Picasso at Tate Liverpool

A major exhibition bringing together over 150 works by Picasso from across the world.

Presented at Tate Liverpool from 21 May to 30 August 2010; this exhibition will reveal a fascinating new insight into the artist's life as a tireless political activist and campaigner for peace, challenging the widely held view of Picasso as creative genius, playboy and compulsive extrovert.

This is the first exhibition to examine in depth the artist's engagement with politics and the Peace Movement, and will reflect a new Picasso for a new time. The exhibition provides a timely look at Picasso's work in the Cold War era and how the artist transcended the ideological and aesthetic oppositions of East and West.

Admission £10 (£8 concessions)

Happy International Museum Day!

International Museum Day has been celebrated all over the world since 1977. Each year, a theme is decided on by the Advisory Committee. The event provides the opportunity for museum professionals to meet the public and alert them to the challenges that museums face if they are to be - as in the International Comitee Of Museums definition of museums - "an institution in the service of society and of its development". A review of the related activities is produced and made available to members of ICOM.

It has been recommended that this celebration be held each year on 18 May (Given that each country has its own specific traditions and conditions, we recommend that members organise their events around 18 May), in the spirit of the motto: « Museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, co-operation and peace among peoples »

Royal Academy to show Hungary's exceptional National treasures.

The Royal Academy in London is showing a phenomenal array of art from one of Europes finest State collections. The collection which will go on display in September include works by Claude, El Greco, Gauguin, Goya, Leonardo, Manet, Monet, Picasso, Pissarro, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Schiele and Veronese.

One Leonardo drawing in the show, Studies for the Heads of Two Soldiers in the Battle of Anghiari, was described by currator David Ekserdjian as "one of the most important and spectacularly impressive Leonardo drawings in the world".

This is definately one show not to be missed.

• Treasures from Budapest: European Masterpieces from Leonardo to Schiele at the RA, 25 September-12 December

Regional Museums beat London to the Art Fund Prize Shortlist

Four regional projects have beaten the £75m Darwin centre at the Natural History Museum to the shortlist for the £100k Art Fund museum prize.

The four are: the £20m relaunch of the Herbert Art Gallery and museum in Coventry; the £17.8m redisplay of the Ulster Museum in Belfast; the £61m transformation of the Ashmolean in Oxford; and a £12m development of Blists Hill at Ironbridge Gorge, recreating Victorian life.

The £22m redisplay of the Royal Institution and Hampton Court's 500th anniversary of Henry VIII becoming king were not shortlisted.

The winner will be announced on 30 June.

Turner Prize nominations have been made for 2010. 

Artists on the shortlist, announced today, include Dexter Dalwood, 49, a painter whose subjects have included the death of Dr David Kelly and the Charles Manson murders. Susan Philipsz the Glasgow-born 44-year-old is best known for recording herself singing versions of pop and folk songs which she has replayed in stairwells, supermarkets, and under bridges, Angela de la Cruz, breaks, rips and folds her paintings in on themselves and displays them wedged into corners and doorways or presented on the gallery floor,  the Otolith Group, named after the part of the inner ear that senses gravity and orientation, comprises two artists, Anjalika Sagar, 42, and Kodwo Eshun, 44, who live and work in London. Their work has included a film which depicts the making of advertisements for financial services in Mumbai with sweatshop workers producing goods under extreme conditions

Shared Birthday. 

Tate Modern turns 10 years old this year, as do we at De Lacey Fine Art. Created in the year 2000 from a disused power station in the heart of London, Tate Modern displays the national collection of international modern art.