The Bayeux Tapestry exhibition at the British Museum starts on September 10; it's already sold out for this year but booking for the rest of the run, from January 1 through to July 11, will open on October 21. If you've never seen this most breathtaking of historical artefacts, you may want to seize the chance before it leaves London next year for its permanent home in Normandy, which will have been renovated during its absence. At Southampton City Art Gallery, we're promised an extensive exhibition of British art from the first half of the 20th century, drawing on the museum's own substantial holdings and those of the Ingram Collection . Running from September 26 to February 21, Art Then! British Painting, Sculpture and Drawing, 1910-1960 will feature artists including Barbara Hepworth, Gwen John , Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious. There might not be much new on in London this month, but we'll always have Paris. Starting at the Musée Jacquemart-André with Time...
What a riot of colour! An explosion of sheer outrageous exuberance! The exhibition is called Les Nabis et le Décor , it's on at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, and it celebrates a decade or so at the end of the 19th century when a group of young French painters broke down the boundaries between the fine and decorative arts to produce work that was completely original. Who were the Nabis? Artists such as Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard and Maurice Denis, who wanted to move on from Impressionism, which they saw as being too close to reality. Nabi is Hebrew for prophet, and the Nabis wanted to proclaim a new art. They were fascinated by the flatness of Japanese prints, by the post-Impressionism and innovative use of colour of Paul Gauguin, and they wanted to create contemporary interiors that were utterly at odds with the historical pastiche in vogue at the time. The aim of this exhibition is to recreate some of those interiors, now largely dispersed. And the curators have succ...