Search results for: first look

Ateneum Art Museum

Finnish lines – a new look for the Ateneum in Helsinki

Finland’s most important art museum has been completely rehung just as questions of culture and national identity are on everyone’s mind

14 Apr 2023

Vermeer’s very strange way of looking at things

The painter’s works invite us to marvel at the mysteries of perception – and we will never see so many of them in the same place again

28 Mar 2023

‘You have to look into the past to move forward’ – an interview with Zineb Sedira

The French-Algerian artist explains her fascination with the activism of the 1960s and why, for her, the personal really is political

30 Jan 2023

First-class results in Cambridge

A new library at Magdalene College and a dining hall at Homerton make the most of modern craftsmanship

30 Jan 2023
The Interview Dana Schutz

Sculpture from the scrapyard and Simone Leigh’s first museum survey – contemporary art highlights in 2023

Exhibitions to look forward to include some major retrospectives and shows that pick up where the Venice Biennale left off

30 Dec 2022
Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt (detail; 1876), Georges Clairin.

The major art anniversaries to look out for in 2023

Joshua Reynolds, Sarah Bernhardt and Pablo Picasso are all being celebrated in anniversary events this year

28 Dec 2022
Christie’s Paul Allen

The first billion-dollar auction? Plus ça change…

The sale of masterpieces at Christie’s shattered records – but has it really changed the art market?

11 Nov 2022

What can we learn from looking at doubles?

An exhibition examining ‘doubles’ in modern art at National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. ends up a little out of focus

26 Sep 2022

Wolfgang Tillmans: To Look Without Fear

MoMA presents the first US survey of the photographer’s intimate portraits of contemporary life

2 Sep 2022
Exterior view of the ‘Borderlands’ exhibition, including Enrique Martínez Celaya’s There-bound (2021), at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.

Progress report – the Huntington reckons with its past and looks to the future

The Gilded Age institution renowned for its Eurocentric holdings is re-evaluating its history and winning over a wider audience

27 Jun 2022
British filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien (b.1960), photographed in 2021. Photo: Anne-Katrin Purkiss; © Royal Academy of Arts, London

‘You look for your own art history’ – an interview with Isaac Julien

The artist tells Apollo how his new film for the Barnes Foundation weaves together restitution debates with the history of the Harlem Renaissance

30 May 2022

A closer look at William Kent’s gilded ceilings at Houghton Hall

With a new book dedicated to William Kent’s Houghton Hall ceilings, Apollo takes a closer look at the depiction of Venus in the Green Velvet Drawing Room

30 May 2022
Isamu Noguchi sculpture

Child’s play – why artists are looking to childhood for inspiration

Artists have long embraced playful behaviour – not just as a form of creative release, but also as a way of dealing with conflict and taboo

30 May 2022
Meat-shaped stone, China, Qing dynasty. National Palace Museum, Taipei

The art of making stone look good enough to eat

Rocks that resemble food may not be appetising exactly, but they can certainly be a feast for the eyes

4 Mar 2022

Arty books and films to look out for in 2022

From a caper about the pensioner who swiped a Goya to the memoir of a curator who came in from the cold – the must-see movies and a first reading list for art lovers

7 Jan 2022
Reflection with Two Children (Self-portrait)

The major art anniversaries to look out for in 2022

The year ahead brings significant anniversaries and, consequently, blockbuster exhibitions for Lucian Freud, Piet Mondrian and Rosa Bonheur

2 Jan 2022
Echo (detail; 1952), Yildiz Moran. Yildiz Moran Archive

Looking for the lost women of modern Turkish art

In Istanbul, an exhibition of works created by women between 1850 and 1950 has made some impressive finds

1 Nov 2021
After a fashion – Mary Quant on the Brompton Road, Knightsbridge, in October 1960. Photo: Cyril Maitland/Mirrorpix/Getty Images

How Mary Quant defined the look of Swinging London

Sadie Frost’s documentary about the designer is hardly original, but then Quant didn’t actually invent the miniskirt – and it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of her genius

27 Oct 2021
Subway, from the series One Hundred New Views of Tokyo (1931), Senpan Maekawa.

For the real Tokyo story, look beyond kooky stereotypes of the city

An ambitious show at the Ashmolean Museum looks past the familiar clichés to the real city and its artists 

5 Oct 2021
Stained-glass window for the Salon Arabe in the Sursock Museum, in the workshop of Maison Tarazi.

A year after the blast, Beirut is in crisis – but look hard, and there are small signs of hope

With chaos in Lebanon and Beirut in crisis, the resilience of the city’s artists and heritage workers is something of a miracle

30 Jul 2021

How Britain’s first prime minister became a sitting target for satirists

Robert Walpole was a supreme political operator – but his power and personal wealth made him a splendid butt of satire, too

2 Apr 2021
Will the real William Shakespeare please stand up? The effigy above the playwright’s grave in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Is this what Shakespeare really looked like?

A dumpy effigy in a church in Stratford-upon-Avon has been mocked for centuries, but new research claims it’s the most accurate likeness of the playwright there is

23 Mar 2021
Playing false: Glafira Rosales, in a still from ‘Made You Look’.

Made You Look – a true crime doc that should terrify art collectors

The knavery and folly of the rarefied art world are writ large in a documentary that picks over the Knoedler forgery scandal

16 Mar 2021
Left: Addie Card, 12 Years Old, Spinner in cotton mill, North Pownal, Vermont (1910), Lewis Hine. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Right: Digital colourisation of Lewis Hine’s photograph of Addie Card by Marina Amaral. Photo: © Marina Amaral

Does the past look better in black and white?

Photographers and film-makers have long added colour to their images – but does the current craze for colourisation create a false impression of olden times?

11 Mar 2021