Apollo

Blain Southern closes all three galleries in London, New York and Berlin

Blain Southern at 4 Hanover Square in London.

Art news daily: 13 February

Frayed histories – unravelling the stories behind seven women’s textile collections

Phulkari (early 20th century), unknown maker. Bradford Museums and Galleries

An exhibition on the textile collections of women from the 19th century to the present day tells us as much about their own lives as about the objects themselves

Sheer delight – at the State Silk Museum in Tbilisi

A cardboard presentation case for storing silkworm eggs. State Silk Museum, Tbilisi. Photo: Guram Kapanadze

The world’s most significant collection of silkworm cocoons, and many other marvels of sericulture, can be found in the capital of Georgia

Sonia Boyce to represent UK at 59th Venice Biennale in 2021

Sonia Boyce.

Art news daily: 12 February

Bonhams chief executive Matthew Girling steps down

Courtesy Bonhams

Art news daily: 11 January

A Viking-inspired frieze by Walter Crane finds a new home in Rouen

The Skeleton in Armor (detail; 1883), Walter Crane. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen

The Musée des Beaux-Arts in the capital of Normandy, where the Vikings once ruled, is the perfect place for this painting of a wandering warrior

Climate activists stage three-day protest against BP sponsorship at British Museum

Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Art news daily: 10 February

When Kirk Douglas played Van Gogh

Kirk Douglas (1916–2020) as Van Gogh in Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life (1956).

A celebration of the late actor’s star turn as the tormented artist in Vincente Minnelli’s biopic of 1956

Sex Education meets art history

On the left is Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit. On the right is Sex Education’s Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield)

The students of Moordale High have been reimagined as a cast of painted saints and sinners

‘It’s very meaningful to have an Asian art museum in this city’

The Seattle Asian Art Museum, designed by Carl F. Gould, which opened in 1933 as the home of the Seattle Art Museum

The Seattle Asian Art Museum reopens with a thorough overhaul of its displays – and a commitment to being open about uncomfortable recent histories

Art Basel cancels Hong Kong fair due to coronavirus outbreak

Art Basel in Hong Kong in 2019.

Art news daily: 7 February

The Mesopotamian city that can claim to be the cradle of civilisation

Reclining cow, Jemdet Nasr period, 3300–3000 BC, Uruk, Iraq. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Photo: Olaf M. Tessmer; © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museen

Uruk may not be as well known as Babylon or Ninevah, but layers of complex, urban life have been uncovered there over the course of the 20th century

Beverly Pepper (1922–2020)

Photo: © Beverly Pepper, courtesy of Marlborough, New York and London

Art news daily: 6 February

Fertile ground – ‘Portraying Pregnancy’ at the Foundling Museum, reviewed

Textile panel depicting the Visitation (early 17th century), unknown English maker. © Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

A visual history of hundreds of years of veneration, satire, or the breaking of taboos moves from the Virgin Mary to Demi Moore

The great dictator – William Feaver’s biography of Lucian Freud, reviewed

Cover 'The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth' by William Feaver

The painter exerts the force of his personality from beyond the grave in the first part of this unconventional biography

Naked positions – Mary Beard’s Shock of the Nude, reviewed

Mary Beard at Crawford Art Gallery, Cork.

The BBC programme takes a playful look at changing attitudes to nudity in art – from Michelangelo’s David to modern life drawing

Draft executive order could require federal buildings to be classical in style

Art news daily: 5 February

‘If James Wines’ greatest works were still around, they would be Instagram sensations’

Installation view of ‘Ghost Parking Lot’ (completed in 1978) at the National Shopping Center in Hamden, Connecticut, by James Wines & SITE. © SITE New York

Perhaps it’s time to catch up with the sculptor-turned-architect who has always been ahead of the pack

Bulgarian billionaire’s antiquities collection seized by authorities

A silver rhyton depicting the death of Orpheus (c. 420–410 BC), from the Vassil Bojkov Collection, Sofia.

Art news daily: 4 February

How Charlotte Salomon turned her dark family history into a masterpiece of 20th-century art

No. 521 from Leben? oder Theater?, (1941–42), Charlotte Salomon. Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam.

‘Leben? oder Theater?’ is a totally unique work of art, produced in extreme circumstances

How the only portrait Beethoven posed for in his lifetime became a much coveted memento

Beethoven with the manuscript for Missa Solemnis (detail; 1820), Joseph Karl Stieler.

For the past two centuries, Joseph Karl Stieler’s portrait of the composer has been highly sought after by music lovers

Martine Gosselink appointed general director of the Mauritshuis

Martine Gosselink.

Art news daily: 3 February

Acquisitions of the Month: January 2020

The Trumpeters (c. 1735–40), Nainsukh of Guler.

A masterpiece of Pahari painting and a pot adorned with poetry are among this month’s highlights

‘For Goya, the normal, the terrible, and the fantastical existed cheek by jowl’

I Am Still Learning (detail; 1824–28), Francisco de Goya. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

A gathering of some 300 drawings at the Prado is a comprehensive guide to life in the artist’s cruel and chaotic world