Exhibition of the week
Rachel Whiteread
The Sussex countryside is haunted by grey concrete ghosts and white mortuary slabs as Whiteread proves her vision is as melancholically powerful as ever.
Goodwood Art Foundation, West Sussex, 31 May to 2 November
Also showing
V&A East Storehouse
This enjoyable, utopian and generous reinvention of what a museum can be is an unmissable experience.
Opens 31 May, admission free
Hamad Butt: Apprehensions
Overdue retrospective of an artist who died young but left a body of uncanny, highly imaginative works.
Whitechapel Art Gallery, from 4 June to 7 September
Glenn Brown and Matthew Weir: The Sight of Something
Paintings and drawings that drip with dream-like memories and peculiar fantasies fit for Freud’s couch.
Freud Museum, London, from 4 June to 19 October
Leonardo Drew: Ubiquity II
Sprawling, chaotic installation that looks like the aftermath of a hurricane.
South London Gallery, until 7 September
Image of the week
The Ethiopian photographer Aïda Muluneh took a month-long road trip around the UK in a minivan, resulting in The Necessity of Seeing, 22 images that explore identity, gender and conflict. ‘It was like getting a crash course in UK history and contemporary life,” she says. Read about the project and see more of her pictures in our interview with her
What we learned
Lauded photographer Sebastião Salgado died at 81
Australian women played a vital role in forging international modernism
William Morris played a blinder with his football kit designs
Two Somerset villages hosted a bite-sized biennale with global reach
Black artist Tomashi Jackson explores how colour theory echoes discussions of race
Bob King’s theatre posters have helped turn shows into global hits
The Goodwood Art Foundation’s opening exhibition is a winning choice
after newsletter promotion
Cartoonist, illustrator, playwright and detective novelist Barry Fantoni has died
Banksy posted a new lighthouse work thought to be in Marseille
Masterpiece of the week
Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1523
The theologian and classical scholar Erasmus, the most famous and influential thinker of the north European Renaissance, poses in his study with a gentle almost-smile. Holbein paints him, not as an idealised or formal figure, but with an immediacy that makes you feel Erasmus is right there, patiently keeping his head in the position the painter requires, tolerantly spending this time being depicted. It has the same sense of an actual encounter between artist and sitter that you get in Holbein’s portrait drawings, especially his intimate studies of Thomas More and his family. That is no coincidence. Holbein knew Erasmus personally, not just professionally, when they both lived in Basel. When Holbein wanted to go to England, Erasmus wrote a letter of introduction to his friend More, who commissioned a family portrait on his recommendation. Holbein is often seen as a simple portraitist but this painting reveals him as part of an intellectual circle, mixing with More and Erasmus and influenced by their warm, witty humanism.
National Gallery, London
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