Exhibition of the week
Lily Cole: Balls
A film about Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff, one of the most famous foundlings in literature, and how his fictional story resonates with the real lives of children who were left at London’s Foundling hospital in the 18th and 19th centuries.
• Foundling Museum, London, until 2 December.
Also showing
Lucy Skaer
This sensitive, meandering epic of an exhibition finds infinite poetry in old images of ferns and seaweed that Skaer translates into sculpture.
• Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, until 6 October.
Tacita Dean
The tragic weight of history and the inner spaces of the self haunt a powerful exhibition that mingles the painterly scrawls of Cy Twombly with a passion for cinema and found photographs.
• Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until 30 September.
Animals and Us
Tracey Emin, Joseph Beuys, JMW Turner and medieval manuscripts all feature in this enjoyable, sometimes moving survey of how artists engage with the animal world.
• Turner Contemporary, Margate, until 30 September.
Thomas Cole
The invention of the American landscape as a space of possibility and mystery by an immigrant from Lancashire in the early 19th century is the theme of this lovely exhibition.
• National Gallery, London, until 7 October.
Masterpiece of the week
The sensitive way artists in Renaissance Venice portrayed women is typified by this religious painting. Veronese’s model is posing as Helena, the mother of the ancient Roman emperor Constantine. She had a dream of the location of the True Cross and this most precious of relics turned out to be exactly where her vision told her it was. Veronese’s psychologically acute painting takes us inside her dream, to feel her religious passion and awe.
Image of the week
“The winners of the Oxford University rowing race would set a boat on fire and then – after a long, boozy dinner – jump through the blaze arm in arm,” recalls photographer Dafydd Jones. Read the full interview.
What we learned
Gretchen Róehrs’ apartment is colourful and filled with plants
What the best commissioned photography in the Observer in July looks like
How skyscrapers could ruin Britain’s historic skylines
Why Mark Wallinger’s humorous take on the Icarus myth encourages us to jump
Ai Weiwei’s Beijing studio has been razed by the authorities
How camera tricks can add rainbows to a bleak winter landscape
Orson Welles’ artworks reveal a different side to the film-maker
The glamour of Manhattan is out of reach in Evelyn Hofer’s shot of 1960s Queens
How Rachel Maclean’s month as a Birmingham Bullring bunny took its toll
That artist Sonia Boyce’s cultural highlights include a Dominican cinematic gem
Why there is fresh doubt over a $450m Leonardo painting
What a feminist pop-up museum in San Francisco looks like
Two artists’ perspectives on Australia’s anti-Chinese goldfield riots of 1861
Why millions of Chinese people want to be ‘spiritually Finnish’
How artists are challenging US-Mexico border relations
How to bring out our inner artist
What on-trend summer buys from museum gift shops look like
Black Panthers photographer Neil Kenlock’s best years
Bodies in a Birmingham exhibition could be executed prisoners
What some of the artwork at the African Passions exhibition looks like
How Beyoncé’s Vogue cover helped photographer Tyler Mitchell make history
Don’t forget
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