they were in 1986.

“I’ve been familiar with these images for much of my adult life,” said Adrian Searle in The Guardian, and what struck me on this viewing was how “normal” the lives of Goldin and her friends look today. “We are now used” to people posting photos online as an often “self-conscious and calculated mirage of their lives”. Still, the great power of these photographs – each of which “leaves you on a kind of brink” – is undiminished, and the display here, which covers three black walls, is satisfyingly immersive, sending the eye “pinballing between captured moments and emotions”. The “apparent casualness” of Goldin’s approach is deceptive: there is an “emotional texture and atmosphere” to her work that proves that “not everyone who can hold a phone can take photographs worth looking at”.

Gagosian, 17-19 Davies Street, London W1. Until 21 March.

Skagen is “a remote fishing port at the northernmost tip of Denmark”, said Chloë Ashby in The Times. A wild beauty spot where the North and Baltic seas meet, it is today a magnet for Copenhagen’s elites in the summer. But in the late 19th century, it was home to “a thriving community of international artists” attracted by Skagen’s landscape and the qualities of its light. Anna Ancher (1859-1935) was its innkeeper’s daughter, aged just 12 when this bohemian influx to her home village began. Clearly, it sparked something: Ancher went on to make herself one of Denmark’s best-loved painters. The young Anna, keen to learn how to paint, had “unofficial teachers on tap”.

Later, she married an artist, Michael Ancher, and lived in Copenhagen and in Paris, where the efforts of the impressionists inspired her to return to her hometown and paint similar scenes. She painted portraits, seascapes, still lifes and interior scenes, all meticulously recreating the village’s famous light. Bringing together more than 40 paintings, this exhibition gives British audiences previously unacquainted with her work an introduction to Ancher’s bold and singular art.

Entering the exhibition “feels like walking into a pat of butter, or perhaps, more aptly, a ray of sunlight”, said Eliza Goodpasture in The Guardian. The gallery’s “luscious pale yellow walls” set the tone for this exploration of Ancher’s “practice of painting light”. Most of the works on show record “her home or that of other members of the Skagen community”, revisiting the same subjects again and again but refining them every time. Some of “the most moving” paintings here depict her mother: in one, she’s a “shawl-swathed figure” dissolving into abstract tones of red and thence raw canvas. Another sees her leaning over the coffin of her daughter Agnes, “drenched in shadow” while the deceased is “almost completely washed-out in white”.

Ancher avoided grandiosity, said Lucy Waterson in Apollo. Instead, she gave her pictures a “softer, more domestic focus”. The people in her paintings – a working woman in “The Maid in the Kitchen”, or “patient mothers and their squealing children” in “A Vaccination, Study” – are shown performing “mundane tasks, painted without drama or exaggeration”. But it’s the light in her works that really grabs the attention: it “streams in through windowpanes or shines bright through linen curtains”, but is best captured in “pared-back studies” such as “Evening Sun in the Artist’s Studio at Markvej”, depicting a corner of her workspace patterned with light on a wall. Among a handful of landscape studies, meanwhile, is the gorgeous “Moorland” – in which a green plain stretches out below a “candy-coloured sky” – and “Blue Sunset”, capturing a rare moment of stillness on Skagen’s beach. This exhibition wonderfully showcases Ancher’s “virtuosic handling of the shifting Nordic light”.

Dulwich Picture Gallery, London SE21. Until 8 March

In 1810, the warrior chief Kamehameha I united the Hawaiian islands into a single kingdom. That same year, said Evgenia Siokos in The Telegraph, he dispatched an extraordinary cargo to the other side of the world, along with a formal appeal to King George III to make Great Britain his own island nation’s “natural ally”. “Should any of the powers which you are at war with molest me,” he wrote, “I shall expect your protection.” The letter was sent with “a gift of astonishing splendour”: a cloak fashioned from “hundreds of thousands of red and yellow bird feathers” – which was worn by only the highest-ranking chief, and which “embodied sacred authority”.

It has not been on public display since 1900, but now takes “pride of place” in a “thrilling” new show that illustrates both the range of the British Museum’s Hawaiian collections, and the friendly relations between the two kingdoms until Hawaii’s official annexation by the US in 1898. There are a wealth of spectacular exhibits, including a trio of feathered akua (gods), which encapsulate a chieftain’s power and “exude a ferocious energy”. The exhibition “treats artefacts as living objects”, and gives voice to a “fascinating, rarely heard culture”.

At the heart of this tremendous show is a “desperate tragedy”, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. In 1824, Kamehameha’s son Liholiho and his wife Queen Kamamalu travelled to London, where they were received with full honours, celebrated by society and slotted in for an audience with the profligate George IV – “one of the worst monarchs in British history”. We see a lithograph of the Hawaiians “beaming” through a performance at the Theatre Royal, and Regency portraits of the couple, dressed in the English fashions of the day. But, unused to foreign climes, they both contracted measles and died within a week of each other; they never met George IV, though he did at least pay their hotel bills, and ordered a ship to transport their bodies home.

The show’s narrative isn’t the easiest to follow, said Laura Freeman in The Times: “I felt somewhat walloped by the history and the who’s who of Hawaiian royal genealogy.” Yet the artefacts it contains are “dazzling”. Highlights include textile panels decorated with “chevrons, stripes, steps and zigzags”; helmets woven from climbing plants; even a “tiny, endearing turtle ornament carved from whale ivory and set with tortoiseshell eyes”. Best of all is a cabinet full of “feathered cloaks, capelets, chokers, tokens, garlands and fans”, many embellished with feathers from the now-extinct o’o bird. It’s a grown-up event that recognises our Georgian ancestors as humans, rather than demons; yet never lets them off “scot-free” for their plundering ways. In short, it’s an exemplary British Museum show – “handsome”, “intelligent” and never less than interesting.

The British Museum, London WC1. Until 25 May.

Far from the neon lights of Tokyo, temples and shrines of Kyoto and the Osaka street food scene is Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost — and westernmost — prefecture. Here, expect a slower pace, where the hardest decision you’ll make is which beach to visit.

What to know about Okinawa

Okinawa is Japan’s sole subtropical region, attracting visitors seeking white sand beaches and swaying palms. Of the 160 or so islands, about 40 are inhabited, and the prefecture comes by the nickname “Caribbean of the Sea” honestly, said Travel and Leisure.

Popular spots include the jungle-filled Iriomote Island and Miyako Island, where travelers can swim and kayak through the turquoise waters. Going island hopping is easy, thanks to ferries and flights that connect through Naha Airport. Pack light and consider leaving the jacket at home — the weather is warm and humid year-round, comparable to Hawai‘i and Miami.

While most visitors come to Okinawa for the scenery and activities, some also want to learn more about its status as a Blue Zone. These areas have the highest proportions of centenarians and lower rates of diseases like cancer, diabetes and dementia. Two practices that may be linked to Okinawan longevity are hara hachi bu, which means eating until 80% full, and being part of a moai, a social support group that typically forms during childhood and continues through life.

Hit the beach and appreciate local art

Many activities in Okinawa “revolve around water,” making it a paradise for scuba divers and snorkelers, said Travel and Leisure. The underwater sights are “incredible,” thanks to coral reefs “known for their biodiversity,” arches, caves and wildlife like manta rays and sea turtles.

Aharen Beach and Tokashiku Beach on Tokashiki Island are two of the “most sought-after” spots for diving because of the marine life, said Travel and Leisure. Cape Higashi Henna on Miyako Island is where the Pacific Ocean meets the East China Sea and boasts more than 200 plant and flower species and views from its lighthouse that will "take your breath away,” the BBC said.

History is everywhere in Okinawa, which from 1429 to 1879 was the Ryukyu Kingdom, a tributary state under China’s Ming and Qing dynasties. Bingata, a traditional dyeing technique going back hundreds of years, “reigns supreme” in Okinawa, and this “endemic craft is also a key to its identity,” said Condé Nast Traveler.

Artisans — including some whose families have been perfecting the labor-intensive process for centuries — create “intricately patterned” bingata kimonos, handbags, cushions and tea towels. Workshops dot the islands, and items can also be purchased in many of the souvenir shops.

The epicenter of Okinawan pottery, called yachimun, is Tsuboya Yachimun Street in Naha. Explore the shops that line the road on a tour or solo (many open their studios to the public), and look up to see yachimun shisa dogs peering down from building entrances and roofs; these figures, found across Okinawa, are believed to offer spiritual protection. For a crash course on all things yachimun, and to see early examples of the earthenware, check out the Naha City Tsuboya Pottery Museum.

Dive into the dining scene

Seafood is fresh and plentiful, with skipjack tuna, tiger prawns and sea grapes (green caviar) regularly appearing on menus alongside Okinawan staples like goya champuru, a stir-fry containing bitter melon, and rafute, or braised pork belly. The “iconic” Okinawan taco rice was created in the kitchen of King Tacos, a chain specializing in “hybrid cuisine born out of the long intermingling of American, Japanese and Okinawan culinary traditions,” said The Wall Street Journal. Consisting of “liberally seasoned” minced beef, tomatoes, shredded lettuce and cheese on top of white rice, the dish’s reach has extended beyond Okinawa and can now be found in restaurants across Japan.

The painter William Nicholson is a largely forgotten figure these days, said James Beechey in The Art Newspaper. Known for his “bravura brushwork” and his singular ability to capture the effect of light falling on metal or glass, Nicholson (1872-1949) belonged to no distinct artistic movement, declined all invitations to join exhibiting societies – and “was steadfastly unrevealing about his own work”. That reticence may well have helped to diminish his reputation; indeed, his contribution has been largely eclipsed by that of his eldest son, the abstract painter and sculptor Ben Nicholson.

This exhibition, the first in 20 years, sets out to prove that Nicholson senior was a “sophisticated and original figure”, and a much more intriguing talent than is generally acknowledged. The show is a comprehensive retrospective of his career, bringing together portraits, illustrations, prints and posters, alongside the “ravishing” still lifes for which he is best known. But can it really make us reappraise a painter so regularly “damned as a minor artist”?

From the show’s first room, it’s clear that Nicholson was never “the dullard of legend”, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. Rather, he was “a precocious fin-de-siècle dandy” who flirted with many currents of London’s early 20th century avant-garde. He first came to prominence with a series of posters and book designs that have an “instant iconic quality even now”: his 1895 poster for “Don Quixote” at London’s Lyceum Theatre, for instance, blends “the quirky silhouettes of traditional English woodcuts” with flourishes borrowed from Aubrey Beardsley and Toulouse-Lautrec. Success as a graphic artist wasn’t enough for Nicholson, who was determined to become a master of “all genres” – an ambition that led him to embrace “much that was very far from cutting edge”. His paintings of Morris dancers are “clunky period pieces”, while his portraits – for which he was most celebrated in his lifetime – now look “dully conventional”.

Much better are Nicholson’s landscapes, said Chloë Ashby in The Times. “A keen walker, he traced the rolling hills and craggy coastline” of southern England, “portable paintbox tucked under his arm” – creating delightful works such as “A Glade near Midhurst” (1937), a “sun-dappled woodland scene” in which tiny figures pick their way through birch trees.

But it’s his still lifes that really dazzle. Nicholson “brings inanimate objects to life” like no other artist, depicting objects such as “pears, poppies and pewter” with virtuosic flair. “I could spend an entire afternoon” with “The Lustre Bowl with Green Peas” (1911), in which the “verdant veg” contrasts against a grey tablecloth, “bright-white gleams” reflecting against the silver, a single open pod revealing “pearly” peas “huddled in a row”. It’s a highlight of a “rich and varied” show that offers “a wide-angle view of a prolific and versatile artist”.

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. Until 10 May

This year will see the epoch-defining Bayeux Tapestry come to the UK for a not-to-be-missed visit. Other exhibitions to look forward to in 2026 include tributes to artistic legends, as well as opportunities to cast a fresh eye on artists who may be under-appreciated.

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, V&A, London

The work of this “most daring of designers”, who celebrated Surrealism with work such as her renowned dresses “Skeleton” and “Tears”, “ripped up the rule book”, said Laura Freeman in The Times. The collaborations of the “boundary-breaking couturier” with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray and Salvador Dalí are illustrated by over 200 objects, including her couture creations, accessories, paintings, photos and even perfume, which reveal the fashion house’s “extraordinary history” from the late 1920s to its “present-day revival”, said Belle Hutton in Wallpaper.

