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 ...
You've just been to one exhibition about Canaletto and Venice, and then a second one comes along straight away, a bit like delayed vaporettos on the Grand Canal. Canaletto's Venice Revisited at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich contrasted the painter's classic views of the lagoon city with the threat it faces today from rising sea levels and mass tourism, and Canaletto and Melissa McGill: Performance and Panorama at the Lightbox in Woking takes a similar tack. But if Greenwich's display of statistics about population decline and increasing flooding and an array of disposable plastic boots for tourists left us rather depressed, we found something surprisingly soothing and uplifting about the American artist Melissa McGill's attempt to alert us to the same problems. Back in 2019, McGill created the Red Regatta project, which saw dozens of traditional Venetian sailing boats hoisted with sails she had hand-painted in varying shades of red traversing the ci...