Exhibition of the week
Artist and Empire
The British empire is a fundamental part of British history, and indeed the history of the modern world. This exhibition features artists from Joshua Reynolds and George Stubbs to Hew Locke and Sonia Boyce. It should be a fascinating survey of a complex, tangled story that is global, intimate – and unfinished.
• Tate Britain, London SW1, from 25 November to 10 April.
Other exhibitions this week
Modern Scottish Women
Bessie MacNicol, Phoebe Anna Traquair, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, Dorothy Johnstone and Hazel Armour are among the many artists in this survey of women in Scottish art – their works and lives – from 1885 to 1965.
• Modern Two (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art), Edinburgh, to 26 June.
Gilbert and George
The grand old men of British conceptual art are still trying to provoke. But have they become that cosy thing – a national treasure?
• White Cube Bermondsey, London SE1, from 25 November to 24 January.
Allen Jones
The erotomane pop artist explores the sensuality of colour.
• Marlborough Fine Art, London W1S, from 25 November to 23 January.
An Imagined Museum
Head into the future for the best art show from the year 2052. This excellent exhibition has a sci-fi premise, gathering unforgettable modern masterpieces – by Marcel Duchamp, Frank Stella, Louise Bourgeois, Bridget Riley and many more – for the gallery-goers of tomorrow.
• Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, from 20 November to 14 February.
Masterpiece of the week
Johann Zoffany – Colonel Mordaunt’s Cock Match (c1784-86)
Zoffany paints like an anthropologist watching a ritual with a disengaged scientific eye – and he is just as objective about the British as he is about their Indian sporting rivals in this powerful panorama of the rise of an empire.
• Tate Britain, London SW1
Image of the week
What we learned this week
How to step into Oliver Jeffers’ secret art society
That a Bill Murray art show has opened in the UK
Why Olafur Eliasson is sailing Arctic icebergs into Paris
The world’s tallest building planned – in ex-warzone Basra
That the American land art legend Robert Smithson had a very unlikely beginning
Mexican mugshots: the photos of criminal cult heroes found in a flea market
Whipping up a storm: how Robert Mapplethorpe shocked America
The seven ages of the artist – and how everyone from Rachel Whiteread to Paula Rego feels about ageing
That Fukushima’s radioactive wasteland has turned into an art gallery
That 100 unseen Francis Bacons will soon be unleashed on the world
The future is round: why modern architecture turned doughnut-shaped
That Roger Hiorns (he of blue crystal flat fame) is about to bury a Boeing 737 in the name of art
Groupies revisited: the women with triple-A access to the 60s
Fold-up helmets and sandwich bikes: 12 designs that revolutionised cycling
Special delivery: proud new mothers in the world’s poorest country
Rats: the history of an incendiary cartoon trope
What life looks like in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 20 years on from the war
And finally ...
C is for consciousness: share artworks that show your rich inner lives now
