The Art Exhibitions Blog

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...

Sussex: home to probably the most enticing landscapes in south-east England in the shape of the South Downs and, most spectacularly, the cliffs of the Seven Sisters and Beachy Head, together with large swathes of scarcely populated, thickly wooded countryside.   The weather's been a bit inclement recently, but if you head down to the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester for  Sussex Landscape: Chalk, Wood and Water , you can wander through the entire county without getting your boots dirty and appreciate why it's attracted artists for centuries. From JMW Turner and John Constable through to Eric Ravilious and Paul Nash and contemporary artists, there's much to enjoy in a glorious exhibition that's as invigorating as a good walk.  As you set off, you can get your bearings from a 1795 map at the entrance to the exhibition, showing what the county was like before the railways came and opened up access from London. Brighton -- or Brighthelmstone as it was then called -- is...