Features

After six years of work, the city’s most singular museum is reopening. But while it is once again filled with wonders, there are also questions to be answered

The Svaneti Museum of History and Ethnography is a testament to the local people’s long-standing determination to preserve their cultural heritage

This elegant Japanese tradition with earthy origins has long provided Japanese printmakers with rewardingly risqué material

A remarkable Renaissance roundel from Mantua and a painting by Lavinia Fontana are among this month’s highlights

Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ was the best-loved poem of the 18th century – and has proved a lure to illustrators ever since

The artist rarely showed the drawings that made his revolutionary paintings possible, but the Met is finally putting them centre stage

Lorenzo Tiepolo has long languished in the shadow of his much more famous father and brother – but his was a very singular talent

A major exhibition across 18 venues is highlighting the rich variety of Islamic art. But can it stem the growing prejudices in French society?

The ‘pitman painter’s scenes of men down the mines conjure up a lost world of herculean effort

The Arts and Industries Building on the National Mall has finally reopened – and it remains as forward-looking as ever

It was hard to be indifferent to the designer’s larger-than-life creations, which is exactly what he wanted

‘The Blue Boy’ is heavily influenced by Van Dyck’s grand manner. But what did the artist mean by dressing up his young subject in this way?

The rebuilt Prussian palace is finally open, but the debate about how – and whether – it should house collections from Asia and Africa rumbles on

The firm of Fabergé is synonymous with the Russian Imperial family, but its fabulous baubles soon became a must-have for elites across Europe

The best Scotch baronial buildings epitomise the sophisticated planning required by a mid Victorian household. But have they had their day?

Plus: Man attacks BBC‘S Eric Gill statue with a hammer and Victoria Siddall steps down as global director of Frieze Fairs

A modern-day Salon des Refusés saves and celebrates unrealised and unwanted artworks in digital form

A dislike of frills can signal much more sinister tendencies – or that’s what a BBC adaptation of J.P. Delaney’s thriller ‘The Girl Before’ would have us believe

From a caper about the pensioner who swiped a Goya to the memoir of a curator who came in from the cold – the must-see movies and a first reading list for art lovers

Burials uncovered in East Kazakhstan have revealed the nomadic Saka to be as skilled in gold-working as they were in horsemanship and war

Rachel Cohen spends some quality time with a series of installations and exhibitions by MacArthur Award-winners set throughout the city