28 March to 8 November, V&A

Enid Marx, Compton Verney, Warwickshire

She may not be an artist you’ve heard of “but you’ve probably sat on one of her most famous works”, said The Times, because Enid Marx designed the fabric covering the seats of the London Underground. Her contemporaries at the Royal College of Art, St Ives School and Bloomsbury Group include better-known names such as Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash and Bernard Leach, but Marx is also a “force to be reckoned with”. A versatile artist and a “chronicler of British folk art”, she was a “prolific and imaginative designer” whose work spanned textiles, children’s books, wrapping paper, stamps and bookplates. “Set aside a whole day” for this show – “it’s going to be a cracker”.

18 July to 3 January 2027, Compton Verney

Bayeux Tapestry, British Museum, London

Arguably the “art event of the year”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian, is the early medieval piece going on display in the UK in a “once-in-a-lifetime triumph of cultural generosity by France”. At almost 1,000 years old and almost 230 feet long, this “vast embroidery” tells the story of the Norman Conquest, and “all manner of contemporary meanings” can be found in its stitches, from a “condemnation of war to nationalistic nonsense to proof that Britons are Europeans”. Book early – it’s expected to be a blockbuster exhibition, sure to “move and astonish you”.

September 2026 to July 2027, British Museum

James McNeill Whistler, Tate Britain, London

If you know only “Whistler’s Mother” you may believe Whistler to be “dour”, said The Times. If that is your “image of the artist”, then “banish it immediately”. In fact, Whistler was a “radical”, who “pioneered” a new “loose and exact, daring and contained” style of painting that “conjured fireworks from darkness and light from the lagoon”. Away from the easel, he was a “wit, a dandy, an idler and a baiter of fellow artists”. This major retrospective, his first in Europe for 30 years, curates his world-famous paintings, as well as lesser-seen works, bringing Whistler “out of the shadows”.

21 May to 27 September, Tate Britain

Beryl Cook: Pride and Joy, The Box, Plymouth

Celebrating her centenary year, this show is her biggest ever, with more than 80 works, from iconic paintings to rarely seen pieces from private collections. Chronicling everyday life, the work of this “self-taught painter” “may not be great art”, said The Guardian, but it is fun, colourful and larger-than-life, and serves up a “bawdy slice of Plymouth and post-war British life”, capturing scenes of “drinking and smoking and ogling and people getting up to all sorts”.

24 January to 31 May, The Box

Gwen John: Strange Beauties, National Museum, Cardiff; National Gallery of Modern Art Edinburgh

This year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Welsh painter Gwen John. During her lifetime, the “visionary art of this quiet hero of modernism” was eclipsed by that of her brother, Augustus John, and her lover, Auguste Rodin, said The Guardian. However, her “luminous, introspective and quietist works” offer a vision that still feels strikingly modern, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. As the first major showing of her work for 40 years, this is an “unmissable retrospective”.

7 February to 28 June, National Museum, Cardiff; 1 August to 4 January 2027, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Edinburgh

Marie Antoinette Style, V&A, London

This exhibition “brings you as close as it’s possible to get to the real Marie Antoinette”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. On display are portraits by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, costumes, gold-trimmed chairs from her pastoral retreat, Petit Trianon, and even a piece of an original guillotine, along with a wealth of items created after her death that speak of her enduring significance as a cultural icon. While this is nominally a show about fashion history, it adds up to “a superb lesson in how history can be understood through images and objects”.

Until 22 March, V&A

After 20 years under construction, the Grand Egyptian Museum officially opened to the public last month. Located nine miles from central Cairo, and just a mile from the pyramids at Giza, the complex covers some 5.4 million square feet – making it the largest archaeological museum in the world – and cost an estimated $1.2 billion (£888 million).

Read on for more on the milestone museum, as well as the other big stories in the arts world in 2025.

Gift to the world

At its grand opening (which had been repeatedly delayed owing to revolutions, economic crises and the pandemic), President Sisi described the museum as “a gift from Egypt to the world”. Its 12 galleries hold some 100,000 artefacts covering seven millennia of Egyptian history, from pre-dynastic times to the Roman era.

The showstoppers include a monumental, 30ft-tall statue of Ramesses II (pictured above), dating to around 1200BC, and the entire contents of King Tutankhamun’s tomb, about 5,500 pieces, some of which have never been seen in public before. Of equal interest to many, however, are the exhibits shedding light on the daily lives of ancient Egyptians – from statues of bakers at work to hi-tech displays that bring ancient images of hunters and farmers to life. As an added bonus, the building’s huge windows offer astonishing views of the pyramids.

The museum is expected to attract five million visitors a year, giving Egypt’s tourism industry a much-needed boost; and its opening has already led to renewed calls for the repatriation of Egyptian artefacts held in public collections abroad – including the Rosetta Stone, at the British Museum.

Looted art

An 18th-century portrait stolen by the Nazis 80 years ago was found in Argentina this autumn – thanks to the dogged efforts of a retired Dutch systems specialist. It all started in 2010, when Paul Post read in his father’s wartime diaries about the confiscation of the Netherlands’ diamonds. Intrigued, he started to investigate, and homed in on Friedrich Kadgien – a Nazi official who was also suspected of having looted art.

Working with Dutch reporters, Post discovered that Kadgien had fled to Argentina after the war, and that his daughter still lived there. She did not engage with them, but this year, she put her house on the market – and in the estate agent’s photos, reporters spotted a missing portrait by Giuseppe Ghislandi hanging above her sofa. It is now in the hands of the authorities, pending its likely return to the heirs of the Jewish dealer from whom it was stolen.

Protest art

Banksy confirmed that he had struck again in London in September, after an image (pictured top) of a judge beating a protester with a gavel appeared on an exterior wall at the Royal Courts of Justice.

The stencil was presumed to be referring to the banning of the Palestine Action group, and the arrest of hundreds of its supporters. Security guards swiftly covered up the Banksy, and it was later removed. Officials said they’d had no choice as the building is listed. Legal experts pointed out that British judges don’t make the law, they just interpret it, and that they don’t use gavels.

Sold, at record-breaking prices

Global art sales fell a further 12% in 2024, to $57.5 billion (£42.5 billion), as geopolitical tensions continued to affect the top end of the market. And in the first half of this year, sale results from the leading auction houses were down again, and more major private galleries closed. But in the autumn, there were signs of a rebound.

In September, Pauline Karpidas’ surrealist collection sold for $100 million (£74 million) at Sotheby’s in London, nearly double its estimate; and in November, Sotheby’s New York sold 24 paintings from the collection of the late Leonard Lauder for $527 million (£393 million). The highlight of the sale was Gustav Klimt’s life-size “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” (pictured below), a young woman who was the daughter of one of Klimt’s most important patrons. The Lederers were Jewish, and to avoid Nazi persecution following the Anschluss, Elisabeth claimed that Klimt, who’d died in 1918, was her biological father.

This tactic saved her life, and also saved the painting: it meant that it was kept in Vienna, to await reclassification as Aryan art (as opposed to degenerate art), when the Nazis sent the rest of her parents’ priceless collection out of the city. Believed to have included at least 10 Klimt paintings, the Lederer collection was held at the Schloss Immendorf – and was destroyed when SS troops set fire to the castle at the war’s end. The surviving portrait sold for $236 million (£176 million), the highest price ever paid at auction for a modern work, and the second-highest for any work.

Leonard Lauder, the son of Estée Lauder and the former CEO of the cosmetics giant, was a great art collector and philanthropist. In the years before his death in June, aged 92, he gave $1 billion (£742 million) worth of cubist art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and millions to the Whitney Museum of American Art. His collection helped Sotheby’s to hit $706 million (£569 million) in sales that night, the biggest haul in its 281-year history. Days later, the auction house notched up another record, when it sold Frida Kahlo’s surrealist self-portrait “The Bed (The Dream)” for $55 million (£41 million), smashing the 2014 record for a female artist at auction ($44 million, around £32 million, set by a Georgia O’Keeffe).

The hammer price, however, was not a surprise: surrealist works by female artists are currently highly sought after, and “Kahlomania” has lately reached new heights, with numerous major exhibitions around the world dedicated to the Mexican artist. Sotheby’s had given the 1940 painting an upper estimate of $60 million (£44 million).

Year of Turner

If 2025 belonged to anyone in the art world, it was J.M.W. Turner. The artist was born in April 1775, and his 250th anniversary was marked by events all over the UK. Most have closed, but in Liverpool the Walker Gallery’s “Turner: Always Contemporary”, exploring Turner’s work and its impact on later artists, runs until February, while Tate Britain’s “Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals”, which features “The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons”, on loan from a gallery in the US, runs until April. And the Turner Contemporary in Margate has his oil sketch “Waves Breaking on a Lee Shore at Margate” on loan from Tate Britain, also until April.

Forgery factory

Italian police raided a clandestine workshop in the northern outskirts of Rome in February, where paintings falsely attributed to the likes of Picasso, Rembrandt and Jean Cocteau were being churned out, allegedly for sale online.

Officers from a specialist art unit found some 70 paintings in the workshop, as well as hundreds of tubes of paint, brushes, forged stamps from historic private galleries, and a typewriter that appeared to have been used to create fake letters of authenticity.

The property reportedly belonged to an art restorer, who was suspected of being behind the enterprise. Police said the suspect had sold “hundreds” of paintings of dubious authenticity on auction sites such as Catawiki and eBay.

The Turner Prize is “the cockroach of art”, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. Established some 40 years ago, it has proved remarkably resilient: “however bad it gets, it survives the hammering and comes back for more”. This year’s iteration takes place at Bradford’s Cartwright Hall, and sees the award “up to its usual cultural nonsenses”. As ever, four artists from (or based in) the UK have been shortlisted: there’s the photographer Rene Matic, aged just 28; the Korean-Canadian multimedia artist Zadie Xa; the Iraqi-born painter Mohammed Sami; and Nnena Kalu, this year’s winner – a learning-disabled Scottish artist with severe autism.

Making an impact

Each gets a room in the gallery to present an emblematic selection of their work, the first of which comes courtesy of Matic. Mixed race, queer and nonbinary, Matic “complains continuously of feeling culturally divided”. Their room contains a lot of empty sloganeering and a display of “wonky” photos of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, gay marches and right-on graffiti. Whatever you feel about those causes, Matic doesn’t transform them “into good art”.

The artists in this year’s show certainly “know how to make a physical impact”, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. A case in point is Xa, whose room feels “more like some psychedelic nightclub than an art display”, with a mirrored golden floor and soundscapes emanating from shells and tinkling bells. Amidst all this are her paintings, “hallucinatory compositions” that channel the shamanic traditions of her Korean heritage. In this vivid context, sadly, they look like “pieces of decorative scene-setting”.

Sami’s much more traditional paintings, meanwhile, evoke the “traumas” of Iraqi history without resorting to the clichés of reportage. They’re eerie things: one “vast” canvas gives us “a blasted palm forest” through “a fog of orange dust”, a human presence hinted at by the green lines of military lasers. The mood is “‘Apocalypse Now’ via computer games, with a touch of Monet”. It is so thrilling that it makes the other artists feel “a shade superficial”.

‘Recognising artistic excellence’?

Sami should have won the prize, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. His “haunting” contemporary history paintings are like “half-remembered nightmares” of Iraq’s recent conflicts. They stand head and shoulders above Kalu’s efforts: namely, a number of “cocoon-like” abstract cultures hewn from materials such as fabric and VHS tape. They have “a festive, exuberant quality”, but there’s not much more to them. Her win is a milestone for disabled people, but a “maddening” decision nonetheless. Is the Turner, in the end, “about recognising artistic excellence or not”?

Comparisons between Kalu and the others “are not much help”, said Adrian Searle in The Guardian. She has limited verbal communication; her works suggest “a constant flux between objects and space, herself and others”. Each sculpture is born of “drive and urgency and intent”; they are “so full of life and energy, you think they might burst”. She is a worthy winner.

Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford. Until 22 February

If the Tudors “exercise a stronger hold on the public imagination than their Plantagenet precursors or Stuart successors”, it is largely “because we can all picture them so clearly”, said Peter Marshall in Literary Review. And that, in turn, is down to one man: the German artist Hans Holbein. Between the late 1520s and the early 1540s, Holbein lived mostly in England and produced an “extraordinary sequence of portraits and drawings” of Henry VIII, his wives and courtiers.

