Features
Acquisitions of the Month: April 2023
The joint acquisition of Joshua Reynolds’s ‘Portrait of Mai (Omai)’ by the National Portrait Gallery and the J. Paul Getty Museum has been confirmed
The creative curating of Walter Hopps
The Menil Collection in Houston looks at the groundbreaking work of a curator who brought a new generation of American artists into museums
What Handel liked to hang on his walls
Three hundred years after the composer moved into his London townhouse, what does the art collection he amassed there tell us about his music?
The unnerving appeal of wax figures
From votive offerings to anatomical models, wax is the perfect material for blurring the boundaries between art and life
The modern potter who was devoted to Delft
When Simon Pettet moved into Dennis Severs’ House in Spitalfields he began to channel the 18th century in the 1980s
‘Sydney Modern must be given time to evolve’
The Art Gallery of New South Wales’s extension is too populist and commercially minded for some – but it is full of possibilities
The family vineyard where art grows between the vines
Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s sculpture garden in Piedmont is also home to the family rosé
Unhappy medium – the pensive watercolours of Richard Foster Yarde
The American artist’s melancholy approach is part of a much punchier tradition says Elisa Germán, co-curator of a show at Harvard Art Museums
What’s the point of studying fine art?
Enrolment in the humanities is tumbling across the United States, but the numbers for fine art are still holding up
Newcastle’s Side Gallery is too important to stay closed
The gallery founded by the Amber Collective is a champion of documentary photography, strongly rooted in the local area, and deserves all the support it can get
Finnish lines – a new look for the Ateneum in Helsinki
Finland’s most important art museum has been completely rehung just as questions of culture and national identity are on everyone’s mind
Could Gilbert & George keep going forever?
The self-styled ‘living sculptures’ have long been an east London fixture – and they’ve just opened a new centre in a bid to stick around even after they’re gone
Acquisitions of the Month: March 2023
A rare 17th-century gold ruby glass goblet and original designs by Augustus Pugin are among this month’s highlights
In Lausanne, a lively new museum district has finally arrived
The Plateforme 10 project has brought the city’s fine arts, design and photo museums together on the site of a former train yard
Supper in the City at the Barbican Brasserie
The arts centre’s new restaurant is not exactly a feast for the eyes, but the food more than makes up for it
James Joyce walks into a bar in Zurich
At the Kronenhalle in Zurich, the writer was most likely to ask for Fendant de Sion, a wine that deserves to be much better known abroad
Fine carpets from Asia are definitely back in fashion
After a spell in the doldrums, prices for magnificent carpets from across the continent are starting to soar again
The cosmic visions of Hilma af Klint
The Swedish artist is now fêted as a pioneer of abstract art, but her spiritual inclinations are what really resonate today
The Tower of Babel now owes more to Bruegel than the Bible
When we think of the biblical folly, it’s Pieter Breugel the Elder’s painting that first comes to mind – but artists and writers are still reimagining it today
The restless side of Felix Vallotton’s sleeping woman
At the MAH in Geneva, the artist Ugo Rondinone has rehung Le Sommeil to bring its livelier side to the fore, explains curator Samuel Gross
Smooth operator – the seductive sculptures of Antonio Canova
The sculptor was regarded as too sensual by classicists and too cold by Romantics, but a more superficial look at his work suggests what he was really up to
Alfred Russel Wallace’s botanical sketches are a natural wonder
The naturalist sketched his discoveries with unmatched dedication, but was unlucky to lose so many of the original specimens at sea
Acquisitions of the Month: February 2023
David Bowie’s archive and the first clutch of NFTs to be acquired by a French museum are among this month’s highlights
What the art world gets wrong about craft
The growing tendency to fold 20th-century makers into the history of modern art often ignores what was truly innovative about their work
What happens when an artist wants to be anonymous?