Cassone is a finalist in the Online Media Awards 2013

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We have deliberately chosen articles this July to ‘refresh’ the site in a way that we think will inspire you with this holiday month in mind. Something has to inspire us as so far, in the UK at any rate, the British summer is not doing much to put us in a holiday mood.

If you are on holiday in Britain or visiting museums or galleries here this summer you might have joined The Art Fund to take advantage of the free/reduced entrance fees. The Art Fund has just announced it has topped the 100,000-members mark. Itis Britain’a national fundraising charity, helping museums to buy and show great art for everyone.  Over the past five years it has given £26m to help museums and galleries acquire works of art for their collections, from ancient sculpture and treasure hoards to Old Master paintings and contemporary commissions. The Art Fund is independently funded, the majority of its income coming from its members who, through the National Art Pass, enjoy free entry to over 220 hundred museums, galleries and historic houses across the UK, as well as 50% off entry to major exhibitions. In this issue   Frances Follin reviews an exhibition by Maria Bell-Salter, who manages to combine being a practising artist with the job of London’s regional chairman for this very successful organisation.

Continuing in the holiday mood Darrelyn Gunzberg has reviewed a lovely book An Art Lover's Guide to Florence. She says that the author, Professor Judith Testa  has created ‘A book that combines politics, sex and religion (which) is bound to be a best-seller, but it may come as a surprise to find that it forms the core of an art book centred on Renaissance Florence, and one aimed directly at art tourists’. So if you are off to Florence take this with you.

Basia Sliwinska visited the 55th Venice Biennale for us and in this month’s issue gives us an overview of the atmosphere of this wonderful event in such a picturesque place and another popular holiday destination. In next month’s issue she talks about specific displays.

As I promised last month, we cover the memorable exhibition at Houghton Hall in Norfolk when around 70 paintings are restored to their original hangings in the home of Robert Walpole, first prime minister of England. Houghton Hall has all the features needed for a great day out for the whole family.

Jenny Kingsley reports on the Fry Gallery in Saffron Walden. She calls it ‘the Pearl of Essex’, a place certainly to be visited if planning a journey to the East of England, as you find out so much about 'the work of an unusual community of renowned artists’. Meanwhile Veronica Davies headed to Gloucestershire for a welcome breath of 'Fresh Air 2013', the biennial sculpture show.

Jerusalem is not perhaps the first place you would look for an museum of Islamic art, but the city is home to many Arabs and has a fine museum dedicated to Islamic art, as Susan Lawson recently discovered. Read her review of work by one woman who is determined to make her voice, and that of other Arab women, heard through art: Fatma Abu Rumi.

We have book reviews on Titian, art created by  walking (we got vertigo just looking at the first picture), British-based Palestinian artist Bashir Makhoul,  and  Black Mountain College, cradle of much late-20th-century US art. Finally Frances Follin reviews David Bowie Is, the catalogue accompanying the blockbuster show now on at the V&A.

So if you are at a loss this month for things to do I think Cassone will give you something to inspire you. Enjoy July!

Cassone was two years old in May, and it seems all our hard work has been rewarded as we have learnt that we are one of the finalists in the Online Media Awards 2013.  In case you missed our excited announcements a couple of weeks ago, we were one of eight finalists in the new section Best Lifestyle/Leisure News Site and up against some pretty strong competition, including the Financial Times and MSN. The winners have now been announced - see this month's Art News.

We have a variety of exhibitions covered in this issue in and outside London and the UK. Katie Campbell visited the ‘Gertrude Jekyll: Landscape Gardener and Craftswoman’ exhibition at the Lightbox Gallery, Woking. Though remembered today as a garden designer, Jekyll began life as an artist and I feel her artistic background is reflected in the wonderful painterly plantings for which she is known, and that feature in this exhibition. Jeannie Labno was transported back to ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum by the British Museum's latest (successful) attempt to wow us. Karen Hasin Bromley went to the University of Kent’s exhibition on Palestinian art, ‘Resilience and Light’. Karen writes that ‘Palestinian art is a genre gathering speed’.

