Michelangelo and Sebastiano
This exhibition is a micro-history: a detailed exploration of a short period in the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti when he collaborated closely with a painter far less famous than he was. It is a tale that takes you to the heart of High Renaissance Rome, with stunning exhibits including a rarely seen Michelangelo statue of the risen Christ and a convincing replica of an entire frescoed chapel.
National Gallery, WC2, 15 March to 25 June
Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun
The spooky games of Claude Cahun created some of the most compelling photographs of the surrealist age. This French visionary lived with her lover in the Channel Islands in the 1930s and 40s. She also lived inside her head, putting on disguises, assuming male identities and using the camera to record her travesties. Her images resonate powerfully today, anticipating performance art and identity politics. This exhibition juxtaposes her with Turner prize winner Gillian Wearing, but could equally well have set her alongside Cindy Sherman, ORLAN or Marina Abramović.
National Portrait Gallery, WC2, to 29 May
Robert Rauschenberg
If you have not yet seen this important exhibition, don’t miss out. Rauschenberg’s capacious imagination and rollicking intellectual freedom are fully revealed in dazzling gestures, from getting his friend John Cage to drive along a piece of paper to make a long black wheelprint, to creating a computer-controlled mud fountain. Yet out of his ingenuity came the profundity of his most enduring works, the combines and silkscreens with their rich textures and suggestiveness, and powerful Dante-inspired drawings.
Sooni Taraporevala
Film-maker, author and photographer Taraporevala presents images of life in her home city of Mumbai since 1976. Thirty years in one of the world’s most populous and socially complex places are documented here with the humane poetry of black-and-white photography.
The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, to early 2018
Josiah McElheny
Paintings that explode from the wall in crystalline structures, drawings that seem to float in glass, and a film based on a 1912 story by the German author Paul Scheerbart feature in this multi-dimensional exhibition. McElheny takes on the history of imperialism and the complexities of modern physics via intellectually omnivorous art that chews over big ideas.
