Visual & Decorative Arts Blog

We may be halfway through the year, but we've still got six months left to indulge ourselves in some beautiful art. With that being said, we've compiled a list of the top 10 worldwide exhibitions that you can still visit throughout the year. Grab your tickets!

Topics: Museums & Galleries, Art Deco, Masterpieces of Art, Flame Tree Calendars, british art, religious art, art

This week marked the long awaited re-opening of museums and art galleries throughout the UK. We can finally indulge in some wonderful art culture again, so here’s a list of ten of the top UK exhibitions this year. Grab your tickets quick, we suspect they’ll be in high demand!

Topics: Museums & Galleries, street art, digital art, Banksy, Art Deco, Masterpieces of Art, Flame Tree Calendars, british art, religious art, art

This year celebrates the 800^th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta. As an emblem of freedom and people’s rights, it is an object steeped in significance, with a relevance well beyond its time and place. Describing the document’s birth as a ‘practical solution to a political crisis’, the British Library’s recent exhibition celebrated the historical repercussions since the 13^th century document was first sealed.

Topics: Museums & Galleries, Art Calendars

London: this great city is forever pulsing with activity, a veritable haven of culture and innovation. For art-lovers, there’s a great selection of museums, galleries and exhibitions covering all sorts of tastes, from fashion and design to war memorabilia. There’s always something going on, which can be both very exciting and extremely overwhelming, so below we’ve gathered a pick of our favourite current and upcoming events. Our fantastic range of 2016 calendars is also now available, with a number of our licensed calendars produced in partnership with the cultural hotspots of the capital, including the V&A, the Tate, the RA, the Royal Opera House and many others.

Topics: Royal Academy of Arts, Museums & Galleries, Art Calendars

There's been a handful of interesting developments across the art world recently. Here's a condensed summary of what's gone on, with links to the full length articles.

Topics: Royal Academy of Arts, Museums & Galleries, Leonardo da Vinci

The general feeling from all of the critics that have reviewed Frederick Wiseman's documentary on the National Gallery is that it captures the gallery magnificently. Time Out called it 'Wiseman's densest and best' work and gave it five stars. It is said to be a fascinating look at not only behind the scenes, but a detailed look at the people who visit – tourists, school groups, professionals and students. Geoffrey MacNab, reviewing the documentary in The Independent writes, 'Some of the time, Wiseman gives viewers the sense that they are inside the gallery alongside other visitors. At other points, his camera scrutinises the faces of museum-goers with the same fascination that the artists whose work hangs in the gallery treated their subjects.' The documentary gets into all the nooks and crannies and no small detail is left out.

Topics: Museums & Galleries, Masterpieces of Art

We're proud to be working with the Ashmolean Museum, located in Oxford. The museum boasts an extensive collection collection of eastern art, ranging from prints, to sculpture, textiles, and more. Right now we have several beautiful designs from the museum available on iPhone 5 cases. The perfect gift for the tech-savvy, art lover in your life.

Topics: Museums & Galleries, J. M. W. Turner, Japanese Woodblock Prints

The ‘once in a lifetime’ Malevich exhibition at Tate Modern is now sadly over… If you missed it, fear not, you can still appreciate the revolutionary art that the master and inventor of suprematism created from 1913 onwards – even if you can't get to Moscow, New York or Amsterdam, where major museums hold impressive collections (the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam owns 24 Malevich paintings) – just take a look online and you can enjoy and learn about his work. Here we take a look at the movement that Malevich created and some of his classic abstract masterpieces. Of course, he didn't start this way – check out this blog to discover his more traditional beginnings.

Topics: Museums & Galleries, abstract art, Art Calendars, Kasimir Malevich

The Manchester Art Gallery is an invaluable publicly owned museum. It houses the civic art collection, which showcases local masterpieces of art along with international pieces, and it also invites proposals from artists, curators and members of the public. The mixture of pieces on display is not as expansive as the V&A’s, but they do feature a wide range of art, including fine and decorative, contemporary, historic, photography and costume. One of their main displays, however, focuses on the Pre-Raphaelites.

Topics: Museums & Galleries, pre-raphaelites, Art Calendars

With the tagline 'the world's greatest museum of art and design', the Victoria and Albert Museum (better known as the V&A) certainly creates high expectations and promises a lot, and it sure does deliver. Currently, there are over two thousand years of art in almost every medium in the museum's collections, from a multitude of places all over the globe. The contrast between walking through the grand archway that is the main entrance into the museum and the humongous, abstract Dale Chihuly chandelier hanging over the information desk in the lobby wonderfully illustrates just how much the V&A holds. While their special temporary exhibitions are very much worth seeing, it's a must-do to go and see the vast array of art the V&A has on permanent display. Here are just a selection of the movements and artists that the museum covers…

Topics: Museums & Galleries, Art Deco, Art Calendars, William Morris