Ian Jones visited the Natural History Museum to see Sebastiao Salgardo’s exhibition, ‘Genesis’, which the national media have called ‘Photography on an epic scale’. We also have another photography exhibition ‘Cairo to Constantinople’, at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, which documents the work of Francis Bedford. He  accompanied the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), who was sent on a tour of the Middle East in 1862 to try to keep him out of mischief. Bedford was the first photographer to accompany a royal tour! Frances Follin saw the small display, ‘Scandal’, at the National Portrait Gallery. Though apparently only warranting a tiny exhibition today, at the time the scandal in question ended the career of the Defence Minister John Profumo and brought down the government.

Here at Cassone we only take 'busman's holidays', so Frances spent a recent weekend in Berlin collecting material for articles and reviews. She visited the new Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle in Unter den Linden, Berlin's main, elegant, thoroughfare, and was bowled over by Imran Qureshi, the Bank's Artist of the Year 2013 - her review explains why. Frances will be sharing more of her experiences in Berlin over the next few months.

In New York Stephen Bury went to the Claes Oldenburg exhibition at MoMA.This examines the beginnings of Oldenburg's extraordinary career with an in-depth look at his first two major bodies of work: The Street and The Store from the early 1960s and two projects from the 1970s, Mouse Museum and Ray Gun Wing.

I was lucky to visit Houghton Hall in Norfolk and saw Catherine the Great’s paintings from the Hermitage, St Petersburg restored to their original hanging in the home of Sir Robert Walpole. The family sold them in the 18th century to clear debts. The exhibition is announced in Art News and will feature in the July ‘refresh’.

Clare Finn attended a discussion, Rewriting History: The Recovery of Nazi-Looted Art, chaired by David Glasser, Ben Uri's chief executive, and part of the gallery’s ‘Talking Art’ series, with leading New York art law and restitution attorney, Howard Spiegler. He is partner at Herrick, Feinstein LLP, and  co-chair of its International Art Group. The company counsels museums, galleries, dealers, auction houses, artists, collectors, and foreign governments on issues arising from art transactions and disputes.

Jenny Kingsley took houses and homes as her theme for this issue and visited two, both in London. She enjoyed the hidden beauty of the home and chapel created by the founding father of Methodism, John Wesley and marvelled at the fretwork in the National Trust-owned house once the home of the Kenyan poet Khadambi Asalache.

We have a  review by Adrian Lewis on the artist Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) who, as Adrian tells us, is widely regarded as the greatest visual artist to have emerged in Europe since the end of the second world war.

A variety of visual culture books are covered in this issue.
Those getting to grips with a study of art history will find  'isms' Understanding Modern Art a great help. A new book on Henry Raeburn  views this important Scottish artist from a European rather than a Scottish viewpoint, and will also be useful for students.

We have a review of the new monograph on Gavin Turk, which coincides with an exhibition of Turk's work at the Ben Brown Gallery, London, which is on until 14 June 2013. Read the review and, if you are in London, why not catch the show? And if you are in London early this month, it is well worth catching the Royal Academy's George Bellows show, closing 9 June.

Other titles include two on film, Coming to a Festival Near You and Hollywood Stardom, and another on the sculptor Ken Price, a retrospective of whose colourful, organic forms is currently travelling round America and opens at MoMA New York later this month. A very big and impressive new book on Japanese photography is like travelling back in time, says Barnaby Norman.

If you watched Downton Abbey (shown worldwide, I believe!) and wondered what life for the upper crust was really like, a couple of new books explore the Edwardian country house and the sort of art its inhabitants patronized. See our reviews of Edwardian Opulence and The Edwardian Country House. The Edwardian era was swept away by the First World War - it's always worth taking a look at our archives to see things you may have missed, and on the subject of WWI, check out Amy Sargeant's review of 'War Horse – Fact and Fiction' which appeared in our July 2012 issue.

See this month's full contents list and don't forget to check Art News regularly – it is frequently updated. Our next full issue is August.

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