Apollo

‘I was storing crates in my dining room’ – on launching a gallery during lockdown

Niru Ratnam in his new gallery.

Setting a brave example wasn’t what Niru Ratnam had in mind when he forged ahead with plans to open his new business during the pandemic

Morel compass – John Cage’s mania for mushrooms

John Cage foraging in Grenoble, France, in 1971.

For the avant-garde composer, mushroom-foraging was closely linked to his ideas about sound and spontaneity

Bible belters – in praise of Murillo’s Prodigal Son paintings

The Return of the Prodigal Son (detail; 1660s), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

The six paintings have long languished in relative obscurity. Restored and on view in Dublin, they are finally getting their due

Private enterprise – the individuals who are taking restitution into their own hands

Visitors to the Petit Musée de la Récade inside the Centre for Arts and Culture in Cotonou, Benin, on 17 January 2020.

While museums deliberate about returning objects that were taken from their places of origin without consent, it is easier for individuals to act

Dressing for a pandemic, Picasso-style

Pablo Picasso at his home and studio in Mougins, south of France, on October 13, 1971. Photo: Ralph Gatti/AFP via Getty Images

The future of fashion may not be the most pressing concern but it’s hard not to fear the worst

The week in art news – National Trust considering up to 1,200 redundancies

Photo: Naomi Baker/Getty Images

Plus: the House of Representatives has approved the National Museum for the American Latino, murals by Picasso have been removed from a building in Oslo, and more art news

‘For more than a thousand years this area has been the burial place of the great and the good of Cairo’

After the bulldozers – in the Cairo Necropolis on 21 July 2020. Photo: © Alia Nassar

A short-sighted view of what counts as cultural heritage has led to the bulldozing of family tombs in the city’s oldest burial site

Toulouse-Lautrec and the Celebrity Culture of Paris

At the Moulin Rouge (1892-95) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

This exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago brings to life the bohemian world of fin-de-siècle Montmartre

Berlin Works from Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas

Laocoön and his sons being attacked by serpents (16th century), Marco Dente.

The unfinished magnum opus featured a number of works held in Berlin’s state museums – now on display at the Gemäldegalerie

Denzil Forrester: Itchin & Scratchin

Brixton Blue (2018), Denzil Forrester.

Nottingham Contemporary reopens with energetic dance-floor scenes from the Grenada-born artist

Bill Brandt/Henry Moore

Henry Moore (1948), Bill Brandt

An exhibition at Hepworth Wakefield traces the intersecting paths of the photographer and the sculptor

‘An unparalleled talent’ – a tribute to Delphine Levy (1969–2020)

Delphine Levy, in the garden of the Petit Palais.

The founding director of Paris Musées worked indefatigably to serve her ideal of culture as a public good

Status anxiety – the battle over culture in Bolivia

Artists on a march to demand the restitution of the Ministry of Culture on June 15, 2020 in La Paz, Bolivia. Photo by Aizar Raldes/AFP via Getty Images

The sacking of two museum directors and the axing of the ministry for culture is part of a wider struggle about who and what culture is for

Celtic revival? Recording Ireland’s historic buildings

The remains of a late medieval church in Garryvoe , Co Cork.

Would that the Buildings of Ireland series could be completed – the architectural riches of Central Leinster and Cork are well served by two new volumes

Losing face – iconoclasm in ancient Rome

The Severan Tondo, c. 200AD, Altes Museum, Berlin.

The importance of public statuary and portraiture for the Romans is no better demonstrated than in the way images of personae non gratae were destroyed, disfigured or re-carved

Photo realism – an interview with Alfredo Jaar

Alfredo Jaar photographed next to his installation ‘The Sound of Silence’ (2006) at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in October 2017. Photo by Jonty Wilde

The Chilean-born artist talks about his ambivalent attitude towards photography and his utopian feelings about art

The week in art news – arson suspected in Nantes Cathedral fire

Firefighters at Nantes Cathedral on 18 July 2020. Photo: Sebastien Salom-Gomis/AFP via Getty Images

Plus: Gavin Brown is shutting down his gallery, and the rest of the week’s art news

Goya for gastronomes – and Donald Trump

The Trumps have a soft spot for Goya Foods, it seems – which sets Rakewell wondering whether the brand could make more of its painterly associations

Dóra Maurer

Overlappings 38 (2007), Dòra Maurer.

The Tate Modern is hosting the largest UK survey to date of this Hungarian conceptual artist

Marie Cuttoli: The Modern Thread from Miró to Man Ray

Marie Cuttoli (1936), Le Corbusier, woven in Aubusson.

The Barnes Foundation explores the career of the entrepreneur who modernised French tapestry-making

Illusions: The Art of Magic

Comedians de Mephisto Co. Allied with Le Roy-Talma-Bosco (detail; 1905), Adolph Friedländer.

How magicians from Kellar to Houdini wowed their audience and built their brand – a display at the Art Gallery of Ontario

20 Dances: Japanese Calligraphy Then and Now

Words Concerned with Existence (detail; 1984), Suda Kokuta

Exploring the history of East Asia’s highest form of art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art

When video art meets the music video

Birds in Paradise (detail of video still; 2019), Jacolby Satterwhite.

Black artists such as Jacolby Satterwhite and Arthur Jafa have made the most of the freedom – and mass audience – music videos can offer

‘Her photographs appear as an eloquent reminder to passers-by of a life cut short’

Khadija Saye was among the 72 people who died in the fire at Grenfell in 2017. A series of self-portraits she made that year is currently on display near the tower