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New Exhibitions in June

Frida Kahlo: Now, there's a name to be reckoned with. More than just a painter, a global phenomenon, a superstar who died too young. And so coming to Tate Modern on June 25 we have  Frida: The Making of an Icon , surely set to be one of the most in-demand tickets in London this year. It's not so much a show about Frida, though, as about the cult of Frida: More than 30 of her works are accompanied by some 200 by contemporaries and those from later generations whom she inspired, and then there are over 200 objects exploring "Fridamania". The show had good reviews when it was on at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and you've got until January 3 to catch it at the Tate.  While we're on the subject of mid 20th-century female icons whose candle burned out long before their legend ever did....  Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait  starts at the National Portrait Gallery on June 4. The Hollywood star would have been 100 years old this year, and this show, running until Sept...

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Opening in September

We're going to start our September preview in Paris, where an absolute stunner of an exhibition is set to open belatedly at the Petit Palais: The Golden Age of Danish Painting. That Golden Age lasted for just over 60 years from the start of the 19th century when artists such as Christen Købke expressed a growing national pride in works of precision and clarity tinged with romanticism. We got to see this fabulous show early last year at the National Museum in Stockholm. It's on in Paris from September 22 to January 3, and if you get the chance to go, don't hesitate.
A few minutes walk away, at the Musée de l'Orangerie, Giorgio de Chirico: Metaphysical Painting opens on September 16. De Chirico's enigmatic art from the first two decades of the 20th century draws on the German Romantics and prefigures the Surrealists. After it closes on December 14 it will transfer to the Kunsthalle in Hamburg early next year.

If you head down the Seine from Paris to the Musée des Impressionismes at Giverny, you can see around 90 American Impressionist landscapes from the collection of the Terra Foundation for American Art, with Whistler among the artists represented. The Studio of Nature, 1860-1910 runs from September 12 to January 3.

Back across the Channel, the Museum of London Docklands unveils the Havering Hoard: A Bronze Age Mystery on September 11. This free show explores the largest trove of Bronze Age objects ever uncovered in the capital, more than 450 in all dating from between 900 BC and 800 BC. The last exhibition we reviewed at the Docklands Museum -- on the Roman Dead -- was really outstanding. This new show runs until April 18.
Before coronavirus, when jostling to see an iconic painting in a crowded gallery, did you ever wish you could have it all to yourself? Well, now here's your chance, at the Mauritshuis in The Hague from September 26 to January 3, to be Alone with Vermeer. There's just one picture in this exhibition, and it's Johannes Vermeer's View of Delft. For Marcel Proust, it was "the most beautiful painting in the world", and for us, it's a picture whose luminosity astonishes every time we see it in the Mauritshuis. Book a time slot, on your own or with a small group, and immerse yourself in a masterpiece with absolutely no distractions....
One English artist who admired the Dutch enormously was Constable, and for the first time a Constable retrospective is being held in the Netherlands, at the venerable Teylers Museum in Haarlem. John Constable starts on September 19 and will be on until January 31, featuring loans from the UK and Canada. It's a bit of a year for English art in Holland, with the George Stubbs show just ended at the Mauritshuis.

At the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, before they get to De Chirico, it's time for one of his close contemporaries. Max Beckmann: Feminine-Masculine from September 25 to January 24 includes some 140 works examining the often contradictory roles played by men and women in the German modernist's oeuvre. 

Last chance to see.... 

September 7 is the final day at the Saint Louis Art Museum for Millet and Modern Art: From Van Gogh to Dalí, demonstrating the astonishing influence of Jean-François Millet on the painters who succeeded him down the decades. We enjoyed this show enormously when we saw it at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam last year.
Ending on September 13 is Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company at the Wallace Collection in London. Far exceeding our expectations, this showcased exquisite Anglo-Indian art from the 18th and 19th centuries that deserves a far wider audience.

We love Edward Hopper, and the show of his landscapes at the Fondation Beyeler, just outside Basel, has been one of the highlights of this severely curtailed year of exhibitions. It's on until September 20, with the bonus of a cinematic homage to Hopper by Wim Wenders.

And that's also the last day at the National Gallery in London for Nicolaes Maes, pupil of Rembrandt and best known for his pictures of mistresses eavesdropping on misbehaving servants. No admission charge at the National to this show, which we saw at the Mauritshuis in 2019.

At the Royal Academy, September 20 is also the final day to see the work of Léon Spilliaert, who wandered the nighttime streets of Ostend, plagued by insomnia and stomach troubles, to produce some haunting pictures.
A show that never made it to the Royal Academy due to coronavirus was the one looking back at the career of one its two founding female members, Angelica Kauffman, an artist who had the talent and the will to break through a lot of 18th-century glass ceilings. The exhibition is still to be seen at the Kunstpalast in Dusseldorf, again ending on September 20.

Please do check museum websites for booking details, opening times and conditions of entry, as these vary greatly and are liable to change.

Images

Christen Købke, One of the Small Towers on Frederiksborg Castle, 1834-35, Designmuseum Denmark, Copenhagen. Photo: Pernille Klemp
A Bronze Age axe head from the Havering Hoard. © Museum of London
Johannes Vermeer, View of Delft, c. 1660-61, Mauritshuis, The Hague
Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners, 1857, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Léon Spilliaert, Woman at the Shoreline, 1910, Private collection. Photo: © Cedric Verhelst

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