As April turns to May, we add new content to keep you reading

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Welcome to this refreshed issue of Cassone, with 11 new aricles and reviews for May.

Bi-monthly the entire content of the magazine changes, but in the intervening months we refresh the site with appraisals of current exhibitions, articles, features and reviews which we think are timely. And remember,  Art News gets added to on an almost daily basis, as we are told of more events and happenings in the worldwide art world.

In this issue Julian Freeman reviews The Royal Academy’s first ever exhibition of George Bellows’ work in Britain, while Stephen Bury covers Wait, Later this will be Nothing: Editions by Dieter Roth at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and   Victoria Keller writes on the photography exhibition, Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light also at MoMA New York.

Jenny Kingsley visited The Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London, which she says is a fascinating tribute to the complementary relationship between the arts and sciences. There’s a gallery in the Museum devoted to paintings and drawings associated with surgical subjects, proving how the arts can familiarize the public with medical concerns. Louis Byrne has been to warmer climes and  reports on the delights of the beautiful art museums of Madrid.

We  also have reviews of books on topics as varied as painter, Keith Vaughan; collagist John Stezaker; the latest thinking on curatorship; the ways in which colour came to dominate consumer culture on the one hand, and the centuries-old relationships between Islamic cultures and colour on the other; plus books on the classic posters of the mid-20th century.

Some years ago (2002) one of my sons decided to do an art project on L. S. Lowry. I suggested we should go to Tate Britain to see some of this painter’s work, but just in case my son should write to the gallery to see the position regarding any additional paintings held in storage. He got a letter back stating that there was only one Lowry on display and he could not see any of those held in storage. At the time I was extremely angry, but I now know that many galleries have huge resources, owned by the public, which we never see and it is a cause for concern.  The Public Catalogue Foundation,  which since 2003 has been recording county by county the visual treasures of Britain estimates that 80% of our publicly owned paintings are never seen. In the case of Lowry, however, the Tate is making amends and next month is staging a large exhibition of this undervalued artist whom the British public love. Cassone will be covering this for you as it has many other exhibitions this month here and abroad.

Frances Follin visited the extremely popular David Bowie exhibition at the V&A in London, the first ever press viewing that she had to queue for, while Sarah Lawson went north and south of the Thames to visit the Wallace and Dulwich exhibitions of Murillo the devout Spanish painter. Clare Finn went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the work of an American artist who has had the most works ever displayed in the Louvre, George Catlin, who recorded for posterity the Indians of North America before the 1830 Act of Removal and the inevitable genocide that followed. To complement this, Frances Follin interviewed Mo Ally, who makes museum-quality artefacts identical to those produced traditionally by Native Americans.

Clare Finn was at the launch of the exhibition that celebrates a hundred years of conservation at the historic Royal Palaces and is supported by the artist Grayson Perry. His alter ego Claire was on hand.

Victoria Keller visits a MoMA exhibition in New York on ‘Henri Labrouste’, possibly the most influential architect you have never heard of .

 Meanwhile Jenny Kingsley writes on the beauty of stained glass and recommends that we visit the Stained Glass Museum at Ely Cathedral.  She notes that stained glass ‘is very much a part of our cultural heritage and the contemporary art milieu’.

For those wanting something from warmer climes I interview Menthe Wells, artist and sculptor from California. Ashoke Nag, our new contributor from Calcutta, writes on two contemporary Indian artists, Paresh Maity and Ganesh Haloi.

In spite of the recession, art book publishing is surviving by adapting the types of books being published. In this issue of Cassone we have another eclectic mix of book and catalogue reviews. These include Howard Hollands’ review of the catalogue for ‘Dancing Around the Bride at the Barbican’, Larry Silver on Dutch and Flemish pictures at London's Mansion House, official residence of the Lord Mayor of the City of London.  Rosa Somerville reviews the latest volume of the catalogue raisonné of John Singer Sargent’s work, which shows just how varied his output was. Susan Grange looks at Venetian painters who inspired Cézanne, among others, while David Page covers a new book on the English painter John Craxton. In our architecture section Katherine Bernard finds out what a ‘green’ home might be like,  while Dennis Wardleworth examines a book on St Paul’s Cathedral, a church with a much longer history than the present building. In our photography section, Jenny Kingsley tells us how Dr Barnardo used photography for fund raising for his philanthropic work for orphans, Barnaby Norman writes on Ian Wallace’s retrospective at Vancouver Art Gallery, and Clare Finn looks at the ‘really wonderful’ portrait photographs by Man Ray.

Hopefully by the time you have enjoyed all the contents of this issue, spring will be here in the northern hemisphere, and we will be looking forward to garden architecture and design, outdoor sculpture parks and days out visiting art galleries in the warm sunshine!