The Art Exhibitions Blog

Of course you'll want to see Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: It's absolutely stunning. But if you haven't been fortunate enough to secure a ticket yet, you may very well be disappointed. Even though it's on till early June and open late three evenings a week, it's absolutely sold out, though the museum is planning to make another announcement on Monday March 6 (set an alert on your phone) on how they'll make more tickets available.  This is truly an exceptional exhibition. Of the 37 paintings now attributed to Johannes Vermeer, the Rijksmuseum has assembled 28 (though there still seems to be an argument about whether a couple of them are truly by him). And although we've seen almost all of these pictures before, many of them on numerous occasions, it's a huge thrill to view them all together in one place. And we thought we'd done well to catch 23 Vermeers together at the Mauritshuis in The Hague in 1996.  So this truly is one of those bloc...

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...

What are the highlights of the exhibition calendar in Europe in 2023? How about the biggest Vermeer show ever? A Frans Hals blockbuster? Or a couple of exhibitions to mark the 250th birthday (in 2024) of the great German Romantic, Caspar David Friedrich? There's quite a bit of Klimt and Van Gogh, too. Here are some of our picks for the year ahead, in more or less chronological order.  January Opening the year at London's Royal Academy is the opportunity to experience some of the highlights of the most extensive collection of Spanish art outside Spain, from the Hispanic Society of America in New York. On show will be paintings by El Greco, Velázquez and Goya, as well as Joaquín Sorolla , along with much else besides.  Spain and the Hispanic World: Treasures from the Hispanic Society Museum & Library runs from January 21 to April 10.  There's a new venue opening in London on January 25: The Lightroom in King's Cross, and until April 23 it's showing David Hockney...

It's not easy being an international celebrity; you need a thick skin. Luckily, Clara was a rhinoceros.  But even though she was feted as she toured Europe, Clara lived a lonely life. Her mother was killed when she was captured by hunters in Assam at the age of just one month in 1738. For the next 20 years until her death, she never saw another rhino. She can't actually have known what she looked like.  The story of this 18th-century animal superstar is told at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in  Clara the Rhinoceros . It's an exhibition for art-lovers, animal-lovers and history-lovers, and it's absolutely fascinating and fun.  And let's introduce you to the star of the show: Clara herself. Jean-Baptiste Oudry painted her in Paris in 1749, life-size. She was 11 years old, 3.6 metres long and 1.7 metres tall; and she weighed more than 2 1/2 tonnes. Yes, that painting is life-size; just try to imagine it on your wall.  What made Clara so special? Well, hardly anyone ...

Two museums in two countries collaborate on a big exhibition, to be shown in both, and you tend to assume that, apart from a few tweaks, you'll see much the same in each city. What we weren't quite expecting when we went along to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to see Rembrandt-Velázquez  this month was to find not only a completely different approach to the show we'd seen at the  Prado in Madrid  during the summer, but for the most part a completely different set of paintings.  The Prado exhibition bringing together the great Dutch and Spanish masters of the 17th century included some superlative pictures, but we were less than convinced by the curators' premise that, beneath the surface, there weren't really any national differences in the approach to art 400 years ago. It seemed a bit too much of an obvious pro-European political message and led to comparisons between paintings that we felt at times were rather contrived.  This show in Amsterdam, by con...

So, it's Spain against Holland in Madrid, for a much-anticipated meeting in the heat of the summer. And, from a rich pool of talent, there are some really big names on both sides. But it's not football we're here for, we've come to the Museo del Prado for 17th-century art, in the shape of an exhibition called  Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer -- Parallel Visions . Is it any good? Well, the opening 25 minutes are fantastic and there's a real purple patch in the second half, but unfortunately they can't keep the pace up for the entire game. The idea of this show isn't so much a contest between the painters of opposing nations, it's to illustrate how similar their art was 350 years ago in the context of a united European culture (strong message here, one might say). National differences were overstated by art historians in the 19th and 20th centuries, the curators argue. Works by Spanish and Dutch masters hang side by side, for you to compare and contrast....