This episode explores an ancient funeral stele, Marie Antoinette’s breast bowl, and how digital technologies are helping to preserve Egyptian heritage sites
The floral and the classical
Whether or not you’re a fan of Coronation Chicken, it’s hard not to admire the woman credited with inventing it. With ‘Constance Spry and the Fashion for Flowers’ (17 May–26 September), the
Garden Museum celebrates a figure with as many unexpected facets as that curious dish has ingredients. I’m looking forward to seeing some of Spry’s exuberant and unusual floral arrangements recreated (kale and artichoke extravaganzas, Instagrammers? Spry got there first), and discovering more about this one-time Hackney headmistress who provided blooms for the Queen’s coronation and inspiration for the floral paintings of her romantic partner, Gluck.
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.