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Opening and Closing in May

Art history? No, we're starting this month with an exhibition that we'll be tagging #artherstory on social media. Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920  opens at Tate Britain in London on May 16, with the aim of charting the path of women to being recognised as professional artists over the centuries. More than 100 will be represented: relatively widely known names such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman , Gwen John and Laura Knight , as well as the more obscure or neglected -- Levina Teerlinc, Mary Beale and Sarah Biffin . It's on till October 13, and as we've just seen a show in Germany focused on women artists over much the same timescale, we'll be keen to compare and contrast. Let's stick with a female theme. A short stroll up Millbank and across Lambeth Bridge, and you're at the Garden Museum, where from May 15 to September 29 you can see Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors . The show takes you around the gardens of Vane

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Opening in November

William Hogarth -- now there's a painter you think of as British through and through, flag-wavingly so. Just look at a painting such as 'O the Roast Beef of Old England'. So an exhibition entitled Hogarth and Europe at Tate Britain in London has something of a curious ring to it. Starting on November 3, it aims to show how Hogarth's portrayal of a rapidly changing British society in the mid-18th century was echoed by painters on the Continent, such as Francesco Guardi in Venice, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin in France and Cornelis Troost in Holland. Until March 20. 
For an early pioneer of pan-European art, look no further than Albrecht Dürer. Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist at the National Gallery from November 20 follows the master painter from Nuremberg on his trips to the Low Countries and across the Alps, spreading his own reputation and exchanging ideas with his Dutch and Italian counterparts. The first major Dürer exhibition in the UK for nearly two decades, it's on until February 27. It's been put together in collaboration with the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen, and the version that was on display there over the past few months had excellent reviews in the German press. 
Dürer died in 1528. At about the same time, the Spanish were just setting out on their conquest of the Inca Empire centred in modern-day Peru. Starting on November 11 at the British Museum, Peru: A Journey in Time looks back at 4,000 years of the history of the country before the Spaniards arrived. It examines the beliefs and cultural achievements of the civilisations that lived there and their legacy on subsequent generations. With many artefacts on loan from Peru, the show runs until February 20. 

The new exhibition at the V&A is Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution. Starting on November 20, the show will look at how the Russian goldsmith Carl Fabergé came to international prominence, winning patrons among the Russian imperial and foreign royal families, and how he came to set up a branch in London in 1903. Highlights will include a selection of the fabulous Easter Eggs crafted for the Romanovs in the years before the Tsar was deposed by the Russian Revolution. Until May 8. 
And one final show this month in a rare London-only list: Paul McCartney has a new book coming out in November recounting his life and career through his lyrics, and to coincide with the publication, there's a free display in the British Library from November 5 of a selection of highlights from the words and photographs. Paul McCartney: The Lyrics runs until March 13.

Images

William Hogarth, Miss Mary Edwards, 1742, The Frick Collection, New York. Photo: Joe Coscia Jr.
Albrecht Dürer, Saint Jerome, 1521, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. © Instituto Portugues de Museus, Minstero da Cultura, Lisbon
Fabergé, The Moscow Kremlin Egg, 1906. © The Moscow Kremlin Museums

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