It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience: the chance to see one of the greatest -- and most fragile -- works of European art before your very eyes. The illustrated manuscript known as the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry contains images that have shaped our view of the late Middle Ages, but it's normally kept under lock and key at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris. It's only been exhibited twice in the past century. Now newly restored, the glowing pages of Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry are on show to the public for just a few months. "Approche, approche," the Duke of Berry's usher tells the visitors to the great man's table for the feast that will mark the start of the New Year. It's also your invitation to examine closely the illustration for January, one of the 12 months from the calendar in this Book of Hours -- a collection of prayers and other religious texts -- that form the centrepiece of this exhibition in Chantilly. It's su...
Is there a more spectacular exhibition on in London at the moment than Dale Chihuly's breathtaking blown-glass creations at Kew Gardens? We doubt it. For Chihuly: Reflections on Nature , more than 30 works have been installed in the grounds and glasshouses at Kew, and the result is, for the most part, absolutely stunning. Summer Sun stands outside Kew's Palm House overlooking the lake, a huge and dazzling fire of red and orange flame that seems to writhe with its own inner life. And just inside the main gate, Sapphire Star , a shimmering modern explosion of blue and white, set in a landscape that evokes classical English parkland, recalls a globe thistle, Echinops ritro Veitch's Blue , to be precise, for the green-fingered among you. It's Kew's Temperate House, the world's largest Victorian glasshouse and a marvel of design and engineering, which reopened last year after a five-year renovation, that's the focus for much of the action, or should w...