Apollo's wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories. Got a story for Rakewell? Email rakewell@apollomag.com. Follow @Rakewelltweets.

Matilda Wormwood as an astrophysicist, as imagined by Quentin Blake

Matilda at 30 – still top of the class and now standing up to Donald Trump

Three decades after the publication of Matilda, Roald Dahl’s heroine has been celebrated in new drawings – and with an unexpected sculpture

2 Oct 2018

Lots of bother… as Bez rigs Bargain Hunt

Plus: Rachel Whiteread’s near-miss with the Gruffalo and Mark E. Smith is immortalised on a chip shop

1 Oct 2018
Jeremy Wright MP.

UK culture secretary abandons his projection

Plus: a cannabis museum opens in Las Vegas, and Martin Parr on how Robert Mugabe informs his dress sense

27 Sep 2018

The collector who says he’s sending artists to the moon

Yusaku Maezawa has booked up Elon Musk’s first space flight for an art adventure

21 Sep 2018

Emmanuel Macron gets taken for a mug

Plus: a bizarre museum in North Korea and a top tip from Sarah Lucas for keeping your house safe

20 Sep 2018

Everything must glow – Nicky Wire is having his first solo show

The Manic Street Preachers bassist is showing mixed media works in Pembrokeshire – and he’s not the first bass-player to have a sideline in art

17 Sep 2018

Van Gogh in the shopping mall

Replicas of Van Gogh’s paintings are on a tour of major retail centres in the US. Plus: art on the loose in Toledo and Kanye goes back to school

16 Sep 2018

William Hogarth as you’ve never seen him before (played by Keith Allen)

The Shallow Grave actor is to play Hogarth in a new play in London. Plus Lucian Freud on Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Iggy Pop eats Andy Warhol’s hamburger

9 Sep 2018

How a Scottish chemist was immortalised in St Petersburg – by mistake

The city of St Petersburg seems to have commissioned a statue of the wrong man

9 Sep 2018

Art lovers fail to stump up for Farage

Nigel on canvas could have been yours for £25k at the Royal Academy this summer. The work went unsold

31 Aug 2018

David Beckham picks up the paintbrush

Plus: why a Trump teddy bear might be heading to a museum in Atlantic City

30 Aug 2018
A view of Brussels' Justice Palace (C). Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP) (Photo credit should read EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images

In Brussels, where the streets have new names

A competition to name 28 streets has come up with some surprisingly sensible and delightfully silly choices

24 Aug 2018
Sunrise at Stonehenge in June 2018. Photo: GEOFF CADDICK/AFP/Getty Images

A prehistoric DJ makes his debut at a neolithic monument

Paul Oakenfold is the first DJ to play a set at Stonehenge. Plus Alex Katz remembers the frank criticism of Frank O’Hara

22 Aug 2018

Your chance to own Rod Stewart’s sofa!

Rod Stewart is to sell part of his antiques collection. Plus art-shaming Kardashians and the V&A in knickers

17 Aug 2018

Soap and glory at the Uri Geller Museum

Uri Geller is to open a museum in Jaffa, Israel, next year – and his psychic powers, or at least an archaeological team, have led to a discovery on site

16 Aug 2018

Now it’s Cate Blanchett’s turn to spoof Marina Abramović 

Cate Blanchett is to play an Abramović-like artist in the mockumentary series Documentary Now!

11 Aug 2018

The artist who can’t get enough of the Coen brothers

Stephen Case is drawing every character from the Coen brothers’ films (and there are a lot of them)

7 Aug 2018

Battle of the bargains – Pulp and the Happy Mondays head on the antiques trail

Jarvis Cocker and Bez are to appear with bandmates from Pulp and the Happy Mondays in an episode of Bargain Hunt

5 Aug 2018

Art goes AWOL at the Palace of Westminster

Works go for a wander from the Parliamentary Art Collection, plus the rest of last week’s arty tittle-tattle

31 Jul 2018
The Descent from the Cross (1611–14; detail), Peter Paul Rubens.

How a not-so-rude Rubens fazed Facebook

The Facebook flesh police took umbrage at a painting by Rubens that features the crucified Christ in a loincloth

25 Jul 2018
Shiny Tim: Chalamet with a fruit basket

The Rake’s progress: last week in gossip

Timothée Chalamet becomes an art-world icon and Theaster Gates reveals he’s a fan of Harry Styles

24 Jul 2018

Sacha Baron Cohen sends up the art world (again)

In his new show, What is America?, the comedian foists some pungent art on a gallerist in California. It’s not the first time he’s fooled the art world

20 Jul 2018

Public art goes prehistoric in London

A pop-up monument to commemorate 25 years since the release of Jurassic Park has appeared in London – and yes, it’s terrifying

19 Jul 2018

The Rake’s progress: last week in gossip

Metro stations celebrate France’s footballers, the former Tory MP who met Andy Warhol, and a curious job advert from MoMA

17 Jul 2018