Features

The Ayurvedic Man (18th century), Nepal. Wellcome Collection, London

Who owns the heritage of traditional medicine?

The Wellcome Collection examines the history of ‘alternative’ medicine in the Indian subcontinent

The Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., which opened to the public in 1923

Charles Lang Freer’s gift to the American people

The Freer Gallery of Art has reopened its doors after a major refurbishment – and its founder deserves to be better known

28 Oct 2017
Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair

Cézanne’s radical portraiture

The painter’s approach to portraiture seems even more refreshing in the era of selfies

25 Oct 2017
Preliminary sketches for Alice i Underlandet (1966), Tove Jansson

How Tove Jansson reimagined Wonderland

The creator of the Moomins thought deeply about friendship in her Alice illustrations

21 Oct 2017
Take Five (2006), Tom Lamb

Digging down into mining art in County Durham

A new art gallery in Bishop Auckland celebrates the mining art of northern England

20 Oct 2017
Green Eye of the Pyramid (1993–97), Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová. Gift of Lisa Shaffer Anderson and Dudley Buist Anderson

Acquisitions of the month: September 2017

The Chrysler Museum celebrated its biggest gift in decades last month, while the Met acquired an extremely unusual coffin

5 Oct 2017
Looking for Oum Kalthum

The best of the Frieze week satellite events

From the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, to artists’ films at the BFI London Film Festival, there’s plenty to see outside of Regent’s Park

4 Oct 2017
A Hot Afternoon from 'The Last Days of Pompeii (2001), Eleanor Antin. Courtesy Richard Saltoun; © the artist

Wrestling with ancient Rome

Plus: Jack Whitten, Lisson Gallery’s 50th birthday, and Willem de Kooning’s late paintings

1 Oct 2017
Der beste Arzt (The Best Doctor; 1901), Alfred Kubin

The weird world of Alfred Kubin

Plus: Giorgio de Chirico’s writings, Enrico David’s sculptures, and reflections on W.G. Sebald

1 Oct 2017
Encyclopedic Geodes (2017), Damián Ortega. © Damián Ortega. Photo © White Cube (Ben Westoby)

Mashed-up encyclopaedias and dismantled watches

Plus: exhibitions of William Turnbull, Gino De Dominicis, and Tim Head

1 Oct 2017
Murder of Crows, (1999), Nicola Hicks, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery London and New York; © Nicola Hicks

Sinister statues and shadowy portraits

Plus: Brice Marden’s painstaking exploration of paint and an Italian protégé of Duchamp makes his debut in London

1 Oct 2017
The main bedroom at the villa of Francesco Federico Cerruti (1922–2015)

The Cerruti Collection – from closed volume to open book

The private collection of Francesco Federico Cerruti will prove a revelation when it goes on show in Turin

30 Sep 2017
A Harlot’s Progress, (1732), William Hogarth, Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2016

Fallen women and philanthropic reformers

Charitable efforts to end prostitution in 18th-century London took many forms, and left behind some remarkable objects

26 Sep 2017
Self-Portrait, (detail), (1719), Juan Rodriguez Juárez, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City,

How to look at Mexican Old Masters

The painters of New Spain have been misunderstood for centuries, but their work seems to be entering the mainstream at last

Still from Interregnum (2017), Adrian Paci. Courtesy kaufmann repetto, Milan, New York, Protocinema, Istanbul, New York

The exhibitions not to miss in Istanbul

With the Istanbul Biennial comes a host of exciting satellite exhibitions around the city

20 Sep 2017
John Ashbery. © Lynn Davis

John Ashbery: poet and artist

He’ll be remembered as a wordsmith, but Ashbery was also a brilliant art critic, collector, and artist with a gift for seeing

11 Sep 2017
The Primitive World (1857), Adolphe François Pannemaker. Courtesy of TASCHEN

Dinosaurs, dioramas, and the strange world of natural history

Paleoart and dioramas are designed to depict prehistory and the natural world – but what they really reveal are our own hopes and fears

7 Sep 2017
The Fortress of Königstein from the North (around 1756–58), Bernardo Bellotto. © The National Gallery, London

Acquisitions of the month: August 2017

This month’s acquisitions include a major collection of African art, a treasure from Queen Victoria’s personal collection, and a beautiful 18th-century landscape

1 Sep 2017
David Tang, at his office in Hong Kong, 15 November 2004. SAMANTHA SIN/AFP/Getty Images

Sir David Tang (1954–2017)

Tang was well known as an entrepreneur, a socialite, and a columnist; he was also a leading art collector and patron of the arts

31 Aug 2017
Installation view of Zeitnot (2017), Elisabetta Benassi. Photo: Andrea Rossetti; courtesy Collezione Maramotti; © Elisabetta Benassi

The contemporary vision of Collezione Maramotti

In the decade since it opened, the collection has emerged as a frontrunner among Italy’s contemporary cultural foundations

29 Aug 2017
Andre Malraux holding a Khmer sculpture, Photo: © Bettmann/Getty Images

The many lives of André Malraux

Collector, dealer, novelist, art historian, culture minister, conservationist – André Malraux’s influence still looms large

26 Aug 2017
Finding Fanon (2015–17), David Blandy and Larry Achiampong. Photo: Sam Garwood

Riding the wave: Plymouth’s burgeoning art scene

The city’s cultural ambitions are growing in the run-up to the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower voyage

24 Aug 2017
Rose bowl (c. 1938), Michael Cardew.

A potted history of studio ceramics

Studio potters continue to push the boundaries of their medium in Britain

19 Aug 2017

Narrating the past, collecting for the future

For Inti Ligabue collecting tribal and oceanic art is a way of telling stories about the cultures the objects come from

15 Aug 2017