Apollo

Book of the Year

‘Bilderatlas Mnemosyne – The Original’ by Aby Warburg; Axel Heil and Roberto Ohrt (eds.)

Exhibition of the Year

Installation view showing St John the Baptist and the Evangelist from the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) by Jan and Hubert van Eyck, MSK Ghent, 2020.

‘Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution’ at the MSK Ghent

Digital Innovation of the Year

A Life Study: A Monk Sleeping against a Pile of Books

The Morgan, Connected

Acquisition of the Year

Prospect Cottage and its garden, Dungeness.

Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage

Literary heroes are big business in Dublin – so why won’t the city protect its Joyce heritage?

Statue of James Joyce by Marjorie Fitzgibbon on North Earl Street, Dublin.

The streets may be paved with commemorative plaques, but plans to convert 15 Usher’s Island into a hostel betray the city’s misplaced priorities

Stereo sound – echoes of the Pergamon Altar return to Turkey

Installation view of 'Bergama Stereotip' by Cevdet Erek, Arter, Istaanbul, 2019–20.

A sound installation by the Istanbul-based artist Cevdet Erek draws on the complex history of the ancient monument

Model buildings – when European architects looked to the Middle East

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The reconstructed ‘rose window’ at the archaeological site of Khirbat al-Mafjar (Hisham’s Palace), near Jericho (photo: 2017). Photo: Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images

Diana Darke’s new book makes the case for the widespread influence of Islamic architecture on European buildings. But how convincing are her claims?

Keeping it in the family – the neglect of Tunisia’s 19th-century heritage

An auction in Paris of a prominent Tunisian family’s heirlooms was stopped earlier this year, but the country’s heritage still needs better protection

‘That hyena in petticoats’: how artists have portrayed Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft (detail; c. 1797), John Opie. National Portrait Gallery, London

The pioneering advocate for women’s rights has inspired many attempts to catch her likeness and spirit – but what can these portraits tell us about her legacy?

How Agnes Gund became an art-world hero

Agnes and Catherine Gund.

A documentary directed by her daughter sets out just why the collector and philanthropist is beloved by so many

Acquisitions of the Month: October 2020

Landscape near Arnhem (1900–01), Piet Mondrian.

A group of Dutch drawings and a collection of pre-cinematic devices are among this month’s highlights

Monumental mutts and presidential pets

It has been a good week for outsize dogs in Turkmenistan and a huge week for good dogs in Delaware

The week in art news – controversial road tunnel near Stonehenge gets the go-ahead

Photo: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The Secretary of State for Transport has approved plans to build a road tunnel for the A303 motorway near Stonehenge.…

Kandinsky

Around the Circle (1940), Vasily Kandinsky.

A career-spanning survey dedicated to the father of abstract painting at the Guggenheim Bilbao

Telling Stories: Resilience and Struggle in Contemporary Narrative Drawing

An Unkindness (detail; 2019), Robyn O’Neil.

The Toledo Museum of Art considers three different approaches to graphic art

The Topographical Collection of King George III

Map of Brazil from the Klencke Atlas (c. 1660), Johannes Klencke.

Some 18,000 maps and views spanning four centuries have been made freely available online by the British Library

Wild at Heart: Romanticism in Switzerland

The Eiger at Sunrise (1844), Alexandre Calame

This exhibition at Kunsthaus Zürich highlights the influence of the Swiss landscape on Romantic painting

Curiosity about the cat – who drew a giant feline on a hillside in Peru?

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The discovery of the figure of a feline on a hillside in Nazca, Peru, was announced by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture on 15 October, 2010.

The exciting recent discovery of a geoglyph in the Nazca desert poses many puzzles

Rats’ nests and recusant history at Oxburgh Hall

View of the gatehouse and west front of Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk.

Restoration work at the Norfolk house has uncovered fascinating evidence of its past as a Catholic stronghold – in part preserved by nesting rodents

Ottolenghi’s French fancies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Image courtesy IFC Films

A film about the Versailles-inspired desserts the chef makes for an event at the museum is a visual treat – albeit one with a bitter aftertaste

Exhibition of the Year

Artemisia National Gallery, London 3 October–24 January 2021 This display under Letizia Treves’s expert curation gathered 30 works firmly attributed…

Digital Innovation of the Year

Art is where the home is Begun in response to Covid-19, ‘Art is where the home is’ was set up…

Book of the Year

The Age of Undress: Art, Fashion and the Classical Ideal in the 1790s Amelia Rauser Yale University Press This thought-provoking…

Museum Opening of the Year

Aberdeen Art Gallery Reopened November 2019 A renovation and expansion costing £34.6m almost doubled the number of permanent galleries (to…