Features

‘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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Burials uncovered in East Kazakhstan have revealed the nomadic Saka to be as skilled in gold-working as they were in horsemanship and war

Rachel Cohen spends some quality time with a series of installations and exhibitions by MacArthur Award-winners set throughout the city

The new-look Musée de Cluny and the Burrell Collection reopen, while there are also treats in store for fans of Bob Dylan and Serge Gainsbourg

The museum in Seoul is dedicated to the Joseon dynasty who ruled for more than 500 years, but also contains reminders of Korea’s turbulent 20th-century history

The year ahead brings significant anniversaries and, consequently, blockbuster exhibitions for Lucian Freud, Piet Mondrian and Rosa Bonheur

When John Tenniel drew the grumpy Gryphon in ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, he may have had a real heraldic monster in mind

The architect who created some of the most memorable buildings of the last century and was a major influence on urban policy in Britain has died at the age of 88

The German director brought fairy tales to gorgeous, animated life with her silhouette films – the earliest of which is as remarkable now as it was in 1926

Max Norman visits the very peculiar home of an eccentric count who tried to derive electricity from vegetables

The artist’s commercial cat illustrations were hugely popular in his lifetime, but his series of psychedelic kitties have attracted rather more serious attention

The artist’s pampered pooch was often seen as an alter ego for the ‘pugnacious’ man himself

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