Reviews
How Rainham Hall, a house with a history but no original contents, has come to life
At Rainham Hall, the National Trust has risen to the challenge of animating and interpreting an 18th-century sea captain’s house
This year’s Berlin Biennale should get rid of the art
The curators’ vision of an iDystopian world can only work if it’s all-encompassing. The more obvious artworks just dilute the effect
Don’t miss Dobson’s drawings at Daniel Katz gallery
The rough-and-tumble humanity of the modern British sculptor’s sketches is refreshing to see
Poetry and violence in the work of Francis Alÿs
The Belgian artist brings the subject of drug wars in Mexico to the heart of Mayfair: but he insists that art comes before politics
‘Taste the essence’ of Indian painting
A new book promises to open up the world of Indian art to a wide new audience
This Cindy Sherman exhibition is good – but have we seen it all before?
Sherman’s groundbreaking work paved the way for so many of today’s artists – but her own creations are starting to seem too familiar
What William Merritt Chase learned from Europe
The 19th-century artist who brought modern spirit to American painting
Pompeo Batoni didn’t just paint aristocrats abroad
The most prestigious portrait painter in 18th-century Rome also had a flair for religious and mythological subjects
The timeless modernity of a forgotten Danish painter
C.W. Eckersberg’s 19th-century paintings are barely known outside Denmark and Germany, but they should be…
Peggy Guggenheim steals the show in Florence
A show about the Guggenheim’s art collections is really about the battle between Peggy and Solomon
The work of Mona Hatoum bristles with a bodily charge
This large exhibition provides an opportunity to engage with the physical effects of Hatoum’s work
Edward Barber’s preventative photography
Edward Barber’s photographic record of 1980s anti-nuclear demonstrators goes on display at the Imperial War Museum
Cavorting amid the ruins with Hubert Robert
The French artist’s obsessive portrayal of antiquity reveals his endless variety
Van Dyck would have relished seeing his work on show at the Frick
The ambitious portraitist was the subject of a major retrospective at the Frick Collection earlier this year
The musical forms of Fausto Melotti
Fausto Melotti’s sculptures ingeniously blur the line between figurative and abstract forms and his work deserves to be better known
Why the history of photography starts north of the border
Photography flourished in Scotland during its early development in the mid 19th century
Fitting the entire universe into an art gallery
Katie Paterson once beamed Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to the moon and back. At the Lowry, she continues to explore the vastness of space
George Shaw finds the otherworldly in trees, porn magazines and plastic sheets
As associate artist at the National Gallery, Shaw focuses on the nondescript woodland where many of art history’s most sordid stories play out
Don Quixote of the drawing board: the visionary schemes of the Earl of Mar
The Earl of Mar has long been seen as a failed rebel and harmless utopian architect, but it’s time to take him seriously as an Enlightenment thinker
Going it alone in the modern city
Olivia Laing’s book on the art of loneliness has some excellent insights, but who is it meant for?
Porn and paranoia on Tyneside
Omer Fast puts contemporary fears and fictions on display at the BALTIC Centre
Irrelevant, boring, expensive… The book that lists everything wrong with house museums
Time for a bit of anarchy
Giacometti’s art channels the nervousness of an entire era
The Sainsbury Centre’s exhibition reveals an artist grappling with a sense of human frailty
From Turkey to China, the legacy of the Seljuq empire should be better known
There are many treasures in the Met’s new exhibition, but the most poignant are the metalwork pieces from Mosul, given the turmoil in the region today
Seeing London through Frank Auerbach’s eyes