Exhibition of the week
Damien Hirst
This surreal encounter between Damien Hirst and a perfectly preserved 18th-century Palladian stately home is hugely entertaining. Read our review of the show.
• Houghton Hall, Norfolk, 25 March to 15 July
Also showing
The House of Fame
Manchester punk artist Linder has created a non-retrospective in which she shares the attention with selected artists from Inigo Jones to Mike Kelley and Heidi Bucher. We went to meet her as she put her exhibition together.
• Nottingham Contemporary, 24 March to 17 June
Langlands & Bell – Internet Giants: Masters of the Universe
This architectural-conceptualist duo take on the internet giants in an examination of the shape of power today. Read our interview with Ben Langlands about the show.
• Ikon, Birmingham, until 10 June
Michelangelo
A ravishing display of drawings by the Renaissance genius in the Ashmolean’s collection.
• Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, until 2 April
Ken’s Show
Art handler Ken Simons selects an exhibition of some his favourites from Tate Liverpool’s 30-year history, including Turner and Rothko.
• Tate Liverpool, 30 March to 17 June
Masterpiece of the week
The Milbanke and Melbourne Families (c 1769) by George Stubbs
The brown and dappled horses are much more alive than their pasty-faced owners in this strange, stilled painting. Stubbs is so precise he seems to have trapped people and animals alike in a glass case for us to study. While the humans pose coldly, passion and energy pulse through the very being of the horses. The savage rocks beyond add to the sense of frenzy and danger just beneath the surface. In fact, the humans, too, have hidden depths. Elizabeth Milbanke, sitting wanly in her carriage at the left of the group, was to become a close friend of “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Lord Byron. So this painting is a portrait of a seemingly rational age poised on the edge of a Romantic maelstrom.
• National Gallery, London
Image of the week
Anthea Hamilton unveiled her installation for Tate Britain’s Duveen galleries. Performers in striking, vegetable-inspired costumes designed with Loewe fashion designer Jonathan Anderson, dart about a tiled courtyard arranged with sculptures from the Tate collection.
What we learned
Anthea Hamilton wanted to be an accountant
Sonia Boyce explained her position on nymphs
Gallery donations from Sackler are being questioned
The shortlist of five for the second Hepworth sculpture prize has been announced
Urban Sketchers are coming to a city near you
Oxford’s Ashmolean is surveying the birth of American modernist art
Tracey Emin told us about her Australian birds
Belgian police are now on the hunt for Russian fakes
Sony world photography award winners have gone on show
A Chinese landscape architect wants to turn cities into sponges
Martin Parr went to the Great British seaside
Nick Warner went to the circus
We took another look at Luigi Ghirri’s Italy
… while Fatma Bucak captured its contemporary tensions
It’s rodeo time in New Zealand
Bruce Wrighton explored the sacred and profane in New York
The V&A will explore how fashion stole Frida Kahlo
Don’t forget
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