‘Jew by blood, Hamburger at heart, Florentine in spirit’. This is how Aby Warburg famously described himself; his intense relationship with Florence is reflected in its eminent role in his last project, the Mnemosyne Atlas, an open laboratory of images, which remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1929. This series of panels composed of reproductions, largely photographic, of art works and all kinds of images offers itself as a cartography of cultural memory. The sixty-three panels of the last version of the Atlas are documented by photographs from 1929 and were reconstructed with original materials from the Warburg Institute in 2020; a selection is being exhibited for the first time in Italy. The history of Florence studied by the young Warburg focuses on the artistic civilization of the late fifteenth  century, the world of Botticelli and Ghirlandaio, the dissemination of secular themes, the multiplication of images in a plurality of artistic media, and the revival of ancient models. Over the years, this perspective on Florence opens up and becomes more complicated, on the one hand, taking on more of an anthropological approach, and on the other, adopting a critical reflection on the present based on analogies observed in visual politics and image practices.

The great painter Anne Vallayer-Coster (Paris, 1744–1818) was protégé of Queen Marie Antoinette and a friend of Vigée Le Brun, Diderot and Hubert Robert. Anne Vallayer-Coster was a rare female painter who left her mark on eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Recognised as one of the most talented artists of her time, her still lifes enchanted critics, and most collectors contemporary to her time was bound to own at least one of Vallayer-Coster’s still lifes. For the first time in Paris, twenty-five of her still lifes will be on show at Galerie Eric Coatalem, with works on loan from the Sacramento Museum and private European collectors. The catalogue is written by J. Patrice Marandel, former curator of the Los Angeles County Museum, Sophie Mouquin and Christophe de Quénetain.

In partnership with the National Portrait Gallery, this exhibition features an action-packed programme of events. Explore untold stories from the River Tees, poetry, portraits from the National Portrait Gallery and unseen works from the Middlesbrough Collection, along with some old favourites.

In the shade of the sun, a group exhibition contemplating the relationship between politics and aesthetics by an exciting new generation of Palestinian artists. The exhibition comprises new multimedia installations by artists Mona Benyamin, Xaytun Ennasr and Dina Mimi as well as a new sonic performance commission by Makimakkuk. Working across mediums that include film, installation, music and gaming, In the shade of the sun brings together artists that are forging a new language to think about and with Palestine. Their individual practices intertwined through making works for future times within the crisis of the present, in soft expressions and radical politics, from the absurd to the poetic.
 

The exhibition features a number of Kelland’s new films, prints and sketchbooks that reimagine the psychoanalytic dialogue that has occurred between Pop Art and Prison Art since the 1960s. Referencing figures from popular culture such as Elvis and Boy George, Kelland interrogates male identity and flawed notions of masculinity. Birmingham-born artist Dean Kelland has been making art for nearly three decades. Despite this, his chosen exhibition title, Imposter Syndrome, reflects his experience at HMP Grendon, an all-male, Category B therapeutic prison. By setting up a studio in the carceral setting, with its own history and typology of art, Kelland has found himself assuming multiple identities. HMP Grendon opened in the post-war period, as an experimental psychiatric prison and, by taking on the residency, Kelland understood that the compulsive behaviour underlying his filmed performances – in which he repeats a physical action in a prolonged and painful way – would be examined by the prison’s therapeutic community.