The Art Exhibitions Blog

Hawaii: A Kingdom Crossing Oceans at the British Museum in London examines the art and history of the islands in the Pacific, in an exhibition marking 200 years since their king and queen travelled to London to seek an alliance with Britain. Many of the 150 objects and artworks have never been seen in the UK before. On from January 15 to May 25. At the Courtauld Gallery, 10 little-known names will be showcased in A View of One's Own: Landscapes by British Women Artists, 1760-1860 . Fanny Blake, Harriet Lister and Amelia Long are some of those whose drawings and watercolours will be on display; some were recognised in their lifetimes, the work of others has only recently come to light. January 28 to May 20.  Her work was instantly recognisable and hugely popular. Beryl Cook: Pride and Joy  at The Box in Plymouth marks the centenary of the birth of a painter who celebrated everyday life but whose pictures were often regarded as mere kitsch by the art establishment. This show, r...

The fabrics swirl, billow, ripple and cling.... the colours are gorgeous, the atmosphere often dreamlike. It is a feast for the eyes.  We've come to see  Evelyn De Morgan: The Modern Painter in Victorian London at the Guildhall Art Gallery in the very heart of the City. It's a bit of a misnomer, that title, because De Morgan's work doesn't really convey much of an impression of modernity, certainly not in the sense of late 19th-century technological and scientific progress. The style is reminiscent in many ways of the Pre-Raphaelites from earlier in the Victorian era, and  Edward Burne-Jones  in particular.  But what was modern about Evelyn De Morgan was in fact the most obvious thing about her; she was a woman, in what was still a very male art world.   Before we get into De Morgan's history, let's start with a painting to give a flavour of her art, and it's one of the most spectacular in this exhibition: The Storm Spirits . Just pause for a moment t...

"Here she comes/You better watch your step/She's going to break your heart in two/It's true." Lou Reed wrote the song ; Now the Kunsthalle in Hamburg brings you the pictures. Femme Fatale: Gaze -- Power -- Gender  looks at how painters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- Pre-Raphaelites, Symbolists and Impressionists among them -- developed the image, as well as how modern women artists have attempted to reinterpret it. With around 200 exhibits, it's on from December 9 to April 10.  Our preview this month is very much centred on Germany as that is where most of the openings are this December. In Berlin, the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg is looking back a full century to the premiere of the seminal horror movie with Phantoms of the Night: 100 Years of Nosferatu . The curators explore how FW Murnau's 1922 film drew on sources such as Goya and Caspar David Friedrich and how this silent movie went on to influence the Surrealists as well as popular culture d...

It's a great idea for an exhibition:  Inspired!  at the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London brings together paintings and sculpture for which artists found their inspiration in literature, music and the theatre.  It's a great idea, but the execution is underwhelming. Two of the four sections in this show, drawn entirely from the Guildhall's own collection, are absorbing. The other two are pretty dull. It's a bit like when you've gone to see a poor production of a favourite play; you come away feeling somewhat dissatisfied.  There are some fine artists on show: You've got Jan Steen, Thomas Lawrence, Duncan Grant, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Lawrence Alma-Tadema. But the painter with most work on display here is John Gilbert . We think you may need to look him up. And he's certainly not very inspiring. He's one of those 19th-century artists whose work is largely forgotten; so are some others here, but at least a few of them have s...

He was only 25 when he died in 1898, yet Aubrey Beardsley 's sensuous, subversive and often risqué drawings are among the most memorable images of the late Victorian era. An exhibition opening on March 4 at Tate Britain in London will be the largest to showcase his original works since the mid-1960s. It runs through until May 25. Over at Tate Modern, the doors open on March 12 on Andy Warhol . The show will feature more than 100 works from across Warhol's colourful career, with images from Marilyn Monroe to Lenin and Mao, not forgetting the odd can of Campbell's soup. On for not just 15 minutes, but almost six months, through to September 6. In the middle of the 16th century, King Philip II of Spain commissioned Titian to paint a series showing Classical myths. The six pictures, dubbed by Titian "poesie" because he saw them as the visual equivalents of poetry, are being reunited for the first time in 400 years for an exhibition at London's National Galler...

It's the month before Christmas, and all through the house, there's not a lot stirring in terms of new exhibitions. At the Wallace Collection in London, December 4 sees the opening of Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company . Curated by writer and historian William Dalrymple , this is the first show in the UK of works by Indian painters for the trading company that effectively ruled large parts of the subcontinent in the 18th and 19th centuries. Until April 19. We've seen some superb exhibitions at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg in the past, and their new show brings together three really big names: Goya, Fragonard, Tiepolo . With around 100 works, the exhibition will examine the disparity of 18th-century art in an age of great political, technological and social change. December 13 to April 13. And in Italy, the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara is devoting a show to Giuseppe De Nittis , the Italian painter closely associated with the French Impressio...

What London really needed in the 1820s, Thomas Willson thought, was a gigantic pyramid. Ninety-four storeys high, covering 18 1/2 acres on top of Primrose Hill . In the churchyards of inner London, space for graves was running out. Willson's planned Metropolitan Sepulcher would have contained tens of thousands of alcoves, each with room for 24 bodies, giving a total burial capacity of 5 million. Five million! Coffins would have been moved upwards on ramps around a central shaft. And there would have been a viewing platform at the top.... It was never built, of course, but it's only one of a number of remarkable schemes that failed to materialise in the capital, as revealed in an interesting, entertaining and enjoyable exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery -- The London that Never Was . Can you imagine the size and the visual impact of that structure? Every day, Londoners would have been reminded of their own mortality by the giant cemetery in the sky looming over them....

If you want a great view of London, there's always been one place to go: Greenwich Hill . Where else then, to depict the distant towers and spires of the City about a dozen years after the Great Fire of 1666 that razed so much of it, with a windmill on the heights of Highgate or Hampstead. These days, your eyes might be drawn more to the right, to the towers of Canary Wharf. This painting, attributed to the Dutch painter Johannes Vorsterman (or maybe Vorstermans ), is the opening image in The Architecture of London , a show at the Guildhall Art Gallery in the heart of the City that's sometimes quite fascinating, at other times a little bit on the dull side. This isn't really an exhibition full of great paintings, but it demonstrates both how London has changed down the years as well as how artists have interpreted one of the greatest cities in the world. That's not to say there aren't some big names. Such as the master of the cityscape himself, Canaletto, makin...