Public artwork of the week
Bottle of Notes by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen
Middlesbrough’s excellent MIMA remains closed like all galleries, but if you’re out for a walk you can see the city’s engaging sculpture created in homage to local boy Captain Cook by one of America’s great modern artists.
• Centre Square, Middlesbrough.
Also showing
Avebury Stone Circle
The neolithic artworks that surround the village of Avebury are visible from many vantage points and once experienced will never be forgotten.
• Avebury, Wiltshire.
Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice
This monument to ordinary people who gave up their lives for others is startling and unforgettable. Instead of another statue, the Victorian sculptor and painter GF Watts devised a wall of ceramic plaques recording the selfless bravery of servants who ran into burning houses and apprentices who dived into rivers.
• Postman’s Park, London.
Do-ho Suh’s Bridging Home, London
This replica of the artist’s childhood home in Korea floats uncannily over a city street, balanced in the middle of a pedestrian bridge, confronting anonymous office blocks with an intimate fragile dwelling.
• Wormwood Street, London.
Corpus Clock
There’s a timely sense of the uncanny about this elaborate Einsteinian clock on the outside of Corpus Christi College with its sinister grasshopper that marks reality’s mad leaps.
• 58 Trumpington Street, Cambridge.
Image of the week
Our new normal walk, by Gilbert & George
Renowned artist couple Gilbert & George have famously always fed their imaginations by strolling around London. Now confined to home by lockdown, they have created an Instagram diary of their new routines for exercise and relaxation – tinged with their customary humour.
What we learned
Rachel Whiteread said artists are struggling to work amid Covid uncertainty
W Eugene Smith highlighted the heroic work of a Colorado media in the 1940s …
… and a vital art project about health workers shines a light on today’s frontline
Eleven leading photographers have documented their confinement …
… and Guardian readers captured coronavirus-themed street art
Forget Titian! Why this might be digital art’s big moment
Our Great British art quiz visited Exeter, Dundee, Norfolk and London
From Brexit vases to Beyoncé’s butterfly ring – the V&A’s director shares his favourite artefacts …
… and the V&A is to collect signs made during lockdown
Rowan Moore took a virtual tour of world’s top 10 new architecture projects
The museums of Europe have begun reopening their doors – what’s it like seeing masterpieces anew?
Critic Hal Foster weighs in on oppositional art in the age of Trump
Portrait of studious woman revealed to be of Millicent Fawcett
Coronation Street double acts are reunited on Royal Mail stamps
Photos of a royal scandal-diverting PR trip got their first online showing
Architect Frank Matcham’s plush theatres are the work of a stage visionary
‘Hyper-resolution’ image of Rembrandt painting aids restoration restart
Justine Kurland spent five years following American girls in the wild
Masterpiece of the week
Mummy Portrait of an Unknown Woman, ancient Egyptian, about AD160-170
This woman is as alive and immediate as if she were taking a selfie – but this painting comes from the covering of her wrapped mummy, perfectly preserved in Egypt’s dry sand. What an amazing portrait. She looks at you with fierce intelligence from big, dark eyes. She’s electrically characterful, proud of the wealth embodied in her fine earrings, avid for life – but if the picture is accurate, she died young. Egyptian art and the death rituals it served were millennia old when this was painted. Egypt was part of the Roman empire and in this portrait its ancient customs merge with a very Roman interest in depicting individuals. The result is more haunting than any mummy horror film.
• At the British Museum, London.
Don’t forget
To follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign.
Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter
If you don’t already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here.
