Exhibition of the week
Unquiet Moments
If the slower world of lockdown has led you to contemplate the ordinary more closely, this online exhibition may strike a chord. Curated by Courtauld students, it creates an alternative archive of the everyday featuring artists including Rembrandt, Sunil Gupta and Karl Ohiri.
• Somerset House and Courtauld online
Also showing
Ella Kruglyanskaya
Cartoon-style figuration and rollicking references to the history of art make it worth booking a slot to visit this politicised painter’s gallery show.
• Thomas Dane Gallery, London until 24 July
Jim Dine
You can book a socially distanced slot to see big, intensely incised and coloured new prints by this major American artist.
• Cristea Roberts, London until 1 July
Young Rembrandt
Take a virtual trip to 17th century Leiden and Amsterdam to see how Rembrandt found his genius.
• Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Abel Rodriguez
It’s worth an online visit to this exhibition by an Amazonian artist whose memories and local botanical knowledge give a movingly intimate perspective to his rainforest scenes.
• On the Baltic+ website
Image of the week
‘Proof of life’: Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, by Vincent van Gogh
Photographs were released this week by Dutch art investigator Arthur Brand – taken on an unknown date and at an undisclosed location – that appear to show an 1884 painting by Vincent van Gogh that was stolen in March from the Singer Laren Museum near Amsterdam. In one, the painting is shown alongside a copy of the 30 May 2020 international edition of the New York Times newspaper. Another picture shows a label on the rear of the artwork, apparently underlining its authenticity. It is speculated the images were circulating in organised crime circles.
What we learned
Debate rages over the fate of colonial-era public statues
… and the UK’s Houses of Parliament is reassessing its art collection in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests
From Italy to Madagascar, the rest of the world is spending to protect the arts sector
A fictional portrait of Jo and Edward Hopper won the Walter Scott prize
Activist street art is springing up all over Glasgow
The Women’s Engineering Society has its work cut out 100 years on
Margaret Howell took the long route to becoming a national treasure
Big-thinking designer Yinka Ilori says architecture is for everyone
Christie’s has withdrawn four “looted” ancient treasures
A Van Gogh letter about a brothel visit sold for €210,000
Britains’s Silicon Valley could take shape on Teesside
Photographer Jenny van Sommer has gone bananas during lockdown
Tracey Emin says her cousin’s Covid-19 death has changed her
RIBA president Alan Jones has been reinstated
Artists have created inspirational lockdown poster messages for the NHS
The first virtual Photo Basel art show featured melted cars and a stampeding dinosaur
We looked at Magnum photographer Thomas Hoepker’s early images
Our daily art quiz came from the Horniman museum, Towner Eastbourne, Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales and the V&A
Tony Cash was a terrifically fun arts broadcaster
Masterpiece of the week
The Queen of the Night, Old Babylonian, c 1800-1700BC
The name of this enigmatic being is a modern reference to Mozart’s Magic Flute – and it does seem to fit. With staring owls beside her, demonic wings and a boldly naked body, this ancient Babylonian entity is an erotic nocturnal power. This work of art would have given Freud some fun. It reveals that Babylonian myth was rampantly imaginative, sensual and spooky – and perhaps that Babylon invented the “classical” art nude long before the ancient Greeks.
• British Museum, London
Don’t forget
To follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign.
Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter
If you don’t already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here.
