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Showing posts from May, 2018

New Exhibitions in July

It's not opening until September 10, but tickets to see The Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum go on sale at 1000 on July 1, so if you want to see it this year you'll probably need to get in early. Follow the link for details. Booking for the rest of the run, from January 1 through to July 11, 2027, will open later in 2026. If you've never seen this most astounding of historical artefacts in its natural habitat in Normandy, you'll want to seize the chance in London.  But what about this month? Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793-1865) is regarded as one of Austria's finest 19th-century painters, and there's a free single-room show devoted to his views of the Alps, Vienna and Sicily from July 2 at the National Gallery. Waldmüller: Landscapes  is on till September 20.  Richard Dadd (1817-1886) was already known as a successful painter of Shakespearean fairy scenes before he began experiencing delusions, leading him to kill his father. Confined to Bethlem and Broa...

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Opening in June

The Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition  this year is a little bit special: It's the 250th, and Grayson Perry heads the committee that's picked the 1,200 or so art works on show from June 12 to August 19. Concurrently, the RA is putting on The Great Spectacle: 250 Years of the Summer Exhibition telling the story from Joshua Reynolds to the present day. There are two linked shows at the National Gallery as well, running from June 11 to October 7. Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire  is the first exhibition in the UK devoted to the British-born American landscape artist inspired by Turner and Constable (tickets can be had for less than £10 on weekdays, so the National is clearly not expecting Monet-size crowds.) At the same time, there's a free display with Ed Ruscha 's modern take on Thomas Cole's work in Room 1. Tate Britain marks the centenary of the end of World War I by examining the immediate impact on British, French and German art.  Aftermath , running from ...

Monet -- Battle the Crowds to Get to Rouen Cathedral

There's no getting away from it: Monet & Architecture at London's National Gallery is a crowded exhibition. The first couple of rooms in particular are a bit of a slog as you try to manoeuvre your way along what is essentially a queue of people looking at the earliest (and to be honest, largely least interesting) of the 70-odd works. But stick with it: You'll eventually come to Rouen Cathedral and to Venice, and thankfully, and rather surprisingly, there's less of a crush to view the momentous art capturing gradations of light and weather on magnificent buildings that you've probably really come to see. It's often a bit of a problem with the National Gallery's subterranean Sainsbury Wing exhibition space: Some of the rooms are quite small, and here they're fairly densely hung, at least initially. This show, the gallery says, presents a new way of looking at Monet's art, demonstrating how he used architecture to create his compositions. It ma...