Features

Golden rose (second quarter of the 14th century), Minucchio Da Siena.

The Musée de Cluny brings the Middle Ages bang up to date

The museum has sensitively reimagined all its displays to breathe new life into its medieval masterpieces

4 Apr 2022
food museum exhibition

Something to savour – at the new Food Museum in Suffolk

An East Anglian museum is turning its attention from the field to the table with provocative results

24 Mar 2022
Four stained-glass panels from a group of eight depicting scenes from the life of John the Baptist, made in Rouen in c. 1510 and installed in the south wall of the Burrell Collection, Glasgow.

Will the new Burrell Collection give Glasgow global reach?

After six years of work, the city’s most singular museum is reopening. But while it is once again filled with wonders, there are also questions to be answered

23 Mar 2022
The rebuilt Svaneti Museum of History and Ethnography in Mestia, Georgia, which reopened in 2014. Photo: Georgian National Museum/Fernando Javier Urquijo

The mountain stronghold that has kept Georgia’s medieval art safe for centuries

The Svaneti Museum of History and Ethnography is a testament to the local people’s long-standing determination to preserve their cultural heritage

18 Mar 2022
Half-length portrait of kabuki actor Kawarazaki Gonjuro as Ono no Yorikaze (detail; 1863), Utagawa Kunisada. Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum

The bawdy world of kabuki theatre

This elegant Japanese tradition with earthy origins has long provided Japanese printmakers with rewardingly risqué material

17 Mar 2022
Meat-shaped stone, China, Qing dynasty. National Palace Museum, Taipei

The art of making stone look good enough to eat

Rocks that resemble food may not be appetising exactly, but they can certainly be a feast for the eyes

4 Mar 2022
Mystic marriage of St Catherine (detail; c. 1575), Lavinia Fontana.

Acquisitions of the Month: February 2022

A remarkable Renaissance roundel from Mantua and a painting by Lavinia Fontana are among this month’s highlights

4 Mar 2022
Plate by Thomas Bentley from Designs by Mr. R. Bentley, for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray (1753)

Tombstone views – picturing Gray’s ‘Elegy’

Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ was the best-loved poem of the 18th century – and has proved a lure to illustrators ever since

2 Mar 2022
Unbaled Truck (2021), Charles Ray.

Charles Ray and the art of keeping body and soul together

The sculptor may work with many different materials but the main ingredient in his art, he says, is time

28 Feb 2022
The Death of Socrates (detail; c. 1786), Jacques-Louis David. Private collection

Why was Jacques-Louis David so determined to keep his drawings to himself?

The artist rarely showed the drawings that made his revolutionary paintings possible, but the Met is finally putting them centre stage

23 Feb 2022
Ritratto di bambina (c. 1770), Lorenzo Tiepolo.

Infant prodigy – is this the most unusual baby picture in art history?

Lorenzo Tiepolo has long languished in the shadow of his much more famous father and brother – but his was a very singular talent

4 Feb 2022
A rally against Islamophobia at Bastille Square, Paris, in 2014. Photo: Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Can the Louvre really counter Islamophobia in France?

A major exhibition across 18 venues is highlighting the rich variety of Islamic art. But can it stem the growing prejudices in French society?

A Fall of Bind (detail; n.d.), George Bissill

The hellish mining scenes of George Bissill

The ‘pitman painter’s scenes of men down the mines conjure up a lost world of herculean effort

31 Jan 2022
The Smithsonian’s Arts And Industries Building, Washington, D.C. Photo: Ron Blunt; courtesy Smithsonian

‘It has always been a museum of the future’ – at the original Smithsonian

The Arts and Industries Building on the National Mall has finally reopened – and it remains as forward-looking as ever

31 Jan 2022
Thierry Mugler with Jerry Hall at his fashion show in March 1995 in Paris.

Fashion is in dire need of more of Thierry Mugler’s thrilling sense of drama

It was hard to be indifferent to the designer’s larger-than-life creations, which is exactly what he wanted

28 Jan 2022
The Blue Boy (1770; detail), Thomas Gainsborough. Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino.

Dress code – decrypting Gainsborough’s dazzling boy portraits

‘The Blue Boy’ is heavily influenced by Van Dyck’s grand manner. But what did the artist mean by dressing up his young subject in this way?

22 Jan 2022
Installation view of ‘Open Storage Africa. Appropriating objects and imagining Africa’ in the Humboldt Forum, Berlin.

Has the Humboldt Forum got it horribly wrong?

The rebuilt Prussian palace is finally open, but the debate about how – and whether – it should house collections from Asia and Africa rumbles on

21 Jan 2022
Taipei Performing Arts Center by OMA.

From the Thames Tideway Tunnel to Taipei – the year ahead in architecture

In London, the River Thames is the centre of attention, while starchitects have big plans in Sydney and Taipei

20 Jan 2022
The Alexander Palace Egg (1908; detail), Henrik Wigström for Fabergé. Moscow Kremlin Museums.

How Fabergé cornered the market in gifts for the Edwardian elite

The firm of Fabergé is synonymous with the Russian Imperial family, but its fabulous baubles soon became a must-have for elites across Europe

18 Jan 2022
Buchanan Castle, Stirlingshire, as it is today.

Are Scotland’s baronial castles worth saving?

The best Scotch baronial buildings epitomise the sophisticated planning required by a mid Victorian household. But have they had their day?

The week in art news – Ricardo Bofill (1939–2022)

Plus: Man attacks BBC‘S Eric Gill statue with a hammer and Victoria Siddall steps down as global director of Frieze Fairs

14 Jan 2022
Progetto di piramide in vetro antiproiettile per l'isola di San Paolodi, di proprietà della Famiglia Beretta (2009), Riccardo Benassi.

Mission impossible – the museum for artworks that don’t exist

A modern-day Salon des Refusés saves and celebrates unrealised and unwanted artworks in digital form

12 Jan 2022
David Oyelowo and Jessica Plummer in ‘The Girl Before’.

Do minimalist architects make the best murderers? – ‘The Girl Before’, reviewed

A dislike of frills can signal much more sinister tendencies – or that’s what a BBC adaptation of J.P. Delaney’s thriller ‘The Girl Before’ would have us believe

7 Jan 2022

Arty books and films to look out for in 2022

From a caper about the pensioner who swiped a Goya to the memoir of a curator who came in from the cold – the must-see movies and a first reading list for art lovers

7 Jan 2022