Exhibition of the week
We Will Walk
This timely exhibition explores a forgotten history of African American resistance. In 1960s Alabama, yard exhibitions and homely assemblages gave the civil rights movement an artistic punch. Bessie Harvey, Emmer Sewell and Thornton Dial are among the artists.
• Turner Contemporary, Margate, 22 July until 6 September.
Also showing
Michael Armitage
The Kenyan-British painter who stars in the Whitechapel’s Radical Figures reveals his sensitive, acutely observed working drawings.
• White Cube online viewing room, until 16 August.
Picasso and Paper
Marvel at the sheer creative abundance of the 20th century’s greatest artist.
• Royal Academy, London, until 2 August.
Alex Urie
Big but sensitive paintings that hint at images through wafts of abstraction.
• Peer Gallery, London, 16 July until 29 August.
Mushrooms
This entertaining exhibition is supposedly about the mysterious biology of fungi but seems fixated on their hallucinogenic properties, with a narcotic artwork by Carsten Höller and gorgeous collages by Cy Twombly.
• Somerset House, London, 16 July until 13 September.
Image of the week
Sculptor Marc Quinn revealed his statue of a Black Lives Matter protester in Bristol. It depicts Jen Reid re-enacting the black-power salute she made on the plinth of Edward Colston’s statue in early June, just after protesters pulled it down. Our writer, who was at the dawn unveiling, told the full story of its creation – and spoke to Reid. (The sculpture was later removed by Bristol city council.) Lanre Bakare, meanwhile, reported on whether Quinn’s work was a stunt or a gesture of genuine allyship.
What we learned
Gilbert and George quit the Royal Academy over dashed hopes for a show
Kensington’s big three museums will reopen in August
Magnum introduced a fresh generation of photographic talents
Han Cao gave old portraits a Covid-mask flourish
Are the environmental costs of skyscrapers too high?
The Helsinki photo festival is in full swing
Theatre designers are busy reshaping their post-lockdown stage
‘I spent lockdown solving art’s grisliest mystery’
Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo enlivened Dior’s latest fashions
Kabul’s artists are battling for the streets
Designers have got into lockdown DIY
Hettie Juddah explored a seriously silly history of art and comedy colliding
A new exhibition shows another side of celebrated war photographer Don McCullin
Photographer Jon Nazca glimpsed Spain without bulls …
… while Laura Pannack hung out with kids in a Black Country wasteland
A Pissarro painting comes to the National Gallery in a tax windfall
A rediscovered erotic gramophone by Óscar Domínguez goes on display
The British Library has acquired Mervyn Peake’s “visual archive”
Our great British art quiz visited Wolverhampton, Leicester, the Jerwood Collection, Preston and Rugby
We remembered I ❤️ NY graphic designer Milton Glaser …
… and architect Michael Glickman
Masterpiece of the week
Landscape With Fisherman’s House, c1497, by Albrecht Dürer
You can see the genius of Dürer at its most intimate in this lovely watercolour of a landscape just outside his home city, Nuremberg. The pale fire of a low sunset, brooding masses of blue-grey cloud, and tawny matted land reflected in brown water create a melancholy mood that anticipates Romanticism. Dürer’s watercolours are not just some of the first great landscapes in European art, but among the most moving ever.
• British Museum, London.
Don’t forget
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