Today, as Elizabeth Goldring explains in her “superb and groundbreaking biography”, it is hard to “appreciate just how novel Holbein’s portraits appeared to the first people who saw them”.

Before he emerged, portraiture was a fairly underdeveloped art form in northern Europe. Yet suddenly, as Goldring puts it, here was a painter who made viewers feel that they’d been “granted access to the sitter’s inner thoughts and feelings”. No wonder that Holbein – a “workaholic” and also a “relentless pragmatist, willing at the drop of a brush to change artistic direction or abandon sinking patrons for rising ones” – thrived in the cut-throat Tudor world.

Holbein was born in Augsburg in 1497, the son of an artist, Hans Holbein the Elder, who specialised in altarpieces. He got his “big break” in 1523, when the humanist scholar Erasmus commissioned him to paint his portrait, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. Erasmus introduced Holbein to Henry VIII’s courtier, Thomas More, who became his chief patron during an early stint in England in the late 1520s.

Returning a few years later, Holbein had to navigate More’s execution in 1535 – at which point he “shrewdly pivoted towards the new man Thomas Cromwell” – and then Cromwell’s downfall in 1540, said Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian.

Despite such ructions, Holbein remained in Henry’s favour until his death, from the plague, in 1543. Thanks to Goldring’s “careful analysis” of his work, aided by more than 250 high-quality reproductions, “Holbein the artist comes vividly to life”, said Katherine Harvey in The Times.

The man himself remains more elusive, but “there are glimpses of a less than exemplary private life”: Holbein effectively abandoned his wife, Elsbeth, and their children in Germany while he pursued success in England, and while here he “fathered at least two children”.

In both life and art, Holbein had a “talent for catching every rising tide”, said Mathew Lyons in The Spectator. Goldring’s “superbly scholarly biography” will surely prove the “definitive account” of this remarkable figure “for many years to come”.

One of the world’s most prestigious art prizes has been awarded to a 59-year-old Glaswegian artist with autism and learning disabilities. Honoured by the 2025 Turner Prize for what the judges called her “bold and compelling” work, Nnena Kalu becomes the “first learning-disabled artist to be nominated” for the prize, “let alone win it”, said art critic Mark Hudson in The Independent.

Kalu’s large, hanging, cocoon-like sculptures, made from old VHS tape, rope and fabric, and her bright, swirling “vortex” drawings in pen and pastel, beat the work of three other shortlisted artists. Her win “breaks down walls” between “neurotypical and neurodiverse artists”, said Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson, chair of this year’s jury.

‘Seismic’ victory

“Kalu’s forms come at you with their almost alien unknowable presence,” said Adrian Searle in The Guardian. You become entangled in the work’s “roaring, spilling, snaggling details” and can’t help but wonder about your “own boundaries, the body’s beginnings and its endings”.

Her work is “so embodied, so sensuous”, it “is not reducible to anything we might call a technique”. It is “the product of drive and urgency and intent”. Her own verbal communication is limited, so her work “has to speak for itself” – and it has quite a bit to say.

“Much has been made, and rightly so,” of Kalu’s win but her victory is “seismic” beyond reasons of equality and diversity, said The Independent’s Hudson. Her work places an emphasis “on the visual, tactile and experiential in art – values that have lost primacy in recent years”. The recognition of her artistry “seems to herald the welcome return of artists physically making things”.

‘Maddening’ decision

Kalu’s “triumph will be hailed as a watershed moment for Britain’s disabled community”, but the judges’ “decision is also maddening”, said art critic Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. The shortlisted Mohammed Sami, who “makes vast, haunting contemporary history paintings, like half-remembered nightmares”, will “feel that he’s been cheated”.

Her “lumpy sculpture, fashioned from brightly coloured gaffer tape and discarded bubble wrap”, was “up there with the worst art” ever nominated for the Turner Prize, Waldemar Januszczak, art critic of The Sunday Times, said on his website in October.

Maybe “it wouldn’t be the Turner Prize without a soupçon – or rather a bucketful – of provocation”, said The Telegraph’s Sooke. But “did the jury really consider her the strongest artist” on the shortlist? Farquharson, the jury’s chair, said the decision “wasn’t about wanting, first and foremost, to give the prize to Nnena as a neurodiverse artist”. It was “a real belief in the quality and uniqueness of her practice, which is inseparable from who she is”.

Ultimately, Kalu’s work goes “over and above the disability issues surrounding her win”, said Hudson in The Independent. It serves as a reminder that “no matter how much art may illuminate our perspectives on history, politics, human relationships and the natural world, the visual and the sensual come first”. Kalu “demonstrates that lesson against all odds”.

Now aged 94, Bridget Riley has been remarkably “consistent” over her long career, but is often misunderstood, said Lily Le Brun in The Observer. Back in the 1960s, her “bold, geometric, abstract” monochrome paintings caused a sensation. To her fans and critics alike, they seemed to hint at “fashionable, cutting-edge concerns: new technologies, space, psychedelics”. Riley’s real inspiration, however, was “very different”. In 1939, when the artist was eight, her mother moved her to “a damp cottage on the Cornish coast to see out the War”, and her experiences of observing the sea have formed what she calls “the basis of my visual life”.

This show in Margate brings together 26 paintings that represent nearly every stage of Riley’s career, and it seeks to investigate how the artist has repeatedly returned to the subject in her work over the past 60 years – evoking the patterns of the waves not directly, but through basic shapes and geometry. Hung within view of the gallery’s “tripleheight windows”, perched on the harbour wall looking out onto the North Sea, can her work really “stand up” to its inspiration?

At her most successful, Riley’s paintings remind you “that sight is a physical sensation ... it’s something you actually feel”, said Eddy Frankel in The Times. They “make you look at the world again, rewired, reconfigured”; and the best do evoke the watery world just beyond the gallery walls. There are canvases filled with triangles that somehow recall “gentle waves lapping at the shore”; a number of “curving, wobbly paintings ... loom over you like big washes of marine turbulence”; one red, blue and green example from 1980 “looks like it’s about to bulge off the canvas”. “At her worst”, though, Riley merely offers “dull minimalism”. Some recent works, painted directly onto the walls, are “lifeless” arrangements of dots with “no visual hum, no eye-melting shock of colour and shape”. Some canvases are just arrangements of stripes in pastel colours; they’re “closer to home decor than anything else”.

“However analytical you might try to be”, Riley’s works keep doing things to you on a physical level, said Adrian Searle in The Guardian. She is asking us to consider the way we see things, inviting us to look closer and really scrutinise the dazzling patterns in her art. “The longer you look, the more they reveal and the more they seem to change.” One recent wall drawing, for instance, seems to change colour as you approach, first appearing dun-hued, then developing a “silvery penumbra” when you draw closer. Elsewhere, two separate paintings entitled “Late Morning” – one from 1967, the other from 1978 – both make you register “bulges and falterings where none exist”. Although Riley’s art is very familiar by now, this is “an invigorating and magical ensemble”. She “turns concentration into reverie and leaves me agape, wide open and surprised. I can’t stop looking.”

Turner Contemporary, Margate. Until 4 May

“‘A Painter’s Secrets’ is that rare, magical exhibition that casts a storybook spell,” said Lance Esplund in The Wall Street Journal. It brings together 55 of the paintings of Henri Rousseau, a self-taught and widely misunderstood French artist whose popularity blossomed shortly after his death in 1910. The show “aims to dispel myths about Rousseau,” casting him as alert to the potential commercial advantages of being seen as naive. But the appeal is largely in the work and the “beautifully abundant” make-believe world it conjures. In Rousseau’s paintings, evocations of folk art and pre-Renaissance Christian religious painting merge with “magical thinking and the candid spontaneity of children’s art.” From the first gallery, we’re enchanted. Rousseau’s “early enigmatic masterpiece,” 1886’s Carnival Evening, depicts two small, costumed figures walking arm in arm out of dusky woods. The image is “a harbinger of surrealism,” and it’s both “eerie and romantic.

“What Rousseau did best was recast elements from his cultural milieu in his own personal idiom,” said Kelly Presutti in Art in America. To achieve his storybook-like images, he flattened the pictorial space, played with scale, and gave his human figures “an almost caricatural stiffness.” In 1908, when France performed well in a rugby match with England, Rousseau created an image in which four players seem to be dancing on a field framed by two rows of trees, the men “appearing both of the moment and suspended entirely outside of it.” Rousseau, a former customs agent, struggled to support himself as an artist after turning fully to the field when he was nearly 50. But he was most successful in selling his jungle scenes, which he devised not by traveling but by visiting zoos and botanical gardens and perusing magazine photos. Though some of the resulting images are clichéd, they’re imbued with “a luminosity and strangeness that still fascinates.”

“While his work may seem simple at first glance,” said Elisa Carollo in The Observer, “walking through the exhibition reveals the astute social commentary woven into his paintings.” Those jungle images are “deeply allegorical works that critique modernity and colonialism,” and Rousseau is “equally insightful” when his subjects are war or bourgeois life. The Barnes exhibition “culminates with some of Rousseau’s most elusively mystical works”—The Sleeping Gypsy (1897), Unpleasant Surprise (1899–1901), and The Snake Charmer (1907). The three paintings “blend fantasy with fear, inviting viewers to consider the deeper mysteries of human experience at its most primordial essence.” Rousseau’s insights into human nature and modern society were “ahead of his time,” as was his method.

Although they were born within little more than a year of each other, it’s difficult to think of two artists more “profoundly and incontrovertibly” different than J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. The former was “a barber’s son who never lost his Cockney twang”; the latter came from a “genteel” Suffolk mill-owning family. Turner specialised in epic seascapes and Alpine vistas, always aspiring towards the sublime; Constable favoured the “down-to-earth”, painting rural scenes “invigorated with a novel dose of realism”.

Yet for all that separates them, they’re both renowned as our “greatest landscape painters” – and for good reason. Marking the 150th anniversary of their births, this “thrilling” show at Tate Britain brings together around 170 works by both, many of which haven’t been glimpsed on these shores for decades. The result could so easily have been “dutiful and boring”; instead, it’s a truly “absorbing” experience.

It’s an “epic confrontation”, agreed Mark Hudson in The Independent. Turner and Constable’s works are juxtaposed in a way that demands direct comparison – as often happened in their lifetime. Initially at least, Turner has the edge: his “Crossing the Brook” (1815) is a “magnificently atmospheric view” of the Tamar Valley that makes the latter’s “doggedly local” “Dedham Vale” (1828) look rather parochial. Turner’s dramatic seascapes – “Buttermere Lake” (c.1798), “Morning amongst the Coniston Fells” (c.1798) and “Fishermen at Sea” (1796) – place him in the same league as any of the European romantic artists. The locations are British, yet they still encapsulate all that is “awesome and terrifying in nature”. These would suggest that Turner’s was the “larger vision”.

Other juxtapositions, though, lead you to the opposite conclusion. “Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows”, “a great visionary evocation of England”, makes Turner’s “Caligula’s Palace and Bridge” – also from 1831 – look like a mere exercise in “special effects”. Either way, “you’ll want to make your own mind up. Because you absolutely must see this exhibition.”

Turner’s fixation on the “sublime” can look like a “predilection for drama and vaporous emptiness”, said Adrian Searle in The Guardian. Constable, meanwhile, “is always specific, grounded, even when he is just staring at the clouds or into the impenetrable dark on a heath, the Moon half seen emerging from behind a bush, in its pale bloom of scattered light”. His paintings are “filled with stuff” – locks, churches, carts, windmills – celebrating the everyday reality of a “now vanished world”. You can “almost smell the river” in his 1826 painting of a man opening a canal lock. His “small and almost casual” studies of clouds moved me more than anything else here. Both artists were brilliant – but I know who “touches me more”.

Tate Britain, London SW1. Until 12 April

Two hundred and fifty years after his birth, Joseph Mallord William Turner remains an “enigma”, said James Jackson in The Times: “a grunting curmudgeon, an establishment outsider, a visitor of prostitutes”, and an artist whose work “touches the sublime”. This new BBC2 documentary seeks to shed light on Turner’s character through close examination of his rarely seen sketchbooks: not just landscape studies and preliminary compositions that he would later turn into paintings, but also reams of “pornographic sketches”. The result is a show that zips “rather fascinatingly ... in and out of Turner’s id, ego and superego”.

