Reviews
Down the rabbit hole at LACMA
A temporary display of the museum’s collection telescopes time and space to group objects thematically – but is this a productive path to follow?
Images of strength – Jennifer Higgie’s ‘The Mirror and the Palette’, reviewed
This wide-ranging book explores how women artists used self-portraiture to establish themselves in a man’s world
In her life and art, Nina Hamnett had some serious fun
The first survey show dedicated to the ‘Queen of Bohemia’ presents a flamboyant figure who was single-minded about her art
Glam-rock Nancy Mitford – The Pursuit of Love, reviewed
Emily Mortimer’s TV adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s novel is a wonderfully glamorous affair – and its anachronisms are whip-smart
The tender fictions of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
In her portraits of imaginary people, the artist conjures a world that feels joyfully real
‘Leonardo’ is clunky and condescending – so it’s bingeable Renaissance schlock, basically
The Amazon series limps through its art history but is just about salvaged by its endearingly goofy hero
The Frick Collection makes a move into modernism
The Breuer Building makes a minimalist foil for the Frick’s permanent collection – but Eve M. Kahn is rather glad the move is only temporary
The dashing Edwardian poster designer who really cut the mustard
In his heyday John Hassall was known as ‘the Poster King’ and his eyecatching ads could be seen on hoardings all over Britain
In post-war Europe, museums dared to experiment with how they displayed art
Post-war museum design had a political impetus that was public-spirited in nature – even if that meant displaying sculptures on a bed of coal
Entente cordiale: the pally portraitists of 18th-century France
Portraits were used to further friendships – and as networking opportunities – in Enlightenment France
The notional gallery? How art museums turned into public palaces
Two new books offer complementary perspectives – the macro and the micro – on the modern museum
America the grave – ‘Grief and Grievance’ at the New Museum, reviewed
An exhibition examining Black experience in America is powerful if piecemeal – and is necessarily exhausting
Raiders of the lost art – the Gardner heist gets the Netflix treatment
The Gardner Museum heist hasn’t been solved in 30 years – and it’s perfect fodder for a true crime documentary
Hardy boy: the wild landscapes of James Morrison, from Angus to the Arctic
As a new documentary reveals, the Scottish painter braved wind, rain and Arctic ice in search of his ‘rough truth’
Fossil hunting and forbidden love – ‘Ammonite’ reviewed
Francis Lee’s film plays fast and loose with Mary Anning’s life – but at least it digs the great geologist out of historical obscurity
The stonecutter who gave life to letters
Ralph Beyer’s idiosyncratic letter-cutting isn’t to everyone’s taste but there’s no denying its power
The court painters who magnified the princely pleasures of a Rajput dynasty
Paintings from the north-west Indian city of Udaipur present life at court as a royal playground
Art is all about human touch – and right now that’s more disturbing than it sounds
With human contact all but banned, an exhibition about touch was always going to provoke mixed feelings
The Grande Odalisque – a graphic novel that flunks its art heists
A new graphic novel offers a fresh take on the museum heist genre – if you can bear its regressive sexual politics, that is
Made You Look – a true crime doc that should terrify art collectors
The knavery and folly of the rarefied art world are writ large in a documentary that picks over the Knoedler forgery scandal
Does the past look better in black and white?
Photographers and film-makers have long added colour to their images – but does the current craze for colourisation create a false impression of olden times?
The avant-garde artists who sold a vision of the future
A display of interwar posters is a reminder of that utopian moment when artists believed they could invent a new world
The Met’s Old Masters, seen in a new light
European paintings still occupy prime real estate on Fifth Avenue – but a redisplay offers fresh insight into the Met’s hallowed holdings
Vein glorious: an epic history of marble, reviewed
For millennia, marble was taken to be a gleaming reflection of the heavens – and, in Fabio Barry’s new book, it regains its divine mysteries
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Do portraits have an image problem?