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...
The old adage that a picture paints a thousand words is only true if you know the language being spoken. Take the Victorians; how many of their painted images appear to us at first glance so prim and proper, even twee. But beneath those buttoned-up, straight-laced exteriors, there lurks a deep, concealed well of emotion. To break through to the real significance, you need to translate the signs, decode the symbols whose meanings are no longer obvious to us. What are they all trying to tell us, those ladies in bonnets, those cute animals, those flowers and climbing plants that you've seen when wandering through a room of Victorian paintings in a provincial museum? You can find out in Telling Tales: The Story of Victorian Narrative Art at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum in Bournemouth, an exhibition that reveals that British 19th-century art is as full of hidden meanings as those Dutch Golden Age interiors we love so much. There are no really big names i...