August is always one of the quietest months for new exhibitions, and this year is no different, but we do have one big event to alert you to, as well as two splendid shows that only have weeks to run. The one major opening is Gwen John: Strange Beauties at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. Running from August 1 to January 4, this is a comprehensive retrospective of the work of the woman perhaps now seen as Wales's most significant artist, born 150 years ago this year. Maybe a little too comprehensive, according to some of the reviews of the show when it was on at the National Museum in Cardiff. The exhibition goes on to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, in February and then at the end of July next year to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. We saw a rather smaller Gwen John exhibition in Chichester in 2023. Last chance to see.... Ending on August 23 is the exhibition at the Lakenhal in Leiden ...
What seems to be the hottest exhibition ticket in the Netherlands at the moment? Rembrandt, Van Gogh? No, it's Design of the Third Reich at the Design Museum in Den Bosch. Surprised? Don't be. It's superbly done, well explained and really engrossing. The Nazis didn't achieve power in Germany without making themselves and their message attractive to millions of people, and the design of their emblems, electoral posters, the very styling of Adolf Hitler contributed to that. And those efforts didn't stop once they'd taken over. This show doesn't make any attempt to downplay the evils of Nazism, the horrors of the concentration camps and of World War II -- this is, after all, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of parts of the southern Netherlands, including Den Bosch, from German occupation -- but the aim is to try and understand the role design played in it all -- even if that role wasn't always a very coherent one. The decision to stage thi...