Category Archives: Exhibitions

Trump asks Smithsonian to install ‘Colossus statue’ of George Washington with exhibit

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Trump, again trying to curate museum, says exhibit would stay until 2032 for 300th anniversary of Washington’s birth

Donald Trump asked the Smithsonian Institution to install a 30ft “Colossus statue” of George Washington outside the National Museum of American History, and a special exhibit honoring the nation’s first president, in a social media post late on Friday.

The president requested that the exhibit continue through February 2032, the 300th anniversary of Washington’s birth.

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Artist delights in beautiful ‘mess’ and dead trees of England’s rewilding sites

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Rebecca Howard spent two years visiting projects and painting landscapes that feature in West Sussex exhibition

Rewilding areas do not usually conform to traditional notions of beauty in England’s green and pleasant land. Detractors may bewail the beaver-felled trees, untidy scrub, deadwood, weeds, mud and “mess”.

But a new exhibition highlights the aesthetic delights that can be discovered on rewilding sites where fungi grows on dying trees, water buffalo gather in new wetlands and brown-watered beaver pools flood once-desiccated fields.

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Egyptian queen’s 673-diamond necklace stolen in Vienna smash-and-grab raid

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Police hunt two suspects after historic 200-carat piece is snatched from Austrian museum during opening hours

Austrian police are hunting two men alleged to have stolen a 200-carat platinum necklace encrusted with 673 diamonds that was on loan to a museum in Vienna and once belonged to Egyptian royalty.

Authorities in the capital released pictures of the suspects captured by security cameras during the heist at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), amid a rash of spectacular smash-and-grab thefts from European cultural institutions.

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Freddie Mercury’s ‘splendid things’ to go on display at V&A

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Eight costumes spanning Queen frontman’s career will feature in a free trail developed with his former fiancee

Eight famous costumes worn by Freddie Mercury, including the outfit featured on the cover of Queen’s debut album and the catsuit from the video for Bohemian Rhapsody, are to go on display at the V&A in London this autumn to mark what would have been the singer’s 80th birthday.

Freddie Mercury | Splendid Things, a free trail developed with Mercury’s former fiancee and close friend Mary Austin, will run from 24 October 2026 to 17 January 2027. Austin is lending seven of the looks, which span Mercury’s career from the 1970s to his final years.

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Durham art gallery opens with works by Tracey Emin and Steve McQueen

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The Light aims to bring art of international significance to north-east England

Works by Tracey Emin, Steve McQueen and Olafur Eliasson have gone on display at a new contemporary art gallery and museum in north-east England which aims to show works of international significance.

The Light is a £17m redevelopment of a museum in Durham that closed 10 years ago to considerable local uproar.

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New LS Lowry exhibition aims to demolish ‘naive and uncultured’ myth

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Gallery director says collection of 140 paintings will offer a more balanced view of Manchester painter’s work

A new exhibition of work by LS Lowry will “bust a few myths” about the Mancunian artist, who the show’s co-curator says is still wrongly derided for being “naive and uncultured”.

LS Lowry: the Theatre of Life features 140 paintings by the artist, who captured working-class life in the industrial north-west of England during the early and mid 20th century.

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Test runs and a shock-absorbing cage: how Bayeux tapestry was moved to UK

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Medieval artwork safely delivered to British Museum before display from September in carefully controlled conditions

The Bayeux tapestry has survived myriad perils, from cathedral fires to its potential destruction for use as wagon covers. Now, with the embroidery about to be displayed in a blockbuster London exhibition, experts must contend with a host of more insidious dangers.

The arrival of the tapestry at the British Museum in the small hours of Friday morning was a historic moment – albeit less dramatic than the landing of William the Conqueror it portrays.

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‘We were broke, but fascinated by freedom’: exhibition showcases East German artist Gabriele Stötzer

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Show at Martin Gropius Bau gallery in Berlin is biggest ever celebration of an East German female artist in a state museum

Gabriele Stötzer remembers the days when she had to decide: “Am I buying a sausage, or film for my Super 8 camera?”

Stötzer was one of the most radical artists in communist East Germany, and her desire to create was born in defiance of and in spite of the material conditions and oppressive restrictions of the GDR regime.

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Tenderness and Rage: how groups affected by HIV found power, comfort and joy in Aids activism

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London exhibition explores how care and protest improved rights and dignity of those living with disease

From photos of a mass “die-in” by Aids activists in Trafalgar Square, London, in the 1990s to plushie breasts, lips and vulvas hand-stitched by HIV-positive women, a new exhibition explores how care and protest have improved the rights and dignity of those living with the disease.

The show, Tenderness and Rage, at the Wellcome Collection, London, reflects how different groups affected by HIV, including gay men, women of colour, and refugees in the UK and around the world have found power, solidarity, comfort and joy in Aids activism and support services.

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‘Come in for one minute’: exhibition showing horrors of 7 October attacks opens in London

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Commemoration of atrocity at Nova music festival confronts those who deny its gravity, says Elkana Bohbot

Two police vans waited expectantly near the front entrance. Officers patrolled the pavements while suited security men with ear pieces stood stern-faced, casting suspicious looks at those approaching. The location in east London had not been disclosed until that morning but no chances were being taken.

It was not for a visiting dignitary or even an embassy of a country in conflict that all this was deemed necessary but the Nova exhibition, a commemoration of the 378 people massacred at a music festival on 7 October along with the 44 taken as hostages and the 19 of those who died in Hamas captivity.

