At home with the greats

Julia Sutherland looks at a unique collection of Dutch and Flemish Old Masters on show in Salem

• Lower East Side story
• Piece rates

Flemish flesh

Realist and classicising innovator Jan Gossaert, the underestimated painter of biblical scenes and portraits, gets the recognition he deserves, writes Jackie Wullschlager

• Lower East Side story
• Piece rates

Matisse: The Seduction of Michelangelo, Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia

This show presents the fascinating scaffolding behind Matisse’s genius and his engagement with the 16th-century artist, and demonstrates his intensely serious approach to sculpture

The Blue Dragon, Barbican, London

This is a spellbinding piece about the choices we make and the cultural pressures on those choices

The Great Upheaval, Guggenheim, NY

This exhibition bears witness to how dazzlingly fruitful an eight-year period can be

Notes from an age of restraint

Correspondence between Federico Garcia Lorca, Salvador Dalí and filmmaker Luis Buñuel is the focus of a show that gives a vivid snapshot of a different era in communication

Tate Britain’s new watercolour exhibition

The show bravely attempts to focus on a painterly medium and at once strikes dead preconceptions about its gentle domestic character, writes Jackie Wullschlager

State of the art

Abu Dhabi’s flamboyant new museum district is set to draw millions to the Middle East. So what can it tell us about the power of culture, asks Peter Aspden