If you keep an eye on contemporary art, or even half an eye, you will have noticed that black art is all the rage. At the National Portrait Gallery, The Time Is Always Now looks at how black artists are “reframing” the black figure. At the Royal Academy, Entangled Pasts, 1768-Now mixes up historic art with ruminations on colonialism […]

The pairing of Francesca Woodman with Julia Margaret Cameron that has arrived at the National Portrait Gallery is insisting on an equivalence between the two artists. The show is predicated on the belief that they share important artistic concerns. Unfortunately, they don’t. Not really. True, there are some superficial similarities. Both take black-and-white photographs using […]

Dear Nicholas Cullinan, First, congratulations on becoming the new director of the British Museum. And at 46 too. It’s the biggest job in our museum world and to have risen to the post so quickly is an impressively modern achievement. That said, I was surprised by your sudden departure from your present bailiwick at the […]

The acceptance of textiles as an important and lofty art form, rather than a lowly pastime with a domestic whiff to it, has been one of the big successes of the new art history, the one being rewritten by women. Textiles used to be out. Now they are in. Why? It’s all about opportunities. While […]

It’s July 20, 1969. Just after 8pm. A crucial moment in the space race. In a few minutes man will be landing on the moon. Or will he? You’ve been glued to the television all day. The school gave everyone a holiday to witness the big finale. In Houston Mission Control is buzzing with last-minute […]

The trouble with Angelica Kauffman, whose work has arrived at the Royal Academy in a well-meaning but irritating tribute, is that she was so uneven. She had her moments. There weren’t enough of them. The show that proves this sets out to do the opposite, of course. The ambition here was to shift Kauffman (1741-1807) […]

At the National Gallery a selection of proposals shortlisted for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square has gone on show. Since it started in 1998, the Fourth Plinth project has given London some feisty artistic sights and yanked the entire territory of public sculpture out of the past and into the present. A lot rides […]

Sargent and Fashion has roped together two exhibition subjects that are on the up. The first is John Singer Sargent himself (1856-1925). Having spent most of the 20th century being looked down on, this busy flatterer of the rich and pushy has re-emerged in recent decades as an artist of interest. The second upwardly mobile subject […]

The madcap and enchanting Yoko Ono exhibition that has arrived at Tate Modern is proof of many things. Most of them are pleasing. A few are regrettable. Certainly, that it has taken until now for Britain’s leading modern art venue to give Ono a chance is cast-iron proof, should we need any more, of the […]

As I made my way round the outrageously blobby and constantly surprising new show at the Hayward Gallery, I found myself thinking about the big public spaces in London that present contemporary art, and – naughty me! – ranking them from five to one. Because that’s the kind of man I am! Number five has […]