An eclectic range of contributors offer their interpretations, said Roland White in the Daily Mail. Psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik, for instance, suggests that Turner’s detailed early depictions of buildings represented “a search for stability after a difficult childhood”. His background was indeed troubled: his mother suffered psychotic episodes at a time when madness was believed to run in families. Fearing it would hinder his career, he committed her to a hospital and never saw her again.

Not all the observations are worthwhile, said Jack Seale in The Guardian. Ronnie Wood, for instance, says of “Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen”: “It’s very dramatic.” But Tracey Emin convincingly discusses Turner’s working-class origins, while Chris Packham is highly insightful about Turner’s view of nature, and the effect of industry on it. This programme “balances accessibility with analytical muscle”, allowing us to see the artist “afresh”.

There are few film directors who are as obsessed with attention to detail as Wes Anderson, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. From his debut “Bottle Rocket” 29 years ago, to this year’s “The Phoenician Scheme”, via such hits as “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001) and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014), his films have been characterised by a “finicky perfectionism” not seen since the heyday of Stanley Kubrick. Every Anderson production has an “unmistakable”, highly stylised aesthetic – whimsical, pastel-hued, crammed with details that “cry out to be noticed”: his hallmarks include “an obsession for symmetry”, “ornate sets” and elaborate costumes.

All this makes him a perfect subject for a retrospective at the Design Museum, an institution that has previously mounted blockbusters devoted to Kubrick and Tim Burton. Bringing together around 700 props, costumes, set designs and all manner of other ephemera, the exhibition traces the director’s three-decade career film by film. It’s full of marvellous things that will be familiar to any fan; and “having the time to pause and pore over them is in some instances an even greater pleasure than watching the films themselves”.

“Wesophiles” will indeed be delighted, said Catherine Slessor in The Guardian. The museum’s galleries have all been appointed in shades of red, “starting with post-box and terminating in maroon”, and Anderson’s weird and wonderful “quirkfest fairly zings out from this incarnadine backdrop”. On display there are “wigs, sketches, models, fictional books, fictional art, a tent, a typewriter and dozens of stop-motion puppets”; an “implausibly intricate” model of the train from “The Darjeeling Limited” (2007); “the luxurious red velvet and mink number” sported by Tilda Swinton in “The Grand Budapest Hotel”; and maquettes of the “mutant sea creatures” from “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” (2004). Less committed fans, however, may find it all a bit much – “like being trapped in a branch of Oliver Bonas crammed with hyper-twee gewgaws”. There’s something “disconcerting” about reducing the kinetic medium of film to a collection of static objects. More often than not, the show feels a little lifeless.

It’s often assumed that the director’s “obsession with style masks a lack of substance”, said Louis Chilton in The Independent. Yet for Anderson, the one is “inextricable” from the other. After all, most of his films can be read as “dryly comic character studies of damaged, emotionally dysfunctional men” whose inner turmoil is at odds with the neatly choreographed worlds they inhabit. Being “an assemblage of collected things”, the show can’t convey this crucial “human element”; nor do we learn much about Anderson himself. Still, even looking at the “actor-less costumes and inert puppets” here, you can’t help but come away with a renewed appreciation for his “impeccable craft”.

Design Museum, London W8. Until 26 July

It’s shaping up to be another season of riveting shows opening at museums across the U.S. Here are six to check out over the winter, including pioneering exhibitions that look at the life and career of Frida Kahlo, examine how lithography changed Hindu art and celebrate Austrian expressionism.

‘Austrian Expressionism and Otto Kallir,’ Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Otto Kallir is credited with helping “establish" Austrian Expressionism through his “influential” New York art gallery, and over the decades Kallir built up an extraordinary personal collection, said the Los Angeles Times. Recently, his family gave more than 100 of those works to LACMA, including the museum’s first Gustav Klimt painting. This 1897 portrait, “Woman With Fur Collar,” is one of the 24 pieces on display in “Austrian Expressionism and Otto Kallir,” along with newly acquired “seminal” landscape paintings by Egon Schiele. (Through May 31, 2026)

‘Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal,’ MFA Boston

Art is often shaped by emerging technologies, and when lithography made its way to Kolkata during the 19th century, it changed how Indian artists depicted Hindu gods. “Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal” looks at how this form of printmaking “reinvented devotional art” and made divinity prints “more realistic, colorful and accessible than ever before,” said MFA Boston. This exhibition is the first of its kind in the U.S. and features more than 100 prints, paintings, sculptures and textiles, including 38 “vibrant” lithographs from the museum’s collection. (Jan. 31-May 31, 2026)

‘Frida: The Making of an Icon,’ Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Frida Kahlo was “practically unknown to mainstream audiences” during her lifetime — she didn’t became a worldwide phenomenon until her work was rediscovered in the 1970s, two decades after her death, said the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Instead of a traditional retrospective, “Frida: The Making of an Icon” takes a different approach to showcasing her life and art and is the first major exploration of her “transformation” from “local painter to a universal icon and global brand.” More than 30 of Kahlo’s works will be on display, alongside 120 pieces by artists she inspired. (Jan. 19-May 17, 2026)

‘Conversation Pieces: Stories from the Fashion Archives,’ Denver Art Museum

An 1896 ballgown from Paris’ first haute couture fashion house and a groundbreaking Chanel shift dress from 1926 are some of the items set to be displayed in this celebration of finery. The Denver Art Museum acquired its first pieces of women’s clothing in 1942, and “Conversation Pieces: Stories from the Fashion Archives” will use garments from its permanent collection to explain cultural trends, how fashion evolves and how history influences clothing. While there is a global focus, the exhibition will also dive into local fashion and how Denver’s department stores promoted homegrown designers. (Feb. 15-Aug. 30, 2026)

‘Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work,’ Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Anna Mary Robertson Moses became a prolific painter in her late 70s, giving rise to the nickname Grandma Moses. While she was “met with astounding popular and commercial success,” any type of “critical success eluded her,” said The New York Times. “Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work” aims to change that by examining her legacy and reframing the painter as a “serious, workmanlike artist.” The Smithsonian American Art Museum only started collecting Moses paintings within the last decade and now has 33 works. All of them will be on view. (Through July 12, 2026)

‘still/emerging: Native American Works on Paper,’ The Cleveland Museum of Art

The 30 prints and drawings in “still/emerging: Native American Works on Paper” showcase the “unique histories and perspectives” of Indigenous artists from a “number of backgrounds and tribal affiliations,” said The Cleveland Museum of Art. Highlights include “powerful” memorial woodcuts by T.C. Cannon (Kiowa/Caddo), “deeply symbolic” color lithographs by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation) and a multimedia piece by Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke/Crow). (Feb. 1-June 7, 2026)

At the age of 88, David Hockney “is enjoying a volcanic burst of late energy”, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Times. Although he now uses a wheelchair, the artist continues to produce paintings at a prodigious pace; and, if anything, his work rate “seems to be accelerating”. Following his hugely popular retrospective in Paris earlier this year, he has returned to London to show off a “delightful and thrilling” selection of new work – under the title “Some Very, Very, Very New Paintings Not Yet Shown in Paris”.

The exhibition testifies to his “extraordinary vitality”. Bringing together interiors, still lifes and portraits, it’s “a blast of fearlessness, innocence and the uninhibited enjoyment of colour”. Hockney has always seemed to look at the world with “childlike curiosity”, and these recent pictures find him returning to life’s simple pleasures with renewed vigour. Whether he’s painting a pair of empty chairs – a nod to van Gogh and a touching tribute to absent sitters – or a display of fruit on a rumpled tablecloth in a Smarties-style palette, his colours “pop about with all the fun of a birthday party”.

Any Hockney show is worth visiting, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. This one is no exception; it certainly “has its moments”. A series of drawings of the moon the artist created on his iPad “feel as cool as an eye bath”: playing with the tradition of the nocturne, he “conjures a mood of mysterious serenity”, conveying his wonder at the beauty of nature through these “shadowy landscapes”.

Some of his acrylic paintings of furniture are “eye-popping”, all reversed perspective and exuberant colour: “chairs cavort wonkily about empty spaces and bunches of flowers explode like fireworks”. But, for all “the frenzied delight in colour”, they mostly seem like pale imitations of his greatest hits; the excitement “has vanished from paintings that look as if they’ve been dashed off in an afternoon”.

“The portraits are where this show fails the hardest,” said Eddy Frankel in The Guardian. Hockney now takes a pointillist approach to skin tones, “and the result is a bunch of bodies that look as if they’re covered in sores”: they seem more like “fresh corpses” than living humans. The exception is a self-portrait in which we see the artist painting from his wheelchair; the painting works “because it’s so vulnerable but also so funnily self-aware”. You can’t help but dwell on mortality here: where Hockney was once so assured, his brushstrokes now look “shockingly unsteady”, the compositions frequently verging on the chaotic.

Yet they couldn’t have come from another hand, and it’s oddly “affecting” to see one of the great artists of our time ageing before our eyes. We’ve seen a lot of Hockney exhibitions lately. Perhaps we don’t really need another one. Still, these new works, with their “wobbles” and colour and humour, “prove that he’s still at it, and he’s still got it, all these years later”.

Annely Juda Fine Art, London W1. Until 28 February

Music is blending into an algorithm-generated playlist, cinema is dominated by blockbuster movies from decades-old franchises, and the rest of the cultural scene is as flat and bland as a pancake.

That's according to a new book, the “lucid and entertaining – yet despairing” “Blank Space”, by W. David Marx. In it, he argues that 21st-century culture has become an “enthusiastic embrace of selling out”, said The Minnesota Star Tribune. But has he missed the point?

‘Slurry of stagnation’

“Omnivorism” is “one of the primary culprits” that Marx identifies. When “country, R&B, hip-hop and classic rock become interchangeable bits to sample, rather than distinct musical styles”, then “nothing stands out”. He thinks “the understandable desire to cross musical boundaries in once-unthinkable ways has turned into a slurry of stagnation”.

Marx’s “key point about the bland sameness” of today’s art “will resonate with anybody who has a hard time remembering when a new song made them perk up, pay attention and realise they have never heard anything like that before”.

This century “looks likely to go down in history as the least innovative, least transformative, least pioneering” one for culture since “the invention of the printing press”, said The New York Times Magazine in 2023. “Shockingly few works of art in any medium” have been “created that are unassimilable to the cultural and critical standards that audiences accepted in 1999”.

Misguided and oversimplified

Yes, it feels like there’s a “confounding glut of art”, but “little of the original, startling kind that matters”, said The Economist. Instead there’s “music without instruments and lyrics without meaning”, plus “endless reboots, sequels and superheroes in the cinema”.

But Marx’s “sweeping book oversimplifies a dizzyingly messy picture”, because some of his criticisms “could have been made in the past, and were”. So even if today’s “means of self-publicity are new”, the “attention-seeking grifters are not” and “there has always been more dross than gold”.

Marx’s argument is a “dated, misguided understanding of how history works”, said Art in America. It is “rooted in a 19th-century fallacy called positivism: the belief that history moves in a clean, linear progression of successive innovations”.

But “if history is any indicator”, those “still insisting culture is dead” will “go down” as “conservative curmudgeons very much on the wrong side of history”. You might “think writers so obsessed with the past would have learned as much”.

Peter Doig is “probably the single most influential painter in the world today”, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. Born in Scotland in 1959, but resident for many years in Trinidad, he is known for blending “different styles of painting and diverse forms of imagery – from Old Master paintings and random found photographs to horror movies”. His approach to painting has been likened to a DJ mixing other people’s records to create something new. So it’s hardly surprising to learn that Doig is “obsessed with music”.

This show sees him bring his “twin passions” together, scattering a representative selection of his paintings through the rooms of the Serpentine Gallery, soundtracked by programmed highlights from the artist’s enormous record collection. Each day of the exhibition’s run, the choice of music will be different, meaning that “no two experiences of the show will be the same”. The result is an “eccentric and entrancing experience”.

The show feels “oddly like a house party where you don’t mind being sober”, said Martin Robinson in The London Standard. There’s an “immediate intimacy” to it, with “easy chairs” scattered throughout, and tables provided for visitors to sit and chat: it’s about “the communal stimulus created when art and music mix”.

