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...
The big new show in London this month is Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance at the Victoria & Albert Museum, starting on February 11. Donatello created a revolution in sculpture in 15th-century Florence, and this show, with some 130 objects, includes much work that has never been seen in the UK before. It's the last in a series of interlinked exhibitions following shows in Florence and Berlin that were highly praised. On until June 11. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford takes us to ancient Crete beginning on February 10 for Labyrinth: Knossos, Myth & Reality . The palace of Knossos was the centre of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization, and legend had it that an enormous labyrinth was built there to hold the Minotaur, a creature half-man, half-bull. This exhibition includes more than 100 objects that have never left Greece before as well as two immersive experiences. It runs until July 30. Curiously, the new show at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is also about the a...