Exhibition of the week
The Weight of Words
A look at the relationship between poetry and sculpture starring Doris Salcedo, Tim Etchells, Shilpa Gupta and more.
• Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, until 26 November
Also showing
Tim Shaw
A bronze sculpture of a man trying to escape a burning tank in Iraq portrays the horrors of war in our own century.
• Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, permanent from 7 July
Tino Sehgal: This Entry
The participatory social artist compares creativity in art and sport.
• Whitworth Art Gallery and National Football Museum, Manchester, until 16 July
Joshua Reynolds
A close look at this 18th-century portraitist, neoclassical art theorist and first president of the Royal Academy, to mark his 300th birthday.
• Kenwood House, London, from 13 July until 19 November
Holly Hendry
A surreal art garden on the roof of Temple underground station with aquatic forms that seem to have emerged from the nearby Thames.
• Temple tube station, London, until 1 September 2024
Image of the week
The £13m revamp of the former Museum of Childhood in east London and its rebranding as Young V&A leaves it a lighter, brighter magical toyshop. With two very different architectural practices involved, De Matos Ryan and AOC, our critic found it: “serious and playful at once, sophisticated and direct. Cognoscenti may spot references to postmodernists Hans Hollein and Michael Graves. The space works with qualities that architects learn about in college – scale, materials, light, form. The target audience, meanwhile, won’t know what the word ‘architecture’ means, but they’ll probably respond to the touch of the many different surfaces, to the glitter and colour, to the climbable and crawlable constructions.” Read the full article
What we learned
Yayoi Kusama has opened a Garden of Earthly Delights in Manchester
Hipgnosis changed the look of album covers for ever
Albrecht Dürer’s meticulous images remain eerily modern 500 years on
African photographers are rewriting the rules
A 40-year retrospective of Carrie Mae Weems honours a momentous talent
Artists Liberation Front co-founder John Dugger has died aged 74
The starchitecture of the Vitra Campus in Germany has a very modest new addition
Peckham in London is showing off its Nigerian side
Masterpiece of the week
The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil by Claude Monet, 1872
Dreaming of rural escape as the summer settles in? Look no further than Monet’s eternal idyll. Here the painter, who would soon become notorious as one of that iconoclastic gang the impressionists, shows his peace-loving side. This golden, shimmering view is as formal and calm as the classical landscapes of Claude and Poussin. They worked in the 17th century and this painting is a reminder that when Monet, Renoir and their fellow impressionists turned to landscape they were following a very well established French artistic path. But Monet had his reasons for stressing tranquility. Just recently France had been rocked by war and revolution when Prussia invaded in 1870. Monet himself escaped the war in London. Now in 1872 he is home, hoping for a bit of tranquility.
• National Gallery, London
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