An Elizabethan adventure
Even when museums open, the National Portrait Gallery, which I always like to do a quick sweep through if nearby, will be closed for renovations. If you’re on Pall Mall and missing Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits there’s always ‘Love’s Labour’s Found’ at
Philip Mould (21 April–28 May), a chance to see 17 portraits that have been unearthed in recent years and are now mainly in private collections. I can’t wait to see ‘The Unintended Beauty of Disaster’ at
Lisson (13 April–5 June). If there is anyone I have been wanting to hear from during the past year of swirling and repetitive debates about the rewriting of history and the purpose of monuments, it is John Akomfrah, who has long been responding to these questions – and asking better ones – in his intelligent and evocative films and video installations.