The musical set-up itself is a sight to behold, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. Doig’s records – from Aretha Franklin to Kraftwerk – are played through “immense” cinema speakers, designed in the 1920s and 1930s. These objects are “sculptures in themselves, with gaping mouths of wood and metal that once boomed behind the screens of British picture houses”. They find a mirror in Doig’s painting “Maracas”, in which a vast sound system towers over a jungle scene, a tiny figure at its edge revealing its “monstrous scale”. Doig’s “eerie” paintings repeatedly evoke “misty musical dreams”: one sees an old musician plucking at a guitar; another is “a more than three-metre-wide vision of a lakeside party venue at night”, filled with “people and lights, clubhouses and umbrellas”.

It’s more of an installation than a painting exhibition, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. Indeed, amid the “atmospheric feng shui” of the gallery set-up, Doig’s canvases can initially feel “incidental”. Yet eventually, they work their magic on you. Doig’s magpie approach injects old-fashioned artistic traditions with his interest in Black culture. This is particularly evident in a suite of paintings that features lions – a ubiquitous symbol in Rastafarianism – stalking past prisons in Venice and in Port of Spain. Without explicitly mentioning slavery and captivity, Doig’s paintings evoke “historical darkness”. Despite these themes, the show is “a joy to wander through”, combining music and art to create “a transportive gallery moment that feels like a Caribbean journey”.

Serpentine South Gallery, London SW7. Until 8 February

In October 1960, Nigeria won full independence from the UK, said Anny Shaw in London’s The Standard. This landmark moment sparked “a period of enormous cultural fecundity”, as artists sought to create a “visual identity” for the country – one that embraced indigenous traditions and the “buzz” of modern life, while reckoning with Nigeria’s “fraught colonial past”.

Now this cultural “renaissance” is the subject of a new exhibition at Tate Modern, which brings together some 250 pieces – including paintings, sculptures and textiles – by more than 50 artists, to examine Nigerian art pre- and post-independence. The result is a show that is sprawling but compelling, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. Other exhibitions of African art have tended to shy away from showing “the first gropings towards modernity from artists working in isolation from the international art world”, for fear of reinforcing the view that they are “folksy”, but this one lets “the work of those early explorers shine out”.

There is, unfortunately, a rather “dutiful” tone to this nine-room show, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. The work of important artists such as Ben Enwonwu (who sculpted Elizabeth II in 1957) is foregrounded, but several galleries are given over to various “schools”, as the exhibition strives to be properly “in depth”. Along the way there are “flashes of artistic magic” including Demas Nwoko’s “mysterious” paintings, and J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere’s “astonishing” black and white 1970s photographs of women’s “intricate hairstyles”. But between them are a host of “middling” works, including too many early 20th-century pieces reflecting African artists’ new interest in naturalism. It becomes a bit wearing, like double history on a sunny afternoon.

I completely disagree, said Jackie Wullschläger in the Financial Times. The show is full of brilliant things – and “what shines throughout is a sparkling diversity of making”. A piece by Asiru Olatunde, who came from a family of blacksmiths, is a sheet of aluminium hammered into “a massive, exquisitely detailed frieze” depicting village life. We also see the Yoruba gods that Adebisi Akanji, who trained as a bricklayer in his youth, sculpted in cement, while the riders in Jimo Akolo’s “Fulani Horsemen” (1962) “gallop right against the picture plane and off to the future”.

The show’s “star piece”, however, is the series of towering wooden sculptures that Enwonwu made for the forecourt of the Daily Mirror’s London HQ in 1960. There are seven of these figures, each possessed of “traditional attenuated Igbo features” and five of them holding an open newspaper. They disappeared later that decade, and were only rediscovered in 2012, in a garage at a secondary school in east London. This is an “entrancing, enlightening exhibition” – Tate’s “most revelatory in years”.

Tate Modern, London SE1. Until 10 May

A large Andy Warhol portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat in a jock strap is the first thing you see at “Downtown/Uptown.” And the choice is fitting, said J. Scott Orr in Whitehot, because the towering electric-red silk-screen image “captures everything about ’80s art: the need to shout above cultural noise, the wholesale packaging of sexuality, and the commodification of, well, everything.” Warhol, then in his 50s, was the new generation’s spirit guide and Basquiat a rising star, about to lead a New York City–based cohort including Julian Schnabel, Keith Haring, David Salle, and Barbara Kruger to a level of pop celebrity that was unknown a decade earlier. Those artists and roughly 20 more are featured in this all-star group gallery exhibition co-curated by 1980s gallerist and impresario Mary Boone, who helped blur the lines between art and commodity, rebel and entrepreneur. The show succeeds “because it refuses to sanitize that legacy.”

Though the show includes 78 works by 26 artists in all, it’s “nowhere near exhaustive,” said Max Lakin in The New York Times. It highlights the return of figurative painting in a style that critics called neo-expressionism, a label that didn’t please most artists. Basquiat, Schnabel, Haring, Francesco Clemente, and Eric Fischl all belonged to this “hot-blooded” group and were shown at Boone’s downtown gallery. Many of the era’s cerebral photographers and appropriation artists instead showed at Metro Pictures, but their kind is represented here by Kruger, Cindy Sherman, and Jeff Koons. Women are underrepresented, said Veronica Esposito in The Guardian, because “the plague of sexism” remained virulent in the ’80s. But the Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous art collective, have some of their wittiest posters displayed, each one challenging men’s domination of the art world.

The vibrant scene captured by “Downtown/Uptown” is “colored a bit by survivorship bias and nostalgia,” said Marion Maneker in Puck. Because co-curator Brett Gorvy was a London teenager when all these artists burst into prominence, “the exhibition is very much the 1980s New York of his imagination.” Several of the era’s most controversial works even share their own room, bringing together two Sally Mann photographs of her nude children, a Richard Prince image featuring a nude 10-year-old Brooke Shields, and Andres Serrano’s photograph of a crucifix immersed in his own urine. But the show as a whole celebrates the explosive creativity of the era, providing a useful lesson for today’s U.S. art scene, currently in a lull nowhere near as deep as that of the ’70s. “Even when the art world is at its bleakest, you never know what’s coming next.”

“Is it trivial to think of flowers in times like these?” asked Kelly Presutti in Art in America. Certainly not if the blossoms were painted by Rachel Ruysch, a Dutch artist who outsold Rembrandt in her day but has not been the subject of a major museum exhibition until the current traveling show, now at its final of three stops. Ruysch (1664–1750) painted floral still lifes “with an exquisite touch,” and “pure pleasure abounds” in any stroll through the show. But Ruysch also seemed to understand that beauty is “a reminder of our vulnerability,” of the fleetingness of life. In a typical Ruysch painting, “stems are snapped, leaves yellow and wilt,” and “a lizard prepares to pounce on a nest of freshly laid eggs.” She shows us bountiful bouquets. And yet “the world holds together in its wondrous beauty, Ruysch’s work suggests, because we will it to be so.”

Describing Ruysch’s paintings as still lifes “feels like a misnomer,” said Murray Whyte in The Boston Globe. “They teem with slimy insects and reptiles,” examples of which her naturalist father kept in jars at her childhood home in Amsterdam. The exhibit’s “dazzling” first gallery simulates what it would have been like to grow up amid that globe-spanning menagerie. The room, “lit like a sideshow of macabre delight,” displays butterfly, beetle, and reptile specimens on loan from Harvard, and reminds us that Ruysch was a product of an age when Dutch explorers were “hauling back all kinds of exotica,” stirring wonderment. You could argue that still life painting, the only genre open to women, flattered its patrons by reflecting back their new wealth in all its excess. But in Ruysch’s work, you sense “the riotous curiosity of an active mind trying to capture the shock of the new in a world freshly without limits.” And beyond that, her routine inclusion of scavengers, predators, and decay suggests that she recognized “the perils of progress alongside its bounty.”

“In some ways, Ruysch, though too long neglected by posterity, was like the lucky bees she painted,” said Sebastian Smee in The Washington Post. She gorged on the beauty of the flowers and fruits the era presented her with, and meanwhile gave birth to 10 children, kept her maiden name, worked as a court artist, took a hiatus when she and her husband won the lottery, then continued painting nearly into her 80s. Portraits of female artists were rare at the time, but Ruysch appears in three, said Cullen Murphy in Air Mail. One on display is a collaboration with an established male painter 20 years her senior. He rendered Ruysch at work at age 29, palette in hand and flowers nearby. Like the duet albums Tony Bennett recorded with Lady Gaga, the pairing of the two artists “acknowledges Ruysch’s stature in a realm of her own creation.”

The theft of eight items from the Louvre, including Napoleonic-era jewellery, has left Paris reeling from one of the “most spectacular” but “brazenly simple” heists of the last century.

It comes at a time when museums and art collections are “increasingly being targeted by criminal gangs”, said the BBC, inspired by some of the most daring, and peculiar, art heists in the modern era.

‘History’s biggest art heist’

The Louvre, the most popular museum in the world in 2024 with nearly 9 million visitors, has a “long history of thefts and attempted robberies”, said The Associated Press.

One of the most famous incidents involved the theft of the prized “Mona Lisa” in 1911, after a former worker at the museum “walked out with the painting under his coat”. It is thought he wanted to repatriate Da Vinci’s work to Italy, but the painting was recovered in Florence two years later and reinstated in the museum. The mystery and uniqueness of the painting, and the drama of this heist, arguably “helped make Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait the world’s best-known artwork”.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the aggravated robbery of 13 artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990 shocked the world. To this day, it is “history’s biggest art heist”, with more than “half a billion dollars” of art vanishing into thin air, said CNN.

Two security guards were “bound in duct tape” and subsequent intelligence led police to suspect that the “Corsican mob” was behind the operation. This line of investigation “fell apart” when the art they were trying to sell ended up being from a robbery at a Nice museum instead. Despite the scale and value of the heist, “not a single motion detector was set off”, with rumours since circling of “ghost robbers”, or perhaps more likely “an inside job”. None of the art has since been recovered.

‘The Scream’ and a golden toilet

Perhaps the second most famous artwork in this list, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” was stolen from the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo just four years later in 1994.

Using a ladder to gain entry in the dead of night, the robbers “made a beeline” for the piece and used wire cutters to access the work in “50 seconds to be precise”, said The Collector. Allegedly, the assailants left the guards a note saying “Thanks for the poor security”, and the whole escapade was caught on camera. Fortunately, within three months the police arrested four men, with the ringleader receiving six years in prison. The painting was safely recovered from a “hotel room in Aasgaarstrand”, 60 miles away.

A painting stolen once is shocking enough, but one taken four times borders on comical. “Jacob de Gheyn III” by Rembrandt, housed at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London, was stolen in 1966, 1973, 1981 and 1983, in “one of the more bizarre cases of art theft” ever recorded, said Euronews.

The piece has gained the nickname the “takeaway Rembrandt”, but was recovered “after every theft” and it is still on display today. In 2019, the gallery was closed following the attempted theft of two Rembrandts, which was “thwarted” thanks to the gallery’s “robust” security systems, said The Art Newspaper. It is still unknown which Rembrandts were targeted.

Most recently, the theft of a £4.75 million golden toilet from Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire captured the imagination of the British public in 2019.

Two men were jailed this year following the “bold and brazen” stunt, said The Guardian. The “18-carat fully functioning lavatory” by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan weighed “around 98kg” and was taken away by “sledgehammer-wielding thieves”. The gold has never been recovered and was “probably melted down”, said The Telegraph. The artefact had been on display “for just under a week before it was taken”, and the palace has since replaced it with a “replica with which visitors can pay £10 to take a selfie”. The new attraction is designed to be a “fun focal point for visitors to sit down for a selfie with a difference”, Blenheim Palace said.

“You’re not allowed to lick paintings in museums, which is cruel when you’re faced with something as mouthwateringly tempting as Wayne Thiebaud’s art,” said Eddy Frankel in The Guardian.

The American artist dedicated his decades-long career to painting cakes and sweets carefully laid out on counters, tempting viewers to “take a big, juicy bite”. But he didn’t just paint to make you drool.

On display at the Courtauld Gallery in central London for his first UK museum show, Thiebaud’s work is both an “update on the long legacy of the still life, and a deep dive into burgeoning consumerism and the capitalistic euphoria of the mass-produced, mid-century American dream”.