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Printmaking skills of Manet, Van Gogh and more celebrated in Bath show

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Exhibition explores how artists mainly known for their paintings helped revive a skill that had fallen out of fashion

They may be best known for their vibrant oil paintings but an exhibition opening in the English West Country is focusing instead on the subtle printmaking skills of artists such as Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.

More than 50 prints created mainly by impressionists, post-impressionists and cubists are going on display at the Holburne Museum in Bath.

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Lost ‘cloud’ of artist who wrapped the Reichstag to be created in UK gallery

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Exclusive: Scale model found in Christo’s studio leads to London realisation of internally lit Air Package on a Ceiling

Christo once wrapped up the Reichstag, suspended a curtain across a Colorado valley and covered up the Pont Neuf in Paris. Now, six years after the artist’s death, a London gallery is to create a monumental installation he designed in 1968, using a detailed scale model and drawings that had been presumed lost until their chance discovery.

Christo had imagined a vast, internally illuminated suspended form, like a cloud, but technical constraints meant the plan was never brought to fruition.

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‘The violence of racist tyranny’: African Guernica goes on display alongside Picasso masterpiece

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Piece by late South African artist Dumile Feni is part of new series History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, But It Does Rhyme

On the second floor of the Reina Sofía, in the very spot where Picasso’s Guernica was first exhibited when it arrived in the Madrid museum 34 years ago, there now hangs a smaller, near-namesake of the Spanish artist’s most famous work.

While African Guernica, which was drawn by the late South African artist Dumile Feni in 1967, may lack the scale of Picasso’s masterpiece, its depth, anger and unnerving juxtaposition of man and beast, light and dark, and innocence and cruelty, are every bit as disturbing.

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Records of deadly 1934 pit explosion in Wrexham to be displayed near site

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Documents include letters calling for recovery of bodies and a falsified safety log that was part of a cover-up

Poignant records relating to a colliery disaster in the 1930s that lay unseen for decades at the National Archives are being put on display close to the site of the mine in north Wales.

Among the documents at the west London archive are petitions and emotional letters calling for the bodies trapped in the underground explosion at the pit in Gresford to be recovered. Despite the heartfelt entreaties, the vast majority remain there.

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UK bans Israeli officials from flagship defence show

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Israel says Britain’s decision to exclude it from military weapons showcase is a ‘regrettable act of discrimination’

The UK has banned Israeli officials from attending the country’s flagship defence event next month.

Israeli industry, including UK subsidiaries of Israeli companies, will be able to attend London’s Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI) show in September but the UK government will not invite representatives of the Israeli government to the major industry event.

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London museum tells forgotten story of African and Indian troops in second world war

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National Army Museum’s Beyond Burma exhibition examines stories of soldiers from Britain’s colonies

The forgotten story of African and Indian troops who fought in south Asia against Japanese forces during the second world war and who have largely been omitted from the official history is to be brought to life in a London exhibition.

The National Army Museum’s Beyond Burma: Forgotten Armies show includes rare items from Indian and African soldiers who toiled in some of the harshest conditions seen anywhere during the conflict.

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Early Beatles photos by Paul McCartney to go on show in London

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Portraits taken in early 60s reveal intimate moments before band’s fame became all-consuming

A collection of photographs taken by Paul McCartney when the Beatles were on the brink of global stardom are to be shown in an exhibition that sheds light on intimate moments as the group first experienced fame.

Rearview Mirror: Liverpool-London-Paris, which opens at Gagosian in London on 28 August, features 18 shots taken by the singer-songwriter during late 1963 after the release of the Beatles’ first album, and early 1964 as they travelled to the US.

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‘Like an academic’: private papers reveal John le Carré’s attention to detail

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Exclusive: Oxford’s Bodleian libraries to put archive items on display for first time, celebrating spy author’s ‘tradecraft’

The extent of John le Carré’s meticulous research and attention to detail are among insights into his working methods that will be revealed when the master of spy thrillers’ private archive goes on display for the first time this autumn.

His classic cold war-era espionage novels have sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and inspired acclaimed films and television adaptations.

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‘Smoke and confusion’: exhibition points out Jane Austen’s true thoughts on Bath

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Georgian city is not shy of milking its links with the author, but actually she was not happy during her time there

The city of Bath does not fight shy of promoting its Jane Austen connections, tempting in visitors from around the world by organising tours, balls, afternoon teas and writing and embroidery workshops inspired by the author. If you have the inclination, you can buy souvenirs ranging from Jane Austen Top Trumps to a Mr Darcy rubber duck.

But in this, the 250th anniversary year of her birth, an exhibition is being launched daring to point out that in truth Austen wasn’t terribly happy during the five years she lived in the city.

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Charles Dickens’s ‘sliding doors’ moment: how a cold turned an aspiring thespian into a writer

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An exhibition explores the authors’ love of theatre, highlighting the dramatic impact of his works

As a sliding doors moment, it leads to arguably one of the greatest “what if?” questions in literary history. Passionate about the theatre, Charles Dickens, then just 20, wrote to the famous Covent Garden theatre actor-manager George Bartley seeking an audition, saying he believed he “had a strong perception of character and oddity, and a natural power of reproducing in my own person what I observed in others”.

Bartley responded saying they were producing “the Hunchback” and arranging an appointment. Dickens planned to take his sister, Fanny, to accompany him singing on the piano.

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