The V&A hopes its new branch in east London is an answer to how to get younger, more diverse audiences through the door. But can such efforts survive in a changing political landscape?
From her shoe hat to her skeleton dress, the couturier’s playful creations show why she felt so at home with the avant-garde artists of her day
Caravaggio’s portrait of a future Pope and a mannerist painting for the Met are among the most important works to have entered public collections recently
Lina Bo Bardi’s original MASP museum building is a masterpiece and a cleverly conceived new extension leaves it free to operate as originally intended
The name Eames is synonymous with the famous lounge chair they designed, but they were also interested in the big questions about how to build and how to live
The Shiraz grape is native to France, but it has longstanding links with Persian courtly life and culture
A former slaughterhouse is home to the city’s newest museum and it’s just the first step in creating a new cultural district
The city has been rebuilding the Residenzschloss, home of its one-time ruler Augustus the Strong, since the Second World War – and the results are worth the wait
Established in 1852 by three brothers, the Alinari firm produced many of the oldest photographs of Italy and have left behind a vast archive in Florence
The painter’s townscape of the Dominican church in Vienna shows why he more than lived up to the reputation of his uncle Canaletto
For Benjamin Markovits, a Cornish scene by Michael Canney hits the sweet spot between figuration and abstraction
Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s classic can sometimes be a byword for whimsy, but its use of CGI was far ahead of its time
After soaking up influences in Norway and France, the Estonian painter brought his own form of modernism back home
A Norman Rockwell baseball scene and a rare pendant linked to Henry VIII are among the most important works to enter public collections recently
Dorich House, the home and studio of the sculptor Dora Gordine, is a reminder of when Britain played host to the avant-garde
Jon Pountney’s photographs of the South Wales Valleys are no lament for a lost industrial past, but a vivid record of an area that keeps adapting to and even defying a changing reality
The painter was one of the most successful portraitists in Europe and should be regarded as the father of the English school of painting. So why has his reputation suffered over the years?
At Loewe’s Fall/Winter 2026 show, a soft-toy menagerie by the German artist Cosima von Bonin added a playful touch
In Jewish tradition, Torah scrolls are often embellished with ornaments. Rarely are they as elaborate as this jewel-encrusted crown, a highlight of the V&A’s reopened Gilbert Galleries
Sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s rebounded impressively, even as the situation in the Middle East worsened
From sensitive portraits by Peter Hujar to Old Master paintings depicting beauty and ugliness, there’s so much to see within a day’s trip from the Maastricht fair
Two unrelated cases in the 1990s show how hard it was to recover stolen artefacts – and even to know that they had gone missing in the first place
The Romanian sculptor expressed his creativity and identity through food just as much as art
Edward Hicks made 62 versions of the same scene of worldly harmony – but they were tinged with personal tragedy too
