1 The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt
Nothing gets you closer to an artist than the intimacy of a drawing. To look at one by Da Vinci is to see his mind and hand at work. This exhibition of portrait drawings by some of the greatest ever artists is an encounter both with genius and the faces of people who lived up to 500 years ago. Hans Holbein’s drawings of Tudor Britons are spookily exact, like Renaissance photographs, while Rembrandt’s make you cry. The stuff of magic.
National Portrait Gallery, WC2, 13 July to 22 October
2 Whales: Beneath the Surface
Gigantic skeletons, skulls and even the preserved flipper of a blue whale are brought out of the Natural History Museum’s vast collection to reveal the secret lives of the biggest animals on Earth. It accompanies the museum’s unveiling this summer of a blue whale skeleton in its majestic central hall to replace Dippy the dinosaur, a shift in emphasis from extinct marvels to endangered wonders.
Natural History Museum, SW7, 14 July to 28 February
3 Dreamers Awake
Surrealism is one modernist movement of the 20th century that still echoes in the art of today. This exhibition explores its particular appeal for female artists interested in sexuality, gender and psychoanalysis. It sets women who belonged to the movement, including Leonora Carrington and Lee Miller, alongside the last of the surrealists, Louise Bourgeois, and contemporary artists including Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and Kiki Smith.
White Cube Bermondsey, SE1, to 17 September
4 Gregory Crewdson
One 21st-century artist who explores the dream stuff that surrealism first revealed is the US photographer Gregory Crewdson. His art is like a series of stills for a film you saw once and still have nightmares about. These uneasy suburban tableaux tell stories whose endings we don’t know and probably don’t want to know. A lyrical scenarist of everyday strangeness, Crewdson’s work will delight any fan of David Lynch or the Coen brothers.
The Photographers’ Gallery, W1, to 8 October
5 Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites
When the exiled Charles Stuart invaded England in 1745, he left a tangled legacy of romance and defeat. The Stuart “Jacobite” cause produced portraits, souvenirs and satires that are resurrected in this exhibition about an event that sowed seeds of nationalism for centuries to come.
National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, to 12 November
