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Exhibition of the week
MC Escher
The great Dutch artist of eye-popping, brain-melting visual paradox gets a rich retrospective of his prints, with video, music and installations adding to the fun.
Somerset House, London, until 6 September
Also showing
Julio Le Parc: Light. Colour. Action.
A survey of this Argentinian artist who settled in Paris and became a provocative presence in the French art scene.
Tate Modern, London, from 11 June to 3 May 2027
Project a Black Planet
Chris Ofili, David Hammons and William Kentridge are among the stars of this grand survey of Pan-Africanism in art.
Barbican, London, from 11 June to 6 September
Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait
Andy Warhol was not the only artist who fixated on Marilyn’s image, this exhibition reminds you. (But he was the best.)
National Portrait Gallery, London, until 6 September
Glasgow International
Victoria Morton, Cathy Wilkes, Luke Fowler and more participate in this biennial event in Scotland’s art capital.
Opening weekend until 6 June, some exhibitions continue through summer.
Image of the week
Former US president Barack Obama’s $850m library in Chicago has been likened to ‘a Klingon prison’ by some critics, before its official opening this month. The library complex, in lakeside Jackson Park on the south of the city, was designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, and its central tower is intended to look like four hands coming together as if to protect a flame – a beacon of hope. Our architecture critic Oliver Wainwright offers his impressions of the Obama Presidental Center here.
What we learned
A forensic show in Berlin maps the 20th century’s first genocide
The largest display of Native North American art ever seen in Britain is arriving in Yorkshire
A wiggly ‘crinkle crankle’ wall has reinvented the Serpentine pavilion
New biennial klaxon! The first New York Upstate Photography Biennial opens
It’s London Gallery Weekend, and these are the 10 best shows to see
The Met is celebrating the art of the portrait
Jack White’s art is not as good as his music
A newly restored bull mosaic in Milan is missing its cojones
Roni Horn has created a show amid the ‘downfall of America’
Museum gift shops are the go-to shopping destination for anything arty
Australia’s Houses awards let you peek inside the country’s most covetable homes
Masterpiece of the week
A Peepshow With Views of the Interior of a Dutch House by Samuel van Hoogstraten, about 1655-60
MC Escher (see exhibition of the week) was fascinated by both optics and architecture, depicting impossible interiors and mirrored worlds. The results are subversive yet as an artist he’s deeply rooted in Dutch tradition, as this 17th century artistic toy for adults reveals. Hoogstraten has painted the interior of a house inside a wooden box: when you look through the peephole, it focusses your vision so that you seem to be looking into an actual three-dimensional domestic realm, taking in table and chairs, an open door, receding rooms, even a dog, as if you were contemplating these painted things in real, deep space. Hoogstraten uses perspective to fool the mind and make an illusory world seem real, just as Escher would centuries later.
National Gallery, London
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