Thiebaud’s background as a cartoonist and motion picture animator gives the “biggest clue” to where his “kitschy universe” of doughnuts and ice cream sundaes came from. Painting for a mainstream audience gave him the skills to get his ideas across directly and powerfully, “like a cream pie to the face”. Then he met a group of abstract impressionists in the 1950s, and within just a few years everything “clicked”.

His works on display at the Courtauld are “beautifully and thickly painted”. From “oozing cakes” to mustard-drizzled hot dogs, they are “exercises in painterly precision” with a keen awareness of art history, continuing, in his own way, the radical legacy of Cézanne and Chardin. “It’s still life painting at its modern best.”

Thiebaud’s “luscious yet unsettling” still lifes make for an “excellent” exhibition, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. His depictions of ordinary snacks are both “irresistible and brilliantly peculiar”. Below the sweetness – “which is meant to cloy – there’s a tang of melancholy and a dash of Cold War anxiety”.

Sorrow “creeps into unexpected places”, said Florence Hallett in The i Paper, from a solitary slice of leftover pie that “pulls at the heartstrings” to a “sausage having an existential crisis” in “Delicatessen Counter” (1963).

But the “visible brushmarks keep every surface alive”, said Laura Cumming in The Observer, and there’s a “benign delight” in Thiebaud’s celebration of everyday items and his “harmoniously balanced compositions”. Unlike Andy Warhol – whom he first exhibited alongside in New York – he renders each cake or ice cream cone in a row as different from its neighbour, highlighting every item as entirely unique.

“No artist has ever more brilliantly captured the idea that such a trivial object can be beautiful, that it can be – and of course would become a thousand times over in his paintings – the stuff of art.”

Until 18 January at the Courtauld Gallery, London; courtauld.ac.uk

It’s difficult to imagine “a more compelling biography” than that of Lee Miller, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. Born in upstate New York in 1907, she found fame as “an androgynous fashion model” in 1920s Manhattan, but soon decided (as she put it) that she would “rather take a picture than be one”. Her next act saw her decamp to Paris, where she became involved with the city’s flourishing modern art scene, falling in love and then collaborating with the surrealist photographer Man Ray.

But Miller was an artist in her own right: an unsettling, surrealist-tinged photographer, and a celebrated wartime photojournalist who captured everything from the London Blitz to the liberation of Dachau. One much-reproduced portrait, taken by her colleague David E. Scherman the day Hitler’s death was announced, pictured her in the bathtub of the dictator’s Munich apartment. This show is the biggest retrospective ever devoted to Miller’s singular talent in this country, bringing together around 230 exhibits that trace her career from start to finish. Featuring some deathless images, it’s a “sexy yet devastating” show that does justice to her art while keeping her “scintillating life story front and centre”.

The exhibition recounts Miller’s story “through her own impeccable eye”, said India Block in The London Standard. We begin with a gallery documenting her brief but stellar modelling career, in the course of which she posed for many famous photographers: Edward Steichen, for example, would sell a portrait of her to Kotex, making her “the unwitting face of sanitary pads”. But things really warm up once Miller arrives in Paris, where she honed her eye for the city’s “unusual and macabre” side: she records an oil slick on a pavement, “rats with tails dangling in a row”, a hand against scratched glass, creating “the illusion of an explosion”. A particularly sinister image sees a dissected human breast “plated up against a chequered tablecloth”; Miller was moonlighting as a surgical photographer, and made use of the result of a mastectomy for the prop.

There’s plenty of celebrity glamour here, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. Miller apparently “knew everyone” in Paris, her famous friends included Picasso, Charlie Chaplin and Jean Cocteau – all of whom we see here in photographic portraits. But in the aftermath of the Second World War, she married the British surrealist Roland Penrose and moved to London. If anything, that conflict only amped up the oddness of her pictures: she staged fashion shoots in the rubble of Blitzed-out London and, from 1944, chronicled the US army’s march through Europe as an official photographer. Some of the scenes she recorded are genuinely shocking: an “angelic female figure” pictured in 1945 is in fact the corpse of a German girl who had been given cyanide as Allied forces approached; American soldiers are seen peering at an emaciated corpse at Dachau, their faces registering not horror but “bombed-out resignation”.

Throughout, her “unflappably cool eye” never deserts her. The strain began to show after the War, however: she all but abandoned art, succumbing to “alcoholism and depression” and dying in 1977. I’m not sure this exhibition entirely succeeds in isolating Miller’s work from her status as an “iconic beauty and muse”, but it is “revelatory” nonetheless.

Tate Britain, London SW1. Until 15 February

“A master of form, fun, lightness, and surprise,” Alexander Calder is “the one 20th-century artist whom probably no one has ever disliked,” said Willard Spiegelman in The Wall Street Journal. With the opening in September of Calder Gardens in Philadelphia, the American titan of kinetic art (1898–1976) joins the select group of artists worldwide who have museums all their own. Except that in this case, “‘museum’ is the wrong word,” because Calder Gardens is so unique. On an “eccentric spit of land” tucked amid the city’s extensive museum row, the building is mostly hidden below a new public garden, and visitors experience the complex as a “splendid” parade of big and small light-filled spaces that create their own sense of Calder-like movement. With his grandfather’s statue of William Penn in view atop City Hall and his father’s Swann Memorial Fountain a block away, Calder, a Philadelphia native, has been awarded a well-earned homecoming, and his works now on display “have already begun to dance.”

“Calder was long dismissed as a sideshow in American art, a toymaker rather than a prophet,” said Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker. But his approach “reminds us of art’s primary role, which is not to issue statements but to make things: evocative things, funny things, beautiful things, trivial things.” Spending time among Calder’s mobiles and static but equally playful “stabiles,” a viewer “becomes acutely aware of their sheer variety.” One mobile, “a cluster of white leaf shapes strung along long horizontal arcs,” has “the aloof grace of an albino peacock.” Another “evokes a mechanized Japanese cherry tree.” To display these wonders, as well as complementary works by Calder’s father and grandfather, the architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron designed a “deliberately ‘irrational’ exhibition space” whose main visible wall is sheathed in reflective steel, “mirroring the gardens around it rather than asserting its own profile.”

It’s surely “one of the strangest cultural complexes to be built anywhere in recent years,” said Oliver Wainwright in The Guardian. “Part barn, part cave, and part rolling meadow,” this “beguiling” new attraction compresses “a whole universe of gallery types into one compact encounter.” After crossing busy Benjamin Franklin Parkway, visitors climb a hill planted by Piet Oudolf, who’s known for his work on New York City’s High Line. The plantings, unfortunately, are years from maturity, but it’s still remarkable to come upon openings in the earth that offer the first glimpses of Calder’s colorful sculpture. Because the artist himself despised art-world formalities such as nameplates and explanatory texts, I completed the journey beyond “feeling entertained but none the wiser about Calder.” Maybe that’s fine. “Theories may be all very well for the artist himself,” he once said, “but they shouldn’t be broadcast to other people.”

At long last, an exhibition of 1960s art has arrived that “makes the decade weird again,” said Jerry Saltz in NYMag.com. For too long, museums have been mounting tributes to the era suggesting that pop art, minimalism, conceptualism, land art, and feminism were the only languages spoken. Happily, “Sixties Surreal” is “not the same old same old.” It uses an elastic definition of “surreal” to bring together some 150 works by 111 artists who plugged into the madness and openness of the period. The “electrifying” first sight that greets visitors is a trio of enormous double-humped camels created in 1969 by sculptor Nancy Graves. A bright-orange backdrop makes the display pop all the more, and “this blast of fresh air only intensifies as you make your way through the rest of the show.”

“‘Sixties Surreal’ might seem like a mea culpa on the part of the Whitney,” said Deborah Solomon in The New York Times. The museum played a major role, after all, in pushing many of these same artists to the margins of the story it told about postwar American art. Many of them arguably did carry on the surrealist project of celebrating the less rational realms of consciousness, often by way of psychosexual paintings and sculptures that “thwacked conventional standards of beauty.” Christina Ramberg, a Chicago painter, specialized in close-up images of women’s bodies constrained by bandages and tight corsets. Martha Edelheit, another of the 47 women in the show, is making her Whitney debut at age 94 with a 16-foot-wide painting she completed in 1965. In Flesh Wall With Table, nude female figures “sprawl from edge to edge of the canvas, their flesh graced with a rainbow of color that progresses from delicate ivories and pinks to dense ceruleans and purples.”

“If there’s a problem with the show, it’s that everything becomes surrealism in the end,” said Marion Maneker in Puck. There are plenty of worthy flag bearers here, including Martha Rosler, who was ahead of her time in creating photomontages that highlighted the sexual politics and global violence undergirding U.S. consumer culture. But the inclusion of well-known artists as varied as Faith Ringgold and Kenneth Anger “makes you wonder where the boundaries of surrealism lie.” And that’s true as well of one of the featured works: a 39-foot-wide reclining male nude by the painter Harold Stevenson. “Once dismissed as a gargantuan art-world curio,” Stevenson’s The New Adam “is now being considered as an ahead-of-its-time, era-defining masterpiece,” said William Van Meter in Artnet. Just be ready for it. When the Guggenheim Museum declined at the last minute to include the painting in a seminal 1963 group show, the curator told Stevenson it would be too distracting to exhibit “a phallus the size of a man.”

“Man Ray didn’t consider photography to be a form of art,” said Marion Maneker in Puck. That notion may surprise some visitors to the Met’s survey of one of the artist’s most fertile periods, because it’s “easy to get lost” in the 64 experimental photographs that constitute the heart of the show. In 1921, Man Ray moved to Paris from New York City, and he later said he was developing images for a fashion client when he left a couple of random objects atop photographic paper and accidentally exposed the paper to light. Excited by the ghostly images the process produced, he repeated it, dubbed the results “rayographs,” and printed a dozen in a 1922 portfolio, Les champs délicieux, that caused a sensation. Today, those 12 images are “both familiar and otherworldly.” They also suggest how the rayographs provide a key to understanding everything their creator did.

“Conceptual pieces were a part of Man Ray’s practice from the very beginning,” said Rossilynne Skena Culgan in Time Out. Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants grew up in Brooklyn, studied art in Manhattan, and was heavily influenced by the 1913 Armory Show that introduced America to Europe’s postimpressionist avant-garde. Before the rayographs, he created a series of colorful collages titled Revolving Doors, presenting them on a rotating stand that visitors to the Met can spin. He “also had a sense of humor,” as can be seen in 1920’s Catherine Barometer, which looks like a device for gauging weather shifts but suggests a need to monitor its namesake’s moods. By then, he was a friend and collaborator of Marcel Duchamp’s, and took Duchamp’s advice in relocating to Paris to seek greater acclaim.

Before the rayographs, Man Ray was already creating “moody, enigmatic” photographs by focusing on purpose-built everyday objects, said Arthur Lubow in The New York Times. He lit an eggbeater to emphasize its looping shadows in an image he titled Man. He also used an extended exposure to turn accumulated dust into an image that suggests a vast, arid landscape. Similarly, the everyday objects that appear in the rayographs are “transfigured by the artist’s skillful manipulations of luminescence and shadows.” And while those are the works that pushed Ray’s career into overdrive, the “showstopper” in this multimedia gathering of some 160 objects is a variation that also happens to be the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction. In Le Violon d’Ingres, from 1924, his lover Kiki de Montparnasse appears naked to just below the waist and her back, which is turned to the camera, is adorned with likenesses of the f-holes on a violin. The artist used his rayograph process to burn in the suggestive flourishes, and “in its beauty and absurdity,” the $12.4 million work “encapsulates, arguably better than any other artwork, the insouciant wit of surrealism and the originality of Man Ray.”

Buying up to four pairs of shoes per week while her subjects were starving, France’s final queen remains both a “vacuous profligate” and a “style icon for a consumerist cult” to this day, said Laura Cumming in The Observer.

The V&A’s exhibition – the first in the UK solely devoted to her – brings together iconic pieces worn, and inspired, by Marie Antoinette: a character of haute-culture adorned with controversies.

Married at just 14 to the late-teens Sun King, Louis XVI, the young Austrian later became a spearhead of extravagance, a vision of “white cotton frocks”, “towering hair and a fresh pastel palette”. During her reign as consort, her decorative force was felt by all in France, with a “grotesque 13% of the state budget” devoured entirely by the royal family.

