Art and design

Architecture: Rowan Moore’s five best projects of 2024

A front garden makeover with dinosaurs, a playful addition to a Scottish castle and the latest from Shard architect Renzo Piano all caught the eye

Rowan Moore

22, Dec, 2024 @3:00 PM

Art: Laura Cumming’s 10 best shows of 2024

Black art moved centre stage, sculpture couldn’t keep still, Francis Alÿs captured the power of child’s play – but the year belonged to Van Gogh

Laura Cumming

22, Dec, 2024 @1:00 PM

Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami review – the opposite of refinement

The Tokyo-born pop artist juxtaposes ancient art, modern politics and his own cartoon logos to surprisingly anodyne effect

Laura Cumming

22, Dec, 2024 @9:00 AM

The big picture: another Christmas rolls around…

The most wonderful time of the year couldn’t be more manufactured in Al Barry’s amusing shot of Santa heads on a conveyer belt in 1955

Tim Adams

22, Dec, 2024 @7:00 AM

Unpeeled tomatoes and barn conversions: Nicky Haslam reveals what’s ‘common’ this year

Instagram release of tea towel featuring what the UK designer ‘finds common’ has become an annual ritual

Morwenna Ferrier

21, Dec, 2024 @8:00 AM

Pirates invade Falmouth, camels trek London and Aus goes gaga for Kusama – the week in art

Yayoi lands in Melbourne, the Silk Road runs through the British Museum and corsairs real and fictional dock in Cornwall – all in your weekly dispatch

Jonathan Jones

20, Dec, 2024 @12:00 PM

There’s nothing meek or mild about childbirth: why have male artists sanitised the Virgin Mary?

She may be the most painted woman in history, almost always portrayed as subservient, pure, chaste – and never actually giving birth. Thank goodness female artists like Paula Rego and Esther Strauss provided a reality check

Katy Hessel

20, Dec, 2024 @11:38 AM

A joyful moment on the isle of Jura: Hannah Maule-ffinch’s best photograph

‘Grace has just jumped off the swing and her hair is all over the place but she doesn’t care. It’s a moment that encapsulates everything freeing about living on the island’

Interview by Chris Broughton

18, Dec, 2024 @4:25 PM

The best art and architecture of 2024

Our critics’ highlights include magnificently rough portraits by the late Frank Auerbach, Caravaggio’s final painting and a 1930s silo reborn as a museum of modern art

18, Dec, 2024 @6:00 AM

Hamad Butt review – the truncated brilliance of the most dangerous YBA

Butt emerged as one of the subtlest of the famous Goldsmiths generation, but he died too soon for his sly, oblique work to fully develop

Adrian Searle

17, Dec, 2024 @10:09 AM

Glynn Hugo obituary

Other lives: Suffolk potter who forged a career in the UK and internationally

Blake Morrison

16, Dec, 2024 @5:09 PM

Versailles: Science and Splendour review – blazing breakthroughs from stuffed rhinos to anal ops

Science Museum, London
Feats of hydraulic engineering, surgical innovations, midwifery machines … there was much more to the palace than Marie-Antoinette’s shepherdess cosplay