Thin Black Line legends return, William Kentridge dazzles and Van Gogh meets a modern – the week in art

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Exhibition of the week

Connecting Thin Black Lines: 1985-2025
Claudette Johnson, Sonia Boyce and Ingrid Pollard are among the artists in this show that revisits their 1985 exhibition, The Thin Black Line - curated, like the original, by Lubaina Himid.
ICA, London, until 7 September

Also showing

William Kentridge
The South African artist shows new film and sculpture in a dazzling, inspiring display.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakeﬁeld, from 28 June until 19 April 2026

Kiefer/Van Gogh
Anselm Kiefer brings out the dark Romantic in Van Gogh, as death stalks the fields.
Royal Academy, London, from 28 June until 26 October

Resistance
Steve McQueen selects photographs of protest and collective action from a century of alternative British history.
Modern Two, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, until 4 January 2026

Jim Lambie
One of the most hedonist artists around shows paintings and objects that pop with colour.
Modern Insitute, Glasgow, until 27 August

Image of the week

Dennis Morris Shopping for the Trenchtown kids, Leeds, UK, 1974

Dennis Morris got his first cover shot at the age of 11. By 14, he was touring with Bob Marley (who taught him how to smoke). And he has spent the rest of his life chronicling Black British experience, now showing in a major new exhibition. Read our full review

What we learned

A 300-year-old painting at the Uffizi was damaged by a visitor taking a seflie

Norman Foster’s ‘wasteful’ Queen Elizabeth II bridge emits ‘Swarovski vibes’

We looked back at the fascinating 50-year history of Save Britain’s Heritage

PhotoEspana, Spain’s premier photo festival, got under way in Madrid and elsewhere

The Belfast photo festival explored ‘the Biosphere’

The late US artist Sam Gilliam’s time in Ireland inspired a wild burst of creativity

A small group from the Northern Territory went on to dominate Australia’s art

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Much-loved painter David Gentleman shared tips

William Kentridge’s restless inventiveness rivals that of Picasso

Masterpiece of the week

Cornard Wood near Sudbury, Suffolk by Thomas Gainsborough, 1748

Gainsborough made his fortune painting the Georgian elite in Bath and London - “pickpocketing the rich”, as he called it – and is often unfairly thought of as a frilly portraitist of the posh. But here he portrays ordinary folk on a piece of common land near his birthplace, the Suffolk town Sudbury. Common land was a medieval tradition that provided wood, grazing and the equivalent of a modern park for the entire community. But commons were gradually “enclosed” from the Tudor age to Gainsborough’s time as villages became increasingly unequal and wealthy farmers and landowners developed more capitalistic farming practices. Gainsborough is making a radical, nostalgic last-ditch defence of a vanishing world in this painting. His common people enjoy the land under a superb canopy of auburn trees and silvery clouds – a beautiful glimpse of this land as it might be.
National Gallery, London

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