Features

Art historians may be sceptical about artificial intelligence, but machine learning might enlarge our capacity for observation – and even revive connoisseurship

The artist’s first performance in a decade was a lot, even for the most ‘open-minded’ onlookers

The vast waterfront complex is a fitting emblem of the painter’s outsized importance to the city

The Transcendental Painting Group in New Mexico was sidelined for its esoteric beliefs, but its members are slowly entering the mainstream

As the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. celebrates its centenary, the museum is also looking firmly to the future

In museums, minerals are both everyday matter and also objects of scientific interest – but they carry more intangible meanings too

Luxury brands are certainly contributing to the conservation of Venice – but massive advertisements on historic buildings are starting to spoil the views

The novelist revered Raphael’s Sistine Madonna – and Holbein’s Dead Christ almost induced an epileptic fit

In Istanbul, an exhibition of works created by women between 1850 and 1950 has made some impressive finds

It’s not easy to repackage a museum devoted to a Victorian missionary, but the David Livingstone Birthplace Museum has pulled it off

Time is suspended in Nicolas Poussin’s paintings of dancers who revel in the viewer’s attention

The discovery that the astrologer’s ‘scrying glass’ is made of obsidian from Mexico points to the complex global webs surrounding many Tudor objects

The spirit of innovation and manufacture lives on in the Midlands city – as a redeveloped museum on the site of the old silk mill makes clear

From street actions to art exhibitions, the organisation empowers homeless people to tell their own stories

Oxford Botanic Garden has played a vital role in the evolution of plant science since it was founded 400 years ago

Painted in around 1625, the Penitent Mary Magdalene inspired a host of copies before disappearing. Now, it has resurfaced in a private collection

Will the glittering new arts complex bring about a ‘Bilbao effect’ in the southern French city?

Lucy and Catherine Madox Brown studied with their father and had close connections to the Pre-Raphaelites – but their achievements have been overlooked until now

Frustrated that memories of more hopeful times are fading, the artist Intissar Belaid is determined to preserve what she can

The spectacular cave monastery of Sabereebi in Georgia is full of frescoes as stunning as their rocky setting

Museum directors in France and Italy seem to agree that requiring proof of vaccination is preferable to being shut – although not everyone is on board

The legendary picture editor Bruce Bernard was famously modest about his own photography, but his portraits of Lucian Freud are peerless

After his failure in politics, Henri Cernuschi succeeded in finance – and left an outstanding collection of Asian art to his adoptive city of Paris