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

Opening and Closing in May

It's a motif that recurs in art down the centuries, going back to ancient times: a woman at a window. A new show at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London builds an exhibition on the theme around its own Girl at a Window by Rembrandt with more than 40 works going right up to the present day, though don't expect Vermeer or Caspar David Friedrich. Reframed: The Woman in the Window runs from May 4 to September 4.

We've seen Edvard Munch in Oslo at the old Munch Museum and the old National Gallery, but we've never been to the significant Munch collection at KODE in Bergen, collected during the painter's lifetime by the industrialist Rasmus Meyer. Eighteen works from the collection, dating from the 1880s and 1890s, will be on show at the Courtauld Gallery from May 27 to September 4 in Edvard Munch: Masterpieces from Bergen. Will this be as popular as the Van Gogh Self-Portraits show at the Courtauld, which finishes on May 8 but is completely sold out?

A free exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge brings together more than 100 works from its own collection as well as from the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Fondation Custodia in Paris for True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe 1780-1870. Constable, Corot and Turner were among the artists who sought new ways of depicting the natural world as travel became easier and equipment more compact. On from May 3 to August 29.

The Tudors: Passion, Power and Politics at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool presents the five Tudor monarchs from Henry VII to Elizabeth I and the people around them -- some of the most recognisable characters in English history, including Thomas Cromwell and William Shakespeare -- through around 100 objects, many from the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition runs from May 21 to August 29; a smaller version of this show has been on at the Holburne Museum in Bath.

The Pallant House Gallery in Chichester has the first major exhibition to feature British artist Glyn Philpot (1884-1937) in almost four decades. Glyn Philpot: Flesh and Spirit will show how the painter moved from society portraits in the Edwardian era to a more modernist style, including sensitive depictions of black sitters, among them the actor Paul Robeson. This one is on from May 14 to October 23.

From May 17, the Belgian pointillist Théo van Rysselberghe is the subject of a show at Singer Laren in the Netherlands. Théo van Rysselberghe: Painter of the Sun will encompass his society portraits, land- and seascapes and nudes. It runs until September 4.

At the Pompidou Centre in Paris, they're offering a comprehensive look at Weimar Germany, though with close to 900 artworks and documents on show it does sound a little overwhelming. Germany / 1920s / New Objectivity / August Sander features paintings and drawings by George Grosz, Otto Dix and Jeanne Mammen, among others, as well as August Sander's photographs of Germans of all classes in People of the 20th Century. In Paris from May 11 to September 5, and then the show moves on to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art north of Copenhagen in October.

On in Denmark before then: Krøyer and Paris, starting on May 13 at the Skagens Museum at the northern tip of Jutland. This celebrates the work of one of the leading Skagen painters, P.S. Krøyer, alongside French art that inspired him, with Courbet, Caillebotte, Monet and Sisley among those represented, in a show that continues until September 18.

It's the 300th anniversary of the birth in Venice of Bernardo Bellotto, nephew of Canaletto and painter of many fine city views, particularly of Dresden, where he worked for Frederick August, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. Enchantingly Real at the Zwinger in Dresden has Bellotto's cityscapes on display from May 21 to August 28.

Last chance to see....

There's no charge to get into a small display at the National Gallery in London to see what all the fuss was about over Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy, once the most expensive picture in the world. Until May 15, after which he flies back home to California.

The best art exhibition we've seen so far this year is Whistler's Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan at the Royal Academy, which ends on May 22. Some gorgeous art, intelligently presented. Tickets are still available.

Images

Tom Hunter, Woman Reading Possession Order, 1997, from the series Persons Unknown, courtesy the artist

Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Queen Elizabeth I ('The Ditchley Portrait'), c. 1592. © National Portrait Gallery, London

Peder Severin Krøyer, Summer Evening on Skagen Sønderstrand, 1893, Skagens Kunstmuseer, Skagen, Denmark. © Skagens Kunstmuseer

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Symphony in White, No 1: The White Girl, 1862, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Opening and Closing in October

There's been a spate of exhibitions over the past few years aimed at redressing centuries of neglect of the work of women artists, and the Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi is the latest to come into focus, at the National Gallery in London, starting on October 3. Most of the works have never been seen in Britain before, and they cover a lengthy career that features strong female figures in Biblical and classical scenes, as well as self-portraits. Until January 24. Also starting at the National on October 7 is a free exhibition that looks at Sin , as depicted by artists from Diego Velázquez and William Hogarth through to Tracey Emin, blurring the boundaries between the religious and the secular. This one runs until January 3. Tate Britain shows this winter how JMW Turner embraced the rapid industrial and technological advances at the start of the 19th century and recorded them in his work. Turner's Modern World , starting on October 28, will include painting

The Thrill of Pleasure: Bridget Riley

Prepare yourself for some sensory overload. Curves, stripes, zig-zags, wavy lines, dots, in black and white or colour. Look at many of the paintings of Bridget Riley and you're unable to escape the eerie sensation that the picture in front of you is in motion, has its own inner three-dimensional life, is not just inert paint on flat canvas, panel or plaster. It's by no means unusual to see selections of Riley's paintings on display, but a blockbuster exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh brings together 70 years of her pictures in a dazzling extravaganza of abstraction, including a recreation of her only actual 3D work, which you walk into for a perspectival sensurround experience. It's "that thrill of pleasure which sight itself reveals," as Riley once said. It's a really terrific show, and the thrill of pleasure in the Scottish capital was enhanced by the unexpected lack of visitors on the day we went to see it, with huge empty sp

What's On in 2024: Surreal Impressions

In 2024, we'll be marking the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition and the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto. There'll be lots more shows focused on women artists. It's 250 years since the birth of the great German Romantic, Caspar David Friedrich, and Roy Lichtenstein was born 100 years ago. We've picked out some of the exhibitions coming up over the next 12 months that have caught our eye, and here they are, in more or less chronological order. February Let's start at Ordrupgaard on the outskirts of Copenhagen with Impressionism and Its Overlooked Women , described by the gallery as a "magnificent exhibition featuring works from across the world". The show focuses on five female artists, including Berthe Morisot , Mary Cassatt and Eva Gonzalès , as well as some of the models who featured in the most iconic Impressionist paintings. The exhibition is on in Denmark from February 9 to May 20, after which it transfers to the Na

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