Features

View of the Grand Gallery at the National Museum of Scotland.

A new era at the National Museum of Scotland

The last phase of the museum’s makeover gives its Egyptian, East Asian and ceramic collections a chance to shine

14 Feb 2019
View of London from Greenwich (1825), Joseph Mallord William Turner. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A window on the world in watercolour

A new online database reveals how before photography, watercolours were used as visual records

12 Feb 2019
Typewriter Eraser, Scale X (1999) by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, installed at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach.

Typing tools, tropical trees and a whole lot of sunshine – the new Norton Museum of Art

Norman Foster’s expansion of the museum in West Palm Beach has been unveiled – and the institution’s new look is enticingly offbeat

8 Feb 2019

Inside Turin’s Museum of Fruit

A 19th-century artist spent decades creating this remarkable pomological collection

6 Feb 2019
St John the Baptist Preaching (detail; 1627), Pieter Lastman.

Acquisitions of the Month: January 2019

A medieval book coffer and a painting by Rembrandt’s teacher are among the top recent museum acquisitions

4 Feb 2019
Meleager, c. 1490, 'Antico'. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The untold story of museums and the art market

The Bowes Museum looks at how art dealers have shaped museum collections

28 Jan 2019
Left: Seated figure (late 13th–14th century), possibly Ife, Tada, Nigeria. Right: Virgin and Child (c. 1275–1300), France.

Assembling the fragments of Africa’s medieval past

Rarely exhibited objects from Saharan Africa, viewed alongside familiar European works, offer a fresh take on the Middle Ages

Inside Koen Vanmechelen’s LABIOMISTA in Genk, Belgium

The madcap menagerie of Koen Vanmechelen

With his ambitious new public project in Genk, the Belgian artist fuses art, activism and animal husbandry

21 Jan 2019
Variation on a Lighthouse Theme II (detail; c. 1931–32), Ida Ten Eyck O’Keeffe

Piecing together the untold story of Ida O’Keeffe

An exhibition in Dallas places the spotlight on the life and art of Georgia O’Keeffe’s younger sister

16 Jan 2019
Progress (The Advance of Civilization) (1853), Asher B. Durand. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Acquisitions of the month: December 2018

A Midwestern epic painting and minimalist marvels were among the top works to enter museum collections last month

11 Jan 2019
Figure (19th–20th century), Togo/Ewe or Fon (river Mono?).

Beyond the blockbusters – five more shows to catch in 2019

Highlights include a celebration of Cosimo de’ Medici at the Uffizi and ceramics from Africa at the Design Museum in Munich

11 Jan 2019

Where next for virtual reality art?

Some seem beguiled by VR technology but others are using it to confront our faith in digital progress

4 Jan 2019
Man in Oriental Dress, (1635), Rembrandt van Rijn, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The major art anniversaries to look out for in 2019

From Leonardo to the Prado, and from the Bauhaus to the birth of John Ruskin, 2019 is full of significant anniversaries

2 Jan 2019

Arty films and books to watch out for in 2019

From a Van Gogh biopic to a novel about Lee Miller, the books and films with an art-historical twist coming up in the next few months

1 Jan 2019
'The Golden Tower' project by James Lee Byars, part of the collateral events at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, Photo: © Awakening/Getty Images

Biennials not to miss in 2019

Venice, the oldest and biggest biennale of all, returns in 2019, but there’s a plethora of other events to look forward to

29 Dec 2018
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles construction site in November 2018.

Bridges, skyscrapers and conservation battles – the year ahead in architecture

The major architectural events to look out for in 2019, from museums in Hollywood and Qatar to office buildings in London

28 Dec 2018
The Shed under construction, as seen from the High Line, October 2018.

The museum openings not to miss in 2019

The National Museum of Qatar and a centre for street art are among the institutions opening next year

27 Dec 2018
The upper stair hall at the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

Sweden’s greatest museum comes into its own

The Nationalmuseum in Stockholm has a world-class collection and an international outlook to match

24 Dec 2018
Caresses (detail; 1896), Fernand Khnopff. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Photo: J. Geleyns Art Photography

Modern art, with a Belgian flavour

Fernand Khnopff was among the most original artists of the fin-de-siècle – but his dreamlike images are unmistakably Belgian

22 Dec 2018
Still from BRIDGIT (2016), Charlotte Prodger, courtesy the artist, Koppe Astner, Glasgow and Hollybush Gardens

How political is political art?

Many artists take themes such as migration, climate change, and human rights as their subjects, but what are they actually doing with them?

8 Dec 2018
View across Lake Seeberg to the Muntigalm (1778), Caspar Wolf.

Acquisitions of the Month: November 2018

A major collection of Swiss art and an early Dutch genre painting are among this month’s top acquisitions

7 Dec 2018
Photograph of Robert Morris; date and photographer unknown.

A tribute to Robert Morris (1931–2018)

The artist is remembered as a pioneer of Minimalism, but his legacy as an experimental performer is equally powerful

5 Dec 2018
Untitled (Igbo Landing) (group of figures from series; 2018), Gerald Chukwuma. Gallery 1957, Accra

‘Art X Lagos is more like an arts festival than your average art fair’

The liveliness of the international art fair shows that the Nigerian arts scene is going from strength to strength

29 Nov 2018
The Cast Courts at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, photographed in the late 19th century.

‘Shouldn’t David be in Florence?’ – on the Cast Courts at the V&A

The museum’s gallery of historic plaster casts – newly restored – has long inspired conflicting responses

27 Nov 2018