Exhibition of the week
Glenn Ligon: Encounters and Collisions
An alternative history of modern American art through the eyes of artist Glenn Ligon, this show features works by Jackson Pollock, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and many more. Ligon’s art is a reflection on African-American experiences and he connects the artistic and sociopolitical history of the United States since 1945.
• Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, from 3 April until 14 June.
Other exhibitions this week
Christine Borland and Brody Condon: Circles of Focus
This show presents the findings of a two-year research project on body donation. The artists have worked with Orkney archaeologists to create memorial sculptures made using Neolithic techniques with earth from Orkney itself. Sounds like another delve into the darkness for Borland, Scotland’s most Gothic contemporary artist.
• CCA, Glasgow, from 3 April until 17 May.
Joseph Wright of Derby
A new free display examines this great 18th-century artist of science and his masterpiece An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, which has been lent by the National Gallery.
• Tate Britain, London, until Spring 2016.
Visions of War Above and Below
A survey of war art in the age of flight and submarines, from surrealist aeroplanes to bombing raids and war under the sea, this exhibition captures the perceptual extremes of modern conflict.
• Imperial War Museum, London, until September 2016.
Sansovino Frames
An exhibition about the history of picture frames – yes, really. It brings together some of the ornate frames, going back to the early 16th century, collected by the National Gallery to enclose its canvases. How does the frame shape what we see?
• National Gallery, London, until 13 September.
Masterpiece of the week
Jean-Louis-Andre-Theodore Gericault – A Shipwreck (c1817-18)
Gericault’s intensely heightened, almost surreal imagination blazes in this painting of a desperate man emerging naked from the sea.
• National Gallery, London.
Image of the week
What we learned this week
But that’s far from Tate’s biggest problem
What it’s really like to go on a nude art tour
What happened when Barack Obama met one of his favourite artists …
That the artist behind The Great Wall of Vagina is back
That Carsten Holler’s giant slides are about to infantilise London
That Ydessa Hendeles has marched a wooden army into the UK
That coral caught in close-up shimmers and sparkles like buried treasure
What the fallout from Fukushima looks like, from red skies to stranded ostriches
How scary and dystopian your visions of the future are
Why big art galleries should take the selfie museum seriously
That the Tories’ new official design guide backs tiny, unliveable, backward-looking homes
How entrancing the bright lights and full skirts of Manhattan in the 50s were
What unlucky snoozing Alabama women and the founder of the Mormons have in common
