Exhibitions

A showstopper is at the heart of this winning show: Dulwich Gallery's Reframed – The Woman in the Window reviewed

23 July 2022 9:00 am

Themed exhibitions pegged to particular pictures in museum collections tend to be more interesting to the museum’s curators than to…

At her best when lightly ruffling the surfaces of things: Cornelia Parker, at Tate Britain, reviewed

9 July 2022 9:00 am

Cornelia Parker wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but when she was growing up her German godparents…

The women’s lips are pursed; the men’s are kissable: Glyn Philpot at Pallant House reviewed

25 June 2022 9:00 am

Of all the photos of artists in the studio, the one of Glyn Philpot being served a martini by his…

Nobody paints the sea like Emile Nolde

11 June 2022 9:00 am

In April, ten years after opening its gallery on the beach in Hastings, the Jerwood Foundation gifted the building to…

A mess: British Museum's Feminine Power – the Divine to the Demonic reviewed

4 June 2022 9:00 am

The point at which the heart sinks in this exhibition is, unfortunately, right at the outset. That’s where we meet…

A brief introduction to Scottish art

28 May 2022 9:00 am

When Nikolaus Pevsner dedicated his 1955 Reith Lectures to ‘The Englishness of English Art’, he left out the Scots. The…

The jewel-bright, mesmerisingly detailed pictures by Raqib Shaw are a revelation

21 May 2022 9:00 am

Describing the Venice Biennale, like pinning down the city itself, is a practical impossibility. There is just too much of…

Fascinating exhibitions – clunky editorialising: Breaking the News at the British Library reviewed

7 May 2022 9:00 am

In The Spectator office’s toilets there are framed front covers of the events that didn’t happen: Corbyn beats Boris; ‘Here’s…

Evocative tribute to the orphaned caped crusader: Superheroes, Orphans & Origins at the Foundling Museum reviewed

30 April 2022 9:00 am

Instead of wasting money, like other museums, on extravagant architectural statements, the Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square has sensibly chosen…

The exquisite pottery of Richard Batterham

23 April 2022 9:00 am

Richard Batterham died last September at the age of 85. He had worked in his pottery in the village of…

Exquisite and deranged: two glass exhibitions reviewed

16 April 2022 9:00 am

A ‘Ghost Shop’ has appeared between Domino’s Pizza and Shoe Zone on Sunderland High Street. Look through the laminated window…

It’s a miracle this exhibition even exists: Audubon’s Birds of America reviewed

9 April 2022 9:00 am

In 2014, an exhibition of watercolours by the renowned avian artist, John James Audubon, opened in New York. The reviews,…

Fails to dispel the biggest myth of all: Whitechapel Gallery's A Century of the Artist’s Studio reviewed

26 March 2022 9:00 am

Picture the artist’s studio: if what comes to mind is the romantic image of a male painter at his easel…

Valuable reassessment of British art: Barbican's Postwar Modern reviewed

19 March 2022 9:00 am

Notoriously, the past is another country: what’s more, it’s a terrain for which the guidebooks need constantly to be rewritten.…

Renaissance radical: Carlo Crivelli – Shadows on the Sky at Ikon Gallery reviewed

12 March 2022 9:00 am

‘Camp,’ wrote Susan Sontag, ‘is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l’oeil insects and cracks in…

Beautiful and revealing: The Three Pietàs of Michelangelo, at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, reviewed

5 March 2022 9:00 am

The room is immersed in semi-darkness. Light filters down from above, glistening on polished marble as if it were flesh.…

How good is he? Pissarro: Father of Impressionism, at the Ashmolean Museum, reviewed

26 February 2022 9:00 am

Two markers: ‘Cottages at Auvers-sur-Oise’ (c.1873) is a sweet especial rural scene of faintly slovenly thatched cottages with, at its…

Part-gothic horror, part-Acorn Antiques: Louise Bourgeois, at the Hayward Gallery, reviewed

19 February 2022 9:00 am

Louise Bourgeois was 62 and recently widowed when she first used soft materials in her installation ‘The Destruction of the…

Astonishing and gripping: Van Gogh's Self Portraits at the Courtauld reviewed

12 February 2022 9:00 am

In September 1889, Vincent van Gogh sent his brother Theo a new self-portrait from the mental hospital at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. ‘You…

The fascination of house fronts: Where We Live at Millennium Gallery reviewed

5 February 2022 9:00 am

Paintings of houses go back a long way in British art: the earliest landscape in Tate Britain is a late…

An ouroboros of vacuity that is immune to its own failure: Kaws online at the Serpentine Gallery

29 January 2022 9:00 am

The second most interesting thing about this digital exhibition is that it is not for art critics like me. I…

Ethereal and allusive, all nuance and no schmaltz: Helen Frankenthaler, at Dulwich Gallery, reviewed

15 January 2022 9:00 am

In 1950 the 21-year-old painter Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, went to an exhibition at New York’s Betty Parson’s…

A show of ample and eerie majesty: British Museum's Peru: A Journey in Time reviewed

11 December 2021 9:00 am

Growing up on a farm outside Lima, I was aware that indigenous Peruvians did not understand time in the same…

Ignore the wall text and focus on the magnificent paintings: Tate Britain's Hogarth and Europe reviewed

4 December 2021 9:00 am

There are, perhaps, two types of exhibition visitor. Those who read the texts on the walls and those who don’t.…

His final paintings are like Jackson Pollocks: RA's Late Constable reviewed

27 November 2021 9:00 am

On 13 July 1815, John Constable wrote to his fiancée, Maria Bicknell, about this and that. Interspersed with a discussion…