Acquisitions of the month: November 2024
A panel by Fra Angelico and a video work acquired using cryptocurrency are among the most significant artworks to enter public collections recently
How to be buried in style in ancient China
What can a bronze Han dynasty horse tell us about status anxiety and the afterlife? Ching-Ling Wang of the Rijksmuseum talks of grave matters
UK signs cultural deals with Saudi Arabia
Plus: France signs lucrative culture deals with Saudi Arabia and Sotheby’s cuts more than 100 staff around the world
Rachel Ruysch says it with flowers
The Dutch artist’s floral paintings might look merely decorative but, as curator Bernd Ebert explains, they encapsulate a world of economic and scientific change in the early modern Netherlands
Nature on Notice: Contemporary Art and Ecology
A chance to see how artists from Southern California and elsewhere are engaging with the climate emergency and ecological imbalance
If Books Could Kill
Knowledge can be toxic, as this selection of killer manuscripts from the collection of the Walters Art Museum demonstrates
Tissot, Women and Time
James Tissot’s gimlet-eyed depictions of women’s lives and fashions in 19th-century Paris and London are celebrated in Toronto
Out of the Ordinary: Uncommon Materials, Marks, and Matrices
The Hammer Museum honours the artists who have poured blood, sweat, tears or other unusual substances into their work
UK government won’t prevent Parthenon marbles being loaned to Greece
Plus: Jasleen Kaur wins this year’s Turner Prize; and Vancouver Art Gallery scraps plans for new Herzog & de Meuron-designed building
In the studio with… Chrissie Hynde
The rockstar-turned-artist revels in her solitude and shuts the door to everyone except her dog when she’s in the studio – which is also her flat
Slovak National Gallery’s department heads resign – with 177 staff threatening to follow
Plus: Rotterdam becomes first Dutch city to return colonial objects to Indonesia; and City of London votes to close Smithfield and Billingsgate markets for good
Fresh Window: The Art of Display & Display of Art
Tinguely and Warhol worked as window-dressers; Dalí and Duchamp had dalliances with shop displays. Art and commerce go under the spotlight in Basel
Semiha Berksoy: Singing in Full Colour
Turkey’s first female opera singer was also a painter who had close ties with Germany, and is now the subject of a survey in Berlin
My Teddy Bear
The king of cuddly toys gets the red-carpet treatment at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris – but life hasn’t always been a picnic for our faux-furry friends
Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome
After a ten-year conservation project, Parmigianino’s youthful masterpiece is ready to take part in the National Gallery’s bicentenary celebrations
In the studio with… Stanley Donwood
Best known for his designs for Radiohead’s album covers, the artist enjoys the sea air but laments the fug of wood varnish in his Brighton studio
Magritte painting sells for $121m – highest sum ever for a Surrealist work
Plus: UNESCO places 34 sites in Lebanon under ‘enhanced protection’; Berlin to cut its arts budget by €130m; and an armed heist at the Musée Cognacq-Jay
Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory
The first exhibition in Australia dedicated to the abstract artist shows work from the 1990s to now
Keeping Time: Clocks by Boulle
Ornate timepieces designed by the Sun King’s favourite craftsman go on show at the Wallace Collection
Rachel Ruysch: Nature Into Art
The Dutch artist populated her floral still lifes with beetles, butterflies, classical sculptures and other unexpected details
Rufino Tamayo: Innovation and Experimentation
The Mexican artist drew on Surrealist and cubist influences as well as on the ancient and contemporary art of his home country
Acquisitions of the month: October 2024
A massive bequest of Old Masters and a huge painting of a procession of giants are among the most important works to have entered museum collections recently
Frank Auerbach has died at the age of 93
Plus: Italian police uncover a pan-European network of art forgers; and the British Museum receives a gift of Chinese ceramics worth £1bn
The 80s: Photographing Britain
The decade is captured in all its turbulence in this searching show at Tate Britain
What happens when an artist wants to be anonymous?