The Surprise (La Surprise)(detail; c. 1718-1719), Jean Antoine Watteau.

La Surprise: Watteau in Los Angeles

The Getty’s recent acquisition ‘La Surprise’ is joined by other works by Watteau in collections in Los Angeles

19 Nov 2021

Amy Winehouse

Ten years after her death, the Design Museum celebrates the life and music of the much-loved singer

19 Nov 2021
David Chipperfield (b. 1953), whose restoration of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin and extension for the Kunsthaus Zürich both opened this year.

Personality of the Year

David Chipperfield

15 Nov 2021
Kehinde Wiley, photographed in New York in September 2021 by Kyle Dorosz.

Artist of the Year

Kehinde Wiley

15 Nov 2021
The Architects (1981), R.B. Kitaj

Acquisition of the Year

The collection of MJ Long and Colin St John Wilson: 175 works

15 Nov 2021
EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS (minted 16 February 2021; detail), Beeple

Digital Innovation of the Year

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)

15 Nov 2021

Book of the Year

‘Painting in Stone: Architecture and the Poetics of Marble from Antiquity to the Enlightenment’ by Fabio Barry

15 Nov 2021
Geoffrey Hendricks and Brian (1978; detail), Alice Neel. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Exhibition of the Year

‘Alice Neel: People Come First’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

15 Nov 2021
A room at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, reopened May 2021.

Museum Opening of the Year

Musée Carnavalet, Paris

15 Nov 2021
Children in a Garden (The Nurse) (detail; 1878), Mary Cassatt.

Whistler to Cassatt: American Painters in France

The Denver Art Museum takes a broad look at the links between Paris and the United States during the 19th century

12 Nov 2021
Free, White and 21 (detail; 1980), Howardena Pindell.

Howardena Pindell: A New Language

The Fruitmarket in Edinburgh explores how the American artist has spoken truth to power since the 1970s

12 Nov 2021
Painted enamel rose with nephrite leaves in a rock crystal pot (1917), Fabergé.

Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution

The Russian goldsmith’s opulent trinkets – going on view at the V&A – delighted Edwardian high society

12 Nov 2021

La Chine: The 18th-century China Collection of the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett

Highlights from Augustus the Strong’s vast collection of Chinese paintings, prints and drawings go on view in Dresden

12 Nov 2021

Exhibition of the Year

Alice Neel: People Come First Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 22 March–1 August In around 100 paintings, drawings and…

12 Nov 2021

Museum Opening of the Year

Casa Balla, Rome Opened June 2021 For nearly 30 years, from 1929 until his death in 1958, Giacomo Balla lived…

12 Nov 2021

Book of the Year

A Biographical Dictionary of English Architecture, 1540–1640 Mark Girouard Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art The eminent architectural…

12 Nov 2021

Artist of the Year

Dawoud Bey Dawoud Bey has been making his compelling photographic portraits for five decades. Ranging from images of Harlem in…

12 Nov 2021

Digital Innovation of the Year

Digital Violence This website presents the findings of Forensic Architecture’s investigation into the use of the malware Pegasus, made by…

12 Nov 2021

Acquisition of the Year

Apollo’s longer selection of the year’s most important museum acquisitions will be published in the December 2021 issue Château de Versailles…

12 Nov 2021
Bogolanfini (1970–79), Bamana peoples, Mali.

Bamana Mud Cloth: From Mali to the World

The Dallas Museum of Art explores the symbolism of the intricately patterned cloths known as ‘bogolanfini’

5 Nov 2021
Landscape inspired by the poems of Tao Yuanming (n.d.), Gao Jian.

Painting Apart from the World: Monks and Scholars of the Ming and Qing Dynasties

A collection of Chinese masterpieces gets its first European outing at the Musée Cernuschi

5 Nov 2021
The Calydonian Boar Hunt (c. 1611–12), Peter Paul Rubens.

Rubens: Picturing Antiquity

The Getty Villa explores the Flemish painter’s debt to the classical world

5 Nov 2021
Gold alloy and shell ear plates (800–550 BC), Peru.

Peru: A Journey in Time

The British Museum charts the history of Andean cultures across some 3,000 years

5 Nov 2021
Wearing, Gillian (video still; 2018), Gillian Wearing in collaboration with Wieden+Kennedy.

Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks

The British artist has always treated identity as a slippery thing, as this retrospective at the Guggenheim makes clear

29 Oct 2021