Exhibition of the week

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms

A blood-soaked blockbuster full of dragons, Vikings, magic … and some remarkable illuminated manuscripts.

• British Library, London, until 19 February.

Also showing

Edward Burne-Jones

The wan Arthurian visions of an artist often hailed as Britain’s great symbolist.

• Tate Britain, London, from 24 October until 24 February.

Arthurian visions … Laus Veneris, 1873-78. Photograph: Edward Burne-Jones/courtesy Tate Britain

NOW

Monster Chetwynd is the focus of a front-line view of art at this very moment.

• Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, from 20 October until 28 April.

Michael Chance

Grotesque realist paintings by a young artist who channels Dix and Grosz to satirise money and power.

• Mercer Chance Gallery, London, until 28 October.

Richard Pousette-Dart

This softly introspective contemporary of Jackson Pollock reveals a lesser-known side to abstract expressionism.

• Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, from 23 October until 6 January.

Masterpiece of the week

Long in the tooth … the Lewis Chessmen. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

The Lewis Chessmen

From the helpless king and his unhappy queen, who rests her head on her hand in a pose that symbolises melancholy, to their loyal knights and pious bishops, these masterpieces of early medieval art portray social types with fierce human accuracy. It is a portrait of the medieval feudal world carved by Scandinavians who, with their Viking heritage, could cast an outsider’s eye on this miniature ivory court and its army.

• British Museum, London.

Image of the week

Photograph: Andy Thomas

The Republican Club

President Donald Trump shares a Diet Coke with previous Republican presidents in this celebrity montage by the American artist Andy Thomas. Best known for western and civil war scenes, Thomas also likes to imagine past leaders hanging out playing pool or playing cards. But he didn’t know Trump admired his work – until the painting was spotted hanging on a White House wall during a TV report on the CBS programme CBS 60 Minutes. Read the full story.

What we learned

The British Museum’s new gallery of Islamic art is a miraculous wonder

The biggest arts centre in the world has opened in Taiwan – and it’s epic

The invisible women of architecture are getting their own back

Edward Burne-Jones loved dashing off quirky sketches of everyday life

There’s more to the $450m Salvator Mundi mystery than meets the eye

Gothic creepiness lives again in Strawberry Hill

Alice Mann won the Taylor Wessing prize for her portraits of South African drum majorettes

Thomas Gainsborough captured the essence of celebrity – in 1785

Rembrandt’s Night Watch will be restored in public

All public art is political in America

… and San Francisco’s murals are being defaced with Trump Maga hats

The Mummy is the mother of all movie posters

Sex Pistols’ artist Jamie Reid is still a punk at heart

It’s red hot in Kate Ballis’s Infra Realist desert

New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana explained why she stole Captain Cook’s trousers

Stephen Shames saw Robert Kennedy in his final days

Photographer Edward Burtynsky sees environmental destruction on a huge scale

… while in Mali, sand digging is on a more human scale

Sophie Calle’s cat is singing to us from the grave

Prison artists have a thing to say about those profiting from their misery

Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam has been jailed for his exposures

Hellbenders and hummingbirds took the podium at the Wildlife photography awards

The Landscape photographer of the year competition offered stunning scene



Japanese photographers were there at their nation’s rebirth

David Goldblatt recorded racial strife in South Africa

In Victorian times, the Guardian believed in fairies

The National Portrait Gallery celebrates women

Banksy had intended to shred his work completely

The V&A adores Dior

Don’t forget

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