The Art Exhibitions Blog

Let's start off this month with Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look at the National Gallery in London. This free one-room show, running from August 8, brings together two David Hockney paintings with a picture from the gallery, Piero della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ , that is depicted in both works. On until October 27. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford's new exhibition is Money Talks: Art, Society & Power , starting on August 9. This show aims to look at art on currency, and currency in art, bringing together notes and coins from history as well as work by artists from Rembrandt to Andy Warhol and Grayson Perry. It runs until January 5.  Starting on August 24 is the last of the major exhibitions around Germany marking the 250th anniversary of the birth of Caspar David Friedrich . This one is on at the Albertinum and the Royal Palace in Dresden, where Friedrich lived and worked for more than 40 years. Caspar David Friedrich: Where It All Started is on until January 5...

Nicholson's a big name in the history of British art. Our 1970s copy of the Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists gives half a page (a comparatively long entry) to Sir William and his eldest son Ben, "the best-known British abstract painter". There's no mention, though, of Mabel Pryde Nicholson, William's wife and Ben's mother. She was a painter too. But she hasn't had an exhibition devoted to her since shortly after her death more than a century ago. Now, for a short time only, you can see Prydie: The Life and Art of Mabel Pryde Nicholson 1871-1918 , back at the Nicholsons' old family home, The Grange in Rottingdean, on the outskirts of Brighton.  This is a show strong on family portraits (definitely the most striking of Mabel's works on display are those of her own family), with tantalising hints at sometimes quite complex paintings by her whose whereabouts are unknown. All this is woven in with the complicated and colourful story of the Nichols...