The Art Exhibitions Blog

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 ...

Albrecht Dürer: one of the great names of Renaissance art. His printmaking secured the man from Nuremberg lasting fame across Europe in his own lifetime, with his AD monogram becoming a pioneering symbol for quality and authenticity. In his native Germany, where Dürer is one of the key figures in the country's cultural history, we've seen some wonderful and exhaustive -- if exhausting -- exhibitions of his work, particularly at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg itself.  Dürer's Journey's: Travels of a Renaissance Artist  at the National Gallery in London doesn't approach those heights; for one thing, there aren't really that many of Dürer's greatest hits -- you won't be seeing his Hare , or his Rhinoceros -- and while there are some fascinating woodcuts and engravings by the German, we got the impression that his paintings here were a little bit overshadowed by the work of other artists on show -- Giovanni Bellini and Quinten Massys, to name...

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 fo...

From The Angel of the North to Another Place , Antony Gormley 's sculptures provide some fantastic open-air art experiences. How about indoors, though? We'll find out when he takes over the main galleries at the Royal Academy in London from September 21 to December 3. Over at Tate Britain, the biggest exhibition in 20 years of the works of William Blake  opens on September 11. The show is designed to offer visitors the chance to sense how Blake's radical and rebellious art must have come across when first shown two centuries ago. Until February 2. It's curtain up at the Foundling Museum on September 20 on Two Last Nights! Show Business in Georgian Britain , an exhibition looking at how similar, and how different, theatre-going was then and now. Hogarth is, of course, involved. The fat lady sings on January 5. And for those of us in south-east England, there's a chance to get a bit better acquainted with the Fauvist-influenced post-Impressionism of the 192...