The Barbican, London Recognition came relatively quickly after Noah Davis moved to Los Angeles in the early 2000s and began painting in earnest. Yet since he died of a rare cancer in 2015 at 32 years old, there have been few opportunities to see Davis’s work. This is the first big institutional survey of his atmospheric, strange paintings and, necessarily, it’s effectively a whistlestop tour of his tragically short but relentlessly prolific career. To May 11, barbican.org.uk Nancy Durrant Read our review

Goya to Impressionism — the cream of a rather delicious crop

Courtauld Gallery, London This is a tantalising exhibition of 25 works spanning the 19th century, the cream of an evidently rather delicious crop — and all but one (a Van Gogh from his time in the hospital at Arles, which was until a couple of weeks ago part of the National Gallery’s blockbuster show) have never been seen in the UK before. To May 26, courtauld.ac.uk ND Read our review

Resistance — Steve McQueen leads us on a voyage of discovery

Turner Contemporary, Margate From the militant suffrage movement in 1903 to the anti-Iraq war protests in 2003, when it matters, we march. This Turner Contemporary exhibition, Resistance: How Protest Shaped Britain and Photography Shaped Protest, curated by the artist and film director Steve McQueen, is a fascinating, deeply researched, if low-key look at a century of protest in Britain through photography. To Jun 1, turnercontemporary.org ND Read our review

Edvard Munch Portraits — the Scream painter shows his social side

National Portrait Gallery, London Edvard Munch’s forensic powers are on full display in the first British exhibition to focus solely on his portraits. Known for his “subject” paintings, which cast friends and family as the dramatis personae in tableaux that communicate a universal emotion (The Scream being the most famous), he was also a prolific portraitist. To Jun 15, npg.org.uk ND Read our review

Anselm Kiefer: Early Works — an artist under the shadow of the Nazis

Ashmolean, Oxford It’s one hell of a moment for an exhibition of the early works of Anselm Kiefer. It was probably conceived as celebratory — the German artist’s 80th birthday lands on March 8; this show at the Ashmolean opens just before an unprecedented presentation across two Amsterdam museums, the Van Gogh and the Stedelijk. But with the rise of the AfD in Germany, and a shift to the right across Europe, a return to these works, created between 1969 and 1982, has suddenly become urgent. To Jun 15, ashmolean.org ND Read our review

Duccio di Buoninsegna’s The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, 1308-1311, is on show at the National Gallery

COURTESY NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON

Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350 — an unmissable National Gallery hit

The show focuses on four painters — Duccio, Simone Martini and the brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti — to reveal them as pioneers, and uses textiles and finely wrought items such as carved ivories and richly decorated reliquaries to show how these four artists were nurtured by this European centre for trade. It is a stunner. National Gallery, London, to Jun 22, nationalgallery.org.uk ND Read the review

Andy Warhol: Portrait of America — depicting a dark side to the USA

MK Gallery, Milton Keynes This exhibition at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, put together from the Artist Rooms collection, goes back to basics in an elegant primer showing how Andy Warhol — uniquely and incisively — held up a mirror to postwar consumerist America. It takes a chronological, rather than thematic, approach. Each room represents a decade, from his days as a commercial artist in the 1950s to the 1980s (he died in 1987). To Jun 29, mkgallery.org ND Read our review

Victor Hugo’s The Cheerful Castle, 1847, on show at the Royal Academy

PARIS MUSÉES/MAISONS DE VICTOR HUGO PARIS-GUERNESEY

Astonishing Things: Drawings of Victor Hugo — strange and marvellous

Royal Academy, London Though many of us won’t actually have read either of the 19th-century writer Victor Hugo’s most famous novels (Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), there’s a chance that we’ve all seen at least one of them, either on film or on stage. Very few will be familiar with the body of work now on display — his strange and marvellous drawings. To Jun 29, royalacademy.org.uk ND Read our review

Leigh Bowery Session I Look 2, 1988

LEIGH BOWERY © FERGUS GREER

Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern is a fascinating homage to an Eighties icon

Tate Modern, London Through artworks by his friends and peers (including portraits by Lucian Freud), garments (or “Looks”) from his archive, films, postcards, sketches, letters, magazines and what feels like hundreds of photographs, we follow the journey of a suburban Melbourne lad. It’s a story that runs from his arrival in London in 1980, fresh out of fashion college, through his entry to the scene, his impact on clubland, his work with the choreographer Michael Clark and his shift into performance. To Aug 31, tate.org.uk ND Read our review

Untitled, from a selection of drawings by Shirley Smith, 2022-24

GRAYSON PERRY COURTESY THE ARTIST AND VICTORIA MIRO

Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur — a mischievous romp

Wallace Collection, London Grayson Perry does not love the Wallace Collection. The decadence, the grandeur, the conspicuous expense trigger his snobbery. It was a sticking point when he was invited to create an exhibition of new work responding to the collection. So Perry conjured someone to love the Wallace for him: Shirley Smith, a fictional artist, inspired by Madge Gill, a real “outsider artist’’ who exhibited at the Wallace during the Second World War — a woman who suffered traumatic events but found solace (and acclaim) through art. To Oct 26, wallacecollection.org ND Read our review

JMW Turner’s Upnor Castle, Kent,1831-2

THE WHITWORTH, THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

Turner: In Light and Shade — a gorgeous display of astonishing scenes

Whitworth, Manchester John Ruskin was a funny old stick, but when it came to his hero JMW Turner, whose 250th birthday falls this year, he really knew what he was talking about. “He paints in colour, but he thinks in light and shade,” he wrote in 1843, and in this exhibition at the Whitworth in Manchester, which focuses on Turner’s prints — in particular the Liber Studiorum series, which, despite the gallery’s significant Turner holdings, hasn’t been shown here in full since 1922 — this is borne out gloriously. To Nov 2, whitworth.manchester.ac.uk ND Read our review

Making Egypt — much more than mummies

Young V&A, London For its older or younger visitors, the V&A’s remit is not simply the history of the past but also its interaction with the design of the present. So in Making Egypt, alongside old fabrics are new dresses; alongside ancient stone carvings are modern ones made with the same techniques. As much space is given for the practice sketches of an ancient scribe — working out how to depict owls and cats and hieroglyphs — as for the finished result. To Nov 2, vam.ac.uk Tom Whipple Read our review

Pirates — the bloody truth behind Captain Pugwash

National Maritime Museum, London Truly this was a timber that shivered. As you enter Pirates, and look above a grisly depiction of Davy Jones’s locker, you see a ghostly, greyed slab of wood. It is a railing from a Dutch ship that sank off of Suffolk in 1672. Well travelled, weathered and cracked, it speaks to the mythology, mystery and high seas romance of pirates and piracy. And, having spoken to these, the exhibition sets about steadily dismantling them. To Jan 4, rmg.co.uk Jack Blackburn Read our review

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