Exhibitions
Unesco are idiots
Of all the moronic decisions made by cultural organisations over the past 50 years, probably the most insulting and retrograde…
The best artist alive? Probably
Taking place every October in Regent’s Park, the Frieze fair is probably the biggest event in London’s art calendar. It…
The staggering beauty of Fra Angelico
In 1982, Pope John Paul II surprised a few people by beatifying Fra Angelico, the 15th-century Dominican friar from near…
A remarkable insight into Le Carré’s working methods
When Richard Ovenden of the Bodleian Library wrote to John le Carré asking if the writer would leave it his…
This museum is a lesson for all curators
The National Railway Museum is 50 years old, and it’s come over all literary. A quote from Howards End stands…
The best Turner Prize in years
So, the Turner Prize: where do we start? It’s Britain’s most prestigious art award, one that used to mean something…
Magnificent: V&A’s Marie Antoinette Style reviewed
This exhibition will be busy. You’ll shuffle behind fellow pilgrims. But it’ll be worthwhile. It’s a tour de force that…
Sondheim understood Seurat better than the National Gallery
In Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim catches something of what makes Georges Seurat so brilliant – not…
Dartmoor’s forgotten painter
Asolo exhibition opened at Oxford’s Ashmolean in October 1980 that appeared to mark the belated arrival of a major new…
I’ve had it with Anselm Kiefer
August is always a crap month for exhibitions in London. The collectors are elsewhere, the dealers are presumably hot on…
Modest, interesting – no masterpieces: Millet at the National Gallery reviewed
Jean-François Millet (1814-75). One Room. 14 items. Eight paintings. Six drawings and sketches. Modest, interesting. No masterpieces. The show appeals…
Wittily wild visions: Abstract Erotic, at the Courtauld, reviewed
If you came to this show accidentally, or as a layperson, it could confirm any prejudices you might have about…
The masterpieces of Sussex’s radical Christian commune
Ditchling in East Sussex is a small, picturesque village with all the trappings: medieval church, half-timbered house, tea shops, a…
Beguiling grot, TfL surrealism and Insta-art: contemporary art roundup
Last month, I got the train down to Margate to interview the Egyptian-Armenian artist Anna Boghiguian (b. 1946), whose exhibition…
Grayson Perry has pulled off another coup at the Wallace Collection
This show was largely panned in the papers when it opened in April, with critics calling it ‘awkward and snarky’,…
The greatest decade for British painting since Turner and Constable? The 1970s
Slowly the canvas was unfurled across the concrete floor of a warehouse on an industrial estate in Suffolk. On and…
The architects redesigning death
Unesco doesn’t hand out world-heritage status to absences, but if it did, there would be memorials all over the western…
London’s best contemporary art show is in Penge
If you’ve been reading the more excitable pages of the arts press lately, you might be aware that the London…
The cheering fantasies of Oliver Messel
Through the grey downbeat years of postwar austerity, we nursed cheering fantasies of a life more lavishly colourful and hedonistic.…
How do you exhibit living deities?
The most-watched TV programme in human history isn’t the Moon landings, and it isn’t M*A*S*H; chances are it’s Ramayan, a…
Why you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Cecil Beaton
‘Remember, Roy, white flowers are the only chic ones.’ So Cecil Beaton remarked to Roy Strong, possibly as a mild…
V&A’s new museum is a defiant stand against the vandals
In last week’s Spectator, Richard Morris lamented museum collections languishing in storage, pleading to ‘get these works out’. There’s an…
Fascinating royal clutter: The Edwardians, at The King’s Gallery, reviewed
The Royal Collection Trust has had a rummage in the attic and produced a fascinating show. Displayed in the palatial…
Architecture has hit a nadir at the Venice Biennale
Much of Venice’s Giardini this year was as boarded up as a British high street. The Israeli pavilion was empty,…
Decent redesign, ravishing rehang: the new-look National Gallery reviewed
A little under a year ago, it emerged that builders working on the redevelopment of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing…
