What a lot of new exhibitions this October! We list well over 20 across Europe below -- many more than usual -- and have still had to leave out quite a few that we'd mention in most other months in order to keep this post to a reasonable length. Let's start at the Royal Academy in London with deep blue seas, cloudless skies, intense light and the heat of the sun. From October 2 to January 31, you can experience the excitement Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso and many others felt while Painting the French Riviera . The exhibition features more than 160 exhibits from the 1870s to the 1960s, and a version of the show travels on to the Cleveland Museum of Art in March. Hmm, Renoir. Now perhaps seen as the most chocolate-boxy of the Impressionists, but without doubt the creator of some of the most recognisable images in French art of the late 19th century. Well worth stealing , and clearly the National Gallery is on to a winner with its Renoir and Love ex...
Is there a more spectacular exhibition on in London at the moment than Dale Chihuly's breathtaking blown-glass creations at Kew Gardens? We doubt it. For Chihuly: Reflections on Nature , more than 30 works have been installed in the grounds and glasshouses at Kew, and the result is, for the most part, absolutely stunning. Summer Sun stands outside Kew's Palm House overlooking the lake, a huge and dazzling fire of red and orange flame that seems to writhe with its own inner life. And just inside the main gate, Sapphire Star , a shimmering modern explosion of blue and white, set in a landscape that evokes classical English parkland, recalls a globe thistle, Echinops ritro Veitch's Blue , to be precise, for the green-fingered among you. It's Kew's Temperate House, the world's largest Victorian glasshouse and a marvel of design and engineering, which reopened last year after a five-year renovation, that's the focus for much of the action, or should w...