Exhibition of the week
Georgiana Houghton
The psychedelic spirit drawings of this Victorian medium, who claimed to be guided by dead artists, are precocious abstract marvels.
• Courtauld Gallery, London, 16 June-11 September.
Also showing
Mark Anderson: Furious Folly
Dada was born as a protest against the first world war’s “furious folly” and this collage of sound and vision sees that slaughter a century ago through its shattered lens.
• On tour Oxford, Birmingham and Stockton-on-Tees, 17 June-5 August
New Tate Modern Opening Weekend
Performances, films and all the fun of the future in a weekend-long celebration of the bigger, even bolder Tate Modern.
• Tate Modern, London, 17 June-19 June.
In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive and Were Full of Joy
From the grotesque paintings of Edward Burra to the haunted photographs of Francesca Woodman, this exhibition curated by darkly visionary video artist Elizabeth Price is guaranteed to chill.
• Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, 10 June-30 October.
Walter De Maria
Indoor works by the artist most famous for setting the desert alight with his legendary Lightning Field – and who was also an early member of the Velvet Underground. White light making me go blind.
• Gagosian Gallery, London, until 30 July.
Masterpiece of the week
History is a morbid nightmare in this eerie French Romantic vision of Britain’s violent past.
• National Gallery, London.
Image of the week
Photographer Nicholas Nixon shared this shot of Harvard student Robert Sappenfield, taken in 1987 when he was dying with Aids. “Bob’s parents had come up from New Orleans to see him. Back then, Aids was like the plague – if you got it, you died,” says Nixon. “No one was writing about the humanity of these men, how they’d been oppressed. That seemed shabby to me.”
What we learned
The new Serpentine pavilion is part Ikea shelving unit, part Minecraft cathedral
Banksy left a mural and cheeky note in a Bristol school as a thank you
Manchester could have been a city of moving pavements and monorails
Surfer turned artist Mary Heilmann is riding a new wave of fame in her seventies
Her Whitechapel show is a glorious riot of California cool and punk attitude
Meanwhile Alex Katz’s new exhibition is a bright burst of life in freeze-frame
‘It was not a sentimental love’ says Françoise Gilot of her years with Picasso
The Museum of London has unveiled six competing designs for its Smithfield site
A painting ‘wrecked beyond repair’ is to be shown again at the Fitzwilliam
‘Poor art’ pioneer Michelangelo Pistoletto is set for Bleinheim Palace show
Christo’s floating pier over Lake Iseo is expected to draw half a million visitors
The refugee residents of the Calais camps have turned architects on the ground
Magnum photographers have been riffing off Cartier Bresson’s ‘decisive moment’
Brian Sewell’s personal art collection is up for auction – and it’s pretty revealing
Stench Wench, aka Catherine Hoffman, is stripping off to tackle class shame
Instagram’s paint-mixing craze shows we can’t get enough of the sloppy stuff
David Bowie and Adele are part of Simon Terrill’s new experimental artwork
Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar has a newly electric message for Donald Trump
One of Australia’s most celebrated photos, Sunbaker, is going under the hammer
We dived into Australia’s obsession with the swimming pool, via Venice
And finally, the Chapman brothers and the Wilson sisters opened up to us
Get involved
A-Z of readers’ art – share art on the theme of illumination
True battles: your best art on the theme of hegemony
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