Even following her death aged 37, the “queen of fashion” became immortalised through her style. Following the blow of the guillotine, red-ribbon chokers became a visceral Paris craze; the porcupine hairstyle echoing her “shorn hair” – known as “coiffure à la guillotine” – a poignant, if less lurid, reminder of her fate.

A bygone age

The V&A’s collection presents a number of exceptional loans never seen outside Versailles, such as “silk slippers, jewels from her private collection” and, remarkably, “the final letter she wrote”, said Anna Murphy in The Times.

Despite relatively little surviving the almost 250 years since her “tragically-ever-after” death, perhaps the most elucidating item is the “single be-bowed beige shoe” she lost while fleeing the Tuileries, pursued “by a revolutionary mob in 1792”.

Another “jaw-dropping exhibit” is an adaptation of her wedding dress for Duchess Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotta, later Queen of Sweden. Its pannier – a type of hooped petticoat – appears so decadently wide “as to render only the most palatial doorway navigable”. Equally impressive is the “epic bling” of the Sutherland diamonds, whose jewels are the “size of Galaxy Minstrels”.

A peek behind the curtain

At a time associated with failed foreign wars, constant political discontent on home soil and financial decline, Marie Antoinette exercised a desire for freedom rather than “magnificence”, said Matthew Dennison in Country Life. Where Louis avoided the “costly building projects” of former kings, or commissioned practical creations – such as round-cornered furniture to tackle his shortsightedness – Marie Antoinette exercised the expansive “cultural leadership associated with consortship”.

Hers was not a life associated with subtlety: she ordered “300 hyacinth bulbs” to perfume her bedchamber in the winter of 1778, and “bespoke scents” straight from Montpellier.

Counter-intuitively, though, these acts reflected a desire to escape, reminding her of the “freedom she had forfeited through marriage”. A tour-de-force, the exhibition shows that “she, not her husband, was responsible for the evolution of the Louis XVI style”, creating an unrivalled “world of beauty”.

Marie Antoinette Style is at the V&A, London SW7, from 20 September, vam.ac.uk

When it comes to new museum exhibitions, this fall has it all — Impressionism, mid-century American modernism, historical Black art, manga and a showcase of British landscapes from fierce rivals. Here are eight standouts.

‘Fra Angelico,’ Palazzo Strozzi and Museo di San Marco, Florence, Italy

In Florence, visitors can see several of Renaissance painter and Dominican friar Fra Angelico’s “lush religious scenes,” but this “once-in-a-lifetime” show at Palazzo Strozzi and Museo di San Marco is the city’s first major exhibition in seven decades entirely “devoted” to his work, said ARTnews. Among the two museums, 140 works will be displayed, including paintings, sculptures and drawings on loan from the Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Vatican Museums. (Sept. 26, 2025-Jan. 25, 2026)

‘Art of Manga,’ de Young Museum, San Francisco

Manga, a style of Japanese comic books and graphic novels, is a “worldwide obsession,” said KQED, but “despite its ubiquity,” it’s rare to see the original drawings on display. Until now. “Art of Manga” is the first major U.S. museum exhibition focusing on what goes into creating this work and includes more than 600 drawings from some of the most influential manga creators. Longtime fans and newbies alike will appreciate the behind-the-scenes look at how this art is made and how the storytelling touches on important social issues. (Sept. 27, 2025-Jan. 25, 2026)

‘Architects of Being: Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina,’ Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock

For the first time, these pioneering artists who helped shape mid-century modernism in the U.S. are being showcased side by side, with special attention to their similarities. Both were immigrants who launched their careers during the Great Depression, and “each woman’s story amplifies the other’s,” said the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition will include found object sculptures, collages, paintings, jewelry, mixed media reliefs and clothing, all revealing their shared appreciation of “cubism, surrealism and constructivism.” (Oct. 3, 2025-Jan. 11, 2026)

‘Reimagine African American Art,’ Detroit Institute of Arts

The Detroit Institute of Arts will christen its four new African American art gallery rooms with this assemblage of Black masterpieces from its collection. The “reimagined” galleries were moved to the “heart of the museum” to “better showcase” the contributions of local Black artists, said the Detroit Free Press. Sculptures, paintings, photographs and furniture from 1840-1986 will be on display, highlighting multiple styles and genres. (Opens Oct. 18)

‘The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro’s Impressionism,’ Denver Art Museum

Camille Pissarro was the sole painter to showcase his work at every Impressionist exhibition in Paris and “left a mark” on his peers and post-Impressionists like Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cézanne, said Apollo Magazine. “The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro’s Impressionism” is the first major U.S. retrospective of the artist in 40 years and will feature over 80 of his paintings from more than 50 museums and private collections. Expect landscapes, cityscapes, figure paintings and “remarkable” urban scenes. (Oct. 26, 2025-Feb. 8, 2026)

‘Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor,’ Museum of Fine Arts Boston

The Museum of Fine Arts is home to the world's largest collection of watercolors by Winslow Homer, one of “America’s greatest artists” who with “just washes and brushes on paper” could “evoke profound emotions,” said Boston Magazine. “Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor” provides a rare look at almost 50 pieces that have been in storage and are “so fragile” they have not been exposed to daylight in nearly five decades. Because of their safekeeping, the works are in beautiful condition, guaranteeing a “spectacular show.” (Nov. 2, 2025-Jan. 10, 2026)

‘Korean Treasures: Collected, Cherished, Shared,’ Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, D.C.

This stunning exhibition of Korean masterpieces spans 1,500 years and boasts 200 works of art once found in Buddhist temples, Confucian academies and royal palaces. The pieces — sculptures, furniture, ceramics, landscape paintings — are from the vast collection of Lee Kun-Hee, former chair of Samsung. Following his death in 2020, his family donated a treasure trove of 23,000 objects to South Korea, and the priceless items displayed in “Korean Treasures: Collected, Cherished, Shared” have never before been viewed in the U.S. (Nov. 8, 2025-Feb. 1, 2026)

‘Turner and Constable,’ Tate Britain London

The rivalry between British painters J.M.W. Turner and John Constable is “one of the greatest in art history,” said Artsy, and this landmark exhibition shines a light on their individual and shared approaches to creating landscape paintings. Both men were born 250 years ago, and critics from their era called the contemporaries a “clash of fire and water,” the Tate Britain said. Paintings, sketchbooks and personal items will be on view, including bold later works by Turner that inspired Claude Monet and Constable’s takes on puffy clouds. (Nov. 27, 2025-April 12, 2026)

Still in her mid-30s, Rachel Jones “is about as successful as a young painter can be”, said Fatema Ahmed in the Financial Times. Since graduating from the Royal Academy Schools in 2019, the artist has seen her work, which “seems wildly abstract at first, then invites you to see new forms and shapes”, sell for hundreds of thousands, and be acquired by institutions including the Tate. She has exhibited widely across Europe and the US, and has even put on an opera.

Now, she has been selected to become the first contemporary artist to mount a show in the main space of London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery. The recurring motif in Jones’s work is the human mouth, said Eddy Frankel in The Guardian – which she renders “in thick swirls of Technicolor semi-abstraction”, with teeth, gums and lips appearing “over and over”, with “smears of red” and “shards of jagged white” adrift in “trippy hazes” of colour. Her Dulwich exhibition features a new body of work, comprising paintings both small and large, as well as other pieces created over the past six years. It’s “a show that looks like a psychedelic bomb has been detonated in a dentist’s surgery”; these are “impressive, imposing, clever” paintings.

Jones is an “exhilarating” painter, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. The new works “radiate self-assurance and charisma”. Among the most striking are eight “vast” pictures in oil pastels and oil sticks which all, confusingly, share the same oxymoronic title: “Gated Canyons”. Consisting of sequential shapes – “like beads on a necklace, or an earthworm’s segmented parts” – they coalesce into “gigantic”, cartoonish teeth and lips, sometimes accessorised by a “lewd” dangling tongue. Colours “bloom like coral”, while some pictures contain “bare swathes of the underlying brown linen” that give them an unfinished air. They look great, these “grotto-like landscapes of feeling”, but what they’re doing in Dulwich is uncertain. The works are supposedly “in dialogue” with the gallery’s Old Masters, specifically a tiny painting of “a reddish-eyed, white-coated hound” by the 17th-century Flemish artist Pieter Boel. That picture contains a mouth, but otherwise, “it has as much in common with Jones’s paintings as I do to the Dalai Lama”.

Jones sees the mouth as “an entry point to the interior self”, said Nancy Durrant in The Times. As the orifice through which we speak, it’s a gateway for us to express emotion. “The unspeaking mouth is remarkably eloquent, evoking the oversexualisation of women or racial caricature.” But intellectualising the artist’s “riotously colourful” work misses the point: these are paintings designed to provoke an “instinctive” response. Stare long enough, and the “vivid reds, spearmint greens, rich purples and emphatic yellows” here will “envelop you”. They are “expressive works that are meant to be felt – and, given time, they leave you tingling”.

Dulwich Picture Gallery, London SE21. Until 19 October

From the start of her career, “creating an aura of mystery has been Lorna Simpson’s generative MO,” said Holland Cotter in The New York Times. The latest chapter of her career finds her focused on painting rather than the conceptual photography that initially won her acclaim. While the 65-year-old New York City native still often centers Black female figures in her work, the figures in her paintings are often taken from vintage issues of Ebony and Jet magazines, enabling her to “edit and play with the female ideals that the magazine photos were intended to represent and promote.” Those images can be striking. “More interesting, though, is the presence in the exhibition of a kind of poetically haunting imagery not previously associated with this artist.” Some incorporate news photo images, such as of 1967 Detroit burning. Others, including her large-scale, blue-washed paintings inspired by glacial landscapes, create a mood that’s “as bleak as it is beautiful.”

The entire show is “a testament to how an artist’s vision can transcend media,” said Brian P. Kelly in The Wall Street Journal. Simpson’s early photographs, which often combine high-contrast black-and-white images with snippets of text, explored Blackness, gender, and identity. By 1990, she’d earned the distinction of being the first African American woman to have her work appear both at the Venice Biennale and in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. But her “omnivorous creative appetite” has compelled her to venture into film and installation, and she excels at painting as well. Each of her blue arctic paintings is “a symphony of color.” The 2021 diptych For Beryl Wright is “slightly menacing,” yet “it calls to us, siren-like, impelling us to draw closer to the mysterious scene.” Similarly, in her large 2024 painting of a meteorite found in 1922 by a Black Mississippi sharecropper, the rock, depicted as if floating or falling, appears “solid, imposing, and seemingly out of time.”

Two paintings hung at the entrances to the Met’s exhibition “juxtapose the bestial and the refined,” said Ariella Budick in the Financial Times. In True Value (2015), a “retro-chic” female figure wrapped in cheetah skin walks a cheetah, though with the faces of the woman and the cat swapped. Like Nightmare?, at the other end, True Value is “lushly executed” and “psychologically unnerving.” It “strikes deep notes that viewers can’t always make sense of but can feel in their bones.” In between those two gatekeepers, though, this show “rises only intermittently to the expectations they set.” Simpson “has a knack for existential dread,” but she hasn’t yet allowed herself to fully express passion in her paintings. “The surfaces remain restrained, the depths elusive.” Even when she selects found images for their potential emotional impact, she “keeps herself at a remove.”

"The case of Jean-François Millet's 1859 painting 'The Angelus' is one of the strangest in all art," said Laura Cumming in The Observer. Depicting two peasants pausing work in a field, called to prayer by a bell from a distant church spire, it shows the pair "heads bent in prayer, bodies haloed by golden evening rays" as shadows "lengthen over the spreading fields". This small, "modest" image has been held up as "the ideal image of la France profonde"; it has attracted endless, far-fetched critical scrutiny; it has repeatedly shattered auction records; and has been "used to advertise everything from cheap cigarettes to camembert". It marks a historical turning point – when the Industrial Revolution led to "a steady exodus of peasants from French farms to the city", and a nostalgia for the rural way of life; but the power of this "sonorous" work remains mysterious. Normally on display at Paris's Musée d'Orsay, "The Angelus" is currently the centrepiece of a small but fascinating – and free – exhibition at The National Gallery. Featuring several of the artist's most celebrated works, the show demonstrates how Millet (1814-1875) memorialised the forgotten peasant class, endowing the downtrodden rural labourers he painted with heroic dignity.

