
Exhibition of the week
Gilbert & George: 21st Century Pictures
The couple who have made art together since the 1960s depict life in 21st-century Britain, as they see it.
• Hayward Gallery, London, from 7 October until 11 January
Also showing
Made in Ancient Egypt
An impeccable look at ancient Egyptian art and artists, with amazing loans from world-renowned collections including Berlin’s Egyptian Museum and the Louvre, Paris. Read the full review here.
• Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 12 April 2026
Sean Scully: Mirroring
This intense abstract painter shows his works with the modernist still lifes of Giorgio Morandi.
• Estorick Collection, London, from 8 October until 23 November
Lee Miller
Courageous reportage from world war two, surrealist experiments and portraits of artists by this renowned photographer. Read the full review here.
• Tate Britain, London, until 15 February
Nordic Noir
Prints from Scandinavia, starting with Edvard Munch and moving right up to now.
• British Museum, London, from 9 October until 22 March
Image of the week
Lee Miller’s relationship with Man Ray arguably changed the course of art history. Together they pioneered solarisation in photography, whereby the negative is exposed momentarily to light during processing. Although Man Ray would get the credit for the first use of the technique in art, a new show quietly and rightfully reattributes it to Miller. See more of Miller’s daredevil photography here.
What we learned
AI analysis found that a £71,000 painting dismissed as copy is a Caravaggio
David Hockney’s iPad drawings of the Yorkshire Wolds are to be sold at auction
An archive show in Paris sewed up Virgil Abloh status as his generation’s leading designer
Naeem Mohaiemen’s new work looks into two 1970 shootings that still shape US politics
Marina Abramović has skeleton orgies and giant penises in her most daring show ever
Artists are being given a chance to use the wood from the felled Sycamore Gap tree
Italy art police seized 21 suspected fakes from a Salvador Dalí show
The female Flemish artist Michaelina Wautier is now seen as an old master
Ian James has found and photographed at least 75 pyramids in the US
The late Terry Farrell’s buildings burst with exuberance – from MI6 HQ to TV-am
Masterpiece of the week
The Painter’s Daughters With a Cat by Thomas Gainsborough, circa 1760-1
Gainsborough is famous for painting the rich, but here he shows us who he really cared about. This is just one of his incredibly spontaneous and sincere paintings of his two daughters, Mary (who’s about 10 here) and Margaret (about 8). As Margaret holds a cat, Mary embraces her. The cat is just a sketch, for this is a free painting of life in motion, and not a formal portrait. All of Gainsborough’s intent has gone into capturing his girls’ faces at this passing moment in their young lives. Remember, there were no cameras 250 years ago. Only an artist had this power to record his children’. Mary and Margaret both have eyes filled with feeling as well as intelligence: this combination of sense and sensibility deeply impresses their father, who hoped they might have careers as professional artists.
• National Gallery
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