fri 13/12/2024

museums

Second Spring review - intriguing film about a woman with an unusual form of dementia

“We want you to see a doctor. You’ve changed, and not in a good way,” says Kathy’s underwhelming husband, Tim (Matthew Jure).We don’t know what Kathy (Cathy Naden, making her film debut) was like before, but as things stand she seems to be following...

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Art for the Nation: Sir Charles Eastlake, National Gallery

We are still acknowledging our 21st-century debts to the energy, curiosity, determination and passion for discovery of a host of Victorian polymaths, and here is another. Sir Charles Eastlake (1793-1865) was a painter, scholar, author, collector and...

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The Holburne Museum, Bath: In With the New

Lightness is everything: the refurbished Georgian museum newly clad in glass

Gleaming, shimmering, full of pizzazz, glitz and unashamed bling, although of the 18th-century sort, as befits its role as the most cheerfully mixed up and glittering show of baubles in Bath, the Holburne Museum reopened in May after three years...

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theartsdesk in Cairo: Old Bones, New Coffins

The Egyptian Government is investing in the arts, which would normally be a cause for celebration. However, in building the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation, it feels like the country’s cultural budget is being spent on another new display...

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Behind the Scene at the Museum: The Staging of the Diaghilev Exhibition

The show's curator Jane Pritchard revealed this wonderful kitchen story in a unique walk-round with theartsdesk this week. Her two-year hunt ranged from Diaghilev's passport to glorious Nijinsky costumes, from the Ballets Russes accounts book to...

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theartsdesk in Istanbul: Salzburg, Here We Come

A traditional melting-pot: 'Istanbul would lose its identity if it became too local.'

At a sprawling car plant in the suburbs of north-eastern Istanbul mechanics are busy repairing camshafts and dynamos, applying blow torches to the undercarriages of a range of luxury cars and retouching paintwork. Visitors to the building are met by...

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Behind the Scenes at the Museum, BBC Four

Errol Simister from the British Commercial Vehicle Museum, Leyland, Lancashire

Television schedules are set months in advance – susceptible only to royal fatalities or political earthquakes (as would-be viewers of EastEnders found out the other night) – but the timing of Behind the Scenes at the Museum could not be more...

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The Printed Image in China, British Museum

The British Museum’s current exhibition of 15th-century works on paper, Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings, explores the increasing importance of the preparatory sketch in the development of western art. Central to that...

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Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings, British Museum

This superb exhibition of Italian Renaissance drawings, featuring 100 works and chosen from the outstanding graphic collections of the Uffizi and the British Museum, explores the evolution of the preparatory sketch in the 15th century. We learn how...

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Quilts 1700-2010, Victoria & Albert Museum

This 18th-century bedcover was probably a professional commission, yet amateur examples are just as impressive

The notion of women’s work has undergone a revolution, and yet that revolution has, in many ways, come comfortably full circle. We may now celebrate the work of generations of women who, limited to the domestic realm, were perhaps also liberated by...

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Boxing Day Bloat: theartsdesk recommends

The morning after the day before has dawned. If you're not inclined to join the shopping queues, theartsdesk is happy to suggest alternatives. Our writers recommend all sorts of cultural things you could get up to in the next week.See Wicked. This...

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The Museum of Everything, Primrose Hill

The art world has never been unself-aware – its navel is deeper and more gazed-at than almost any other art form. So what happens when you bring artists unaware of the art world into the contemplated and contemplating fold? The Museum of Everything...

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