The son of wealthy Norman farmers who described himself as "the peasant's peasant", Millet saw the peasantry as "a class that had been denied full humanity", said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. He painted "lives of backbreaking toil but wants you to see that, behind the hoe, is a human being with a mind, a body, desires". "The Faggot Gatherers", for instance, sees women lugging bundles of sticks through "Stygian gloom" in a scene "that could just as easily have been in the 1370s as the 1870s". The drawing "Man Ploughing and Another Sowing" has a "broken-looking" sower stumbling across the foreground as a flock of black crows rises into the sky. Looking at it, you can see why van Gogh was such a fan of Millet.

People have projected all sorts of readings onto Millet's art, said Jackie Wullschläger in the Financial Times. Salvador Dalí offered a "bizarre" Freudian interpretation of "The Angelus", while communist revolutionaries in 1930s China claimed his painting "The Sower" as their "icon". The latter work, also on display here, depicts "a huge, commanding figure" descending a slope, over which he throws seeds from a bag slung over his shoulder. Yet the artist himself "resisted political, religious and artistic labels". Certainly, his sympathy with the rural poor "is vital to his appeal", but just as important is his "theatrical" flair for constructing images. Nowhere is this clearer than in "The Angelus", in which the two figures are "firmly outlined, massive, silhouetted in a twilight glow", "frozen" in devotion as they recite the evening prayer. It's a bona fide "masterpiece" – and the highlight of this "absorbing" exhibition.

The National Gallery, London WC2. Until 19 October; nationalgallery.org.uk

It's time to face the music. Conservative ideals have made their way back into mainstream pop culture. For the first time in more than 10 years, songs based on faith have been dominating the charts. This aligns with society's shift toward more "traditional values."

The past

Pop culture and music have long been a bellwether of the political climate. Summer 2024 was "defined by the ascendance of boundary-pushing female pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Charli XCX, whose 'brat summer' trend was embraced by Kamala Harris' presidential campaign," said Semafor. However, "rising in a parallel fashion to pop women," country music resonated with "young white people, some who might not even describe themselves as conservative but may have been searching for a watered-down, digestible form of populism," said Rolling Stone.

For some listeners, country music has served as an "art form to latch on to when progressive artists (and their politics) alienated them a little too much," said Rolling Stone. Much of this was attributed to President Donald Trump's campaign, which was "based in part on nostalgia for a formerly 'great' time period in U.S. history when white identity was unthreatened and women held traditional roles." Since Trump's victory, Christian and Christian-adjacent music, especially by men, has broken its way into mainstream culture, capturing the zeitgeist of this political era. "In a time of increased polarization around religion, Christian-coded music has finally broken containment and conquered the airwaves," said Vox.

The present

Summer 2025 has been a "stark cultural contrast from last summer," said Semafor. This summer has been dominated by "tradpop," a term "used to describe a hybrid of traditional pop infused with spiritual and country music elements," said Artistrack. Songs under this umbrella "often include lyrics centered around family, faith, personal values and resilience." Some examples include Benson Boone's "Beautiful Things" and Alex Warren's "Ordinary," which is a "love song that easily doubles as a Christian worship song" and has become one of the biggest hits of 2025, said Vox. Christian artists like Jelly Roll and Brandon Lake have also been featured on the Billboard Hot 100.

"It used to be that Christian music felt like a lesser version of whatever was popular," said Holly Zabka, the president of Provident, a Sony subsidiary dedicated to Christian music, to NPR. In the music scene today, Christian artists "can now simply exist on the same level as all the other artists in the world."

The meaning

Tradpop has found a keen audience in young men. "What unites all of these songs across a broad sonic range is their confessional stance, as well as the performance of raw vulnerability from each male artist," said Vox. This is a "trait that modern men, especially ones steeped in a culture of conservatism, often have difficulty accessing." It also aligns with phenomena such as the male loneliness epidemic, as well as the growing ideological divide between men and women in the U.S. and globally. "So many of them struggle with depression, and what they are finding in Christian music is another way to deal with things," said Zabka. But it is "perhaps ironic that the regressive male codes of stoic masculinity that leave these male artists seeking outlets of expression are frequently heavily reinforced by the same Christian culture they're trying to find themselves within," said Vox.

The shift to tradpop "reflects the broader cultural and political narrative shift toward traditional and conservative ideals" ever since Trump "returned to power," said Semafor. The genre also "lends itself to the participatory nature of today's social media-led marketing," said NPR. "The musicians currently achieving the greatest success position themselves as co-creators with their audience, much like a pastor communing with their congregation."

If you love a country stroll and you're partial to an exhibition, why not combine the two at a sculpture park? The UK is home to an incredible array of open-air galleries, populated with breathtaking works that have been carefully positioned to work in harmony with the nature that surrounds them. Here are some of our favourite spots.

Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, St Ives

Shortly after her death in 1975, Barbara Hepworth's studio in St Ives was turned into a public gallery. Outside in her "picturesque garden overlooking the sea" (pictured above) lie some of her most striking works, said Time Out, each placed in exactly the spot she felt they belonged. Among the treasures on display is the monumental bronze "Two Forms (Divided Circle)" and the totem-like multi-part sculpture "Conversation with Magic Stones". Inside, her living room and workshop remain virtually "untouched" shining a fascinating light on the working life of the influential English sculptor.

tate.org

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield

This "vast Georgian parkland estate" is dotted with many "creations" by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, said The Times. Other works to search out include Andy Goldsworthy's "Peter's Fold" – a permanent sculpture built using ancient dry-stone techniques around a common lime tree. There's also an "ebb and flow of temporary exhibits" to explore. If you want to make a weekend of it, consider booking a room at the nearby "pooch-friendly" Bagden Hall.

ysp.org.uk

Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail, Gloucestershire

Nestled within historic woodland in Gloucestershire lies one of the country's oldest sculpture parks. Carefully laid out among the trees over a four-and-a-half mile circular route are 17 sculptures, "many of which interact with the forest setting or are constructed from its raw materials", said Time Out. Perhaps most impressive is "Cathedral": "a 15-foot-tall stained-glass window depicting a woodland scene, hanging among the trees as if part of the landscape". End your walk at the "lovely picnic area" by the Forestry Visitor Centre.

forestofdean-sculpture.org.uk

The Sculpture Park, Surrey

"You might be expecting little" when you arrive at this unassuming park in Surrey, said Country Life. But you'll leave "bowled over" after an afternoon spent "wandering through what feels like miles of winding woodland paths, peppered with bronze gorillas and mirror-shiny steel bridges spanning lakes and streams". Home to over 800 sculptures, all available to buy, there is plenty to see.

thesculpturepark.com

Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh

Situated just outside Edinburgh, this award-winning sculpture garden is a must visit if you're staying in the Scottish capital. Look out for pieces by "luminaries" like Anish Kapoor, Marc Quinn and Phyllida Barlow, said The Times. Every artwork has been "designed for its precise spot", some "swathed in woodland", others overlooking the lakes. Open from April to October, the park hosts an annual arts festival, Jupiter Rising, each August with poetry readings and live music among the sculptures.

jupiterartland.org

Our group is taking a watercolour class on the terrace of Les Lodges, a delightful hotel in Aix-en-Provence noted for its wonderful view of Mont Sainte-Victoire. We are embarking on a futile attempt to replicate the work of the most celebrated resident of the city, the unrivalled Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne.

Capturing the famous mountain – which the restless and eternally dissatisfied Cézanne himself painted more than a hundred times – is not as easy as it looks. My pitiful attempt to paint one of the most recognisable subjects in the history of art looks more like the daubing of a four-year-old than an exquisite depiction of the variegated hues of the Provencal peak. But the fact that we are making an effort to copy the revered artist's work at all underscores his immense reach.

Cézanne suffered an astounding amount of rejection in his lifetime and was even ostracised by his native city, Aix. In 1900, Henri Pontier, the director of the Musée Granet, considered Cézanne’s work too unorthodox and declined to hang any painting by the ground-breaking artist on the museum's walls.

Despite this, Cézanne had a profound spiritual connection to the place. The city was the inspiration for his most memorable work, and he viewed it as his muse. Now Aix, the lovely, light-dappled Provencal city where the great artist was born and died, is returning the favour, paying homage to him in a year-long festival, "Cézanne 2025".

Jas de Bouffan: Cézanne's studio en plein air

One of the centrepieces of the festival is the grand reopening of Jas de Bouffan, the artist's much-loved 12-acre home, which has been closed for renovation since 2017. A splendid 18th-century mansion where the family lived from 1859 to 1899, Jas de Bouffan was never merely a home for Cézanne; it was his studio en plein air, where he learned the art of painting.

In these grounds, he first developed his revolutionary use of colour, structure and perspective. The captivating, verdant landscape surrounding the house is still flourishing at the neighbouring farm is planted with vines, almond, mulberry, chestnut, cherry and olive trees. Cézanne drew on this to create such memorable paintings as "House and Farm at Jas de Bouffan". He also painted his unparalleled "The Card Painters" series at the estate, using local farmhands as models.

Timeless masterpieces at the Musée Granet

Another highlight of the festival is "Cézanne at the Jas de Bouffan", an exhibition that runs at the Musée Granet until 12 October. Underlining the extent to which Cézanne was inspired by the family home, the show displays 130 timeless paintings of Jas de Bouffan.

It homes in on many of his favourite themes: bathers, Provençal landscapes, self-portraits, and still lifes in oil and watercolour. "Cézanne at the Jas de Bouffan" features such world-renowned paintings as "The Four Seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter", "Bather and the Rocks", "Game of Hide and Seek (based on Lancret)", "Self-Portrait in Front of a Pink Background", "Still Life with Cherries and Peaches" and, of course, "The Bathers" and "The Card Players".

Cézanne was a loner who preferred nature to people. But despite his wilful detachment from others, he created myriad works of art that continue to touch the human soul today. Thanks to his groundbreaking deployment of geometric simplification, he helped usher in Cubism, Fauvism and Abstraction. One of his many passionate devotees, Henri Matisse, called Cézanne "the master of us all". I would recommend, then, that you hurry to Aix now to marvel at his wondrous legacy.

James was a guest of Aquabella Hotel, Aix-en-Provence. For more information about the festival, visit cezanne2025.com

"Erecting a statue of a man's hot dream of what a woman should look like is unlikely to promote many women's acceptance of their own bodies."

So wrote Sørine Gotfredsen, a priest and journalist, in the Danish newspaper Berlingske. The 13-foot statue, a voluptuous stone mermaid, has "caused controversy for years due to its exaggerated figure", said The Independent.

But now it will reportedly be removed from Dragør Fort in Copenhagen because it "does not align with the cultural heritage of the 1910 landmark", said The Guardian.

'Too sexualised'

"Den Store Havfrue" (the "Big Mermaid") is no stranger to eviction. It was initially erected in 2006 at Langelinie Pier in Copenhagen, a few hundred yards from the world-famous "Little Mermaid" statue. But the bigger mermaid was removed after locals reportedly complained that it was "too sexualised", said The Telegraph.

It was then moved in 2018 to Dragør Fort, part of Copenhagen's former sea fortifications, until the Danish agency for palaces and culture "intervened in March, requesting its removal", said The Guardian. Mathias Kryger, art critic for the Politiken newspaper, called the statue "ugly and pornographic".

But the "Big Mermaid" is "arguably a bit less naked" than her smaller inspiration, said Berlingske's debate editor, Aminata Corr Thrane. "On the other hand, she has bigger breasts, and that's probably where the problem lies. Do naked female breasts have to have a specific academic shape and size to be allowed to appear in public?"

'Completely normal proportions'

Peter Bech, the restaurateur who commissioned the statue, said he couldn't understand the fuss; that the statue was a retort to tourists who complain that the "Little Mermaid" is too small.

"The mermaid has completely normal proportions in relation to her size. Of course, the breasts are big on a big woman," Bech told TV 2 Kosmopol, a Danish broadcaster. The criticism is "pure nonsense".

Politician Paw Karslund also "echoed that view", said Euronews. "I simply think the argument that the statue should be ugly and pornographic is too primitive," he told the broadcaster. "We shouldn't be so afraid of a pair of breasts."

Bech reportedly offered to donate the statue to the fort – but Helle Barth, chair of Dragør municipality's climate, urban and business committee, told Berlingske: "It's just hard to fit in. It takes up a lot of space."