The Art Exhibitions Blog

We'll start this month at the almost brand-new Young V&A in London's East End -- Bethnal Green to be precise. It opened in July, as a museum specifically designed to appeal to children and families. October 14 sees the arrival of the first big exhibition there, called  Japan: Myths to Manga . It explores landscape, history, folklore, culture, technology and design -- with toys, games and cartoons playing a big part as well as superb art like Hokusai's Great Wave . On till August 11. If you missed the magnificent Gwen John exhibition at Pallant House in Chichester this summer (and there's still a week to go!), a version will be coming to the Holburne Museum in Bath from October 21. In the Holburne's somewhat smaller exhibition space, the show, running until April 14, will have an increased focus on the intensity and intimacy of John's late work. There are pictures too by contemporaries including Vuillard, Bonnard and Hammershøi. Also on at the Holburne unti...

So, 2021. What will we be able to see, where will be able to go? We're making no plans, but we're nevertheless looking forward to some interesting exhibitions across Britain and Europe in the coming 12 months. There are plenty of big names -- Botticelli, Rembrandt, Titian and Vermeer among them -- though with galleries closed yet again across much of the continent as 2020 ends and lockdowns tighten, we're only too aware of the huge coronavirus-shaped cloud of uncertainty hanging over the calendar.  Just under half of the 30 or so exhibitions we highlighted in our 2020 preview were either postponed till this year or later, if not cancelled altogether. In a spirit of vaccine-fuelled optimism and with fingers firmly crossed, here's a selection of key shows for your diary, in more or less chronological order. January  What more hopeful way to start the year than with a picture of a summer evening by the sea? It's by Peder Severin Krøyer, one of the leaders of the artist...

Painters are such liars. Well, some of them, anyway. Take Jean-Léon Gérôme, a French 19th-century artist who travelled extensively to Egypt and rendered on canvas the exoticism of the Orient for a western audience.  Snake Charmer is so lovingly detailed, so meticulously painted, it must be true. Except it's complete tosh, an utter fabrication. In a Muslim society, a small boy was never going to be performing naked in public. Why does he look like an antique statue, anyway? How has this motley audience come together in this rather splendid interior? And hang on, these turquoise tile panels are from Turkey, not Egypt.... from the Topkapi Palace in Constantinople, except that Gérôme has reassembled them in a completely different way. The picture is from Oriental Visions: From Dreams into Light , a fascinating exhibition at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris that looks at how European (mostly French) painters were stimulated, initially by fantasies of the East, and then later b...