Horses and Landscapes: George Stubbs at Welbeck. The greatest of English horse painters, George Stubbs (1724 - 1806) visited Welbeck several times at the invitation of the 3rd Duke of Portland setting a number of paintings in or around the estate particularly at Cresswell Crags. For the first time some of these will be on exhibition in the locality, plus other paintings, including anonymous 17th century life-sized horse portraits commissioned by the 1st Duke of Newcastle and works by John Wootton, Stubbs's immediate predecessor.
The Harley Gallery, Welbeck, Worksop, Nottinghamshire S80 3LN. Tel. +44 (0)1909 501700. (Open Tues - Sun) 6 September - 21 December.

What are You Like? Self-revealing artworks by forty people in the public eye - curated by the Museum of Illustration.
Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Road, London SE21 7AD. Tel. +44 (0)20 8693 5254. (Open Tues - Sun) 9 September - 14 December.

Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632 - 1717). It was the Kanxi Emperor himself who rewarded Wang Hui with the inscription of "landscapes clear and radiant" on the artist's completion of a 12 scroll work - extending more than 740 feet in length - commemorating the Emperor's tour through China in 1689. Two sections of the scroll are included in this international loan exhibition of the Wang Hui's landscape paintings from his beginnings to his pre-eminence.
Made possible by the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028. Tel. +1 212 535 7710. (Open Tues - Sun; late Fri & Sat) 9 September - 4 January 2009.

*Francis Bacon. Brave the crowds, forget the publicity, and see for yourself this amazing exhibition. Many works can still shock, the subjects portrayed seemingly with a kind of truthful rage - combining hopelessness, misery and love. This is most densely experienced in one room "Memorial" devoted to Bacon's paintings, all of them triptychs, provoked by the suicide of his campanion and model George Dyer.

Comprising some 65 major paintings by Francis Bacon (1909 - 1992) from the whole of his career, the curators aim to provide a re-assessment of his work "in the light of the new research" that followed the discovery of his studio and its contents after his death. Which being said, there is no doubting the exhausting impact of the whole exhibition, nor the disturbing nature of two works from the beginning and end of his career: Figure in a landscape dating from 1945 and Blood on pavement painted about 1988.

Close examination of some of the paintings shows many long and confidently wrought strokes of the brush, on occasion brutally wounded by fiercely applied blobs or streaks of paint. This is rare mastery.
Sponsored by Bank of America.
Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG. Tel. +44 (0)20 7887 8888. (Open daily) 11 September - 4 January.
This exhibition will travel to Spain, the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 3 February - 19 April 2009, and to the United States, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 18 May - 16 August 2009.

Joan Eardley. One of Britain's most notable artists, Joan Eardley (1921 - 1963) spent most of her short life in Scotland where her powerful and emotionally-charged works have a high reputation. This London retrospective exhibition, the first there for nearly five decades, mostly comprises paintings loaned by the National Galleries of Scotland.
The Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, London W1. Tel. +44 (0)20 7409 5730. (Open Tues - Sat) 16 September - 20 December.

Giorgio Morandi, 1890 - 1964. Exhibition of some 110 paintings, watercolours and etchings, including his celebrated still-lifes as well his much rarer self-portraits and landscapes, by important and influential yet reclusive Italian master.
Made possible by Jane and Robert Carroll.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028. Tel. +1 212 535 7710. (Open Tues - Sun; late Fri & Sat) 16 September - 14 December.

Caspar David Friedrich and the German Romantic Landscape. At the heart of this exhibition from the St Petersburg Hermitage is it entire collection of paintings and drawings by Caspar David Friedrich (1774 - 1840). These are shown in the context of works other German artists: his predecessors, successors and contemporaries including Carl Fohr (1795 - 1818) a group of whose watercolours are being shown for the first time.
Hermitage Amsterdam, Nieuwe Herengracht 14, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tel. + 31 20 530 87 51. (Open daily) 20 September 2008 - 18 January 2009.

Liverpool Biennial 2008: MADE UP. Nine major new commissions are at the centre of this festival whose theme MADE UP embraces the idea that "imagination is the dynamo of art" through painting, sculpture, installation, video and drawing. The exhibition spills out of the Tate into other galleries: Bluecoat, Open Eye and FACT as well into public spaces across the City of Liverpool - this year's European Capital of Culture.
Tate Liverpool, Albert Dock, Liverpool L3 4BB. Tel. +44 (0)151 702 7400. (Open Tues - Sun) 20 September - 30 November.

Gerhard Richter: 4900 Colours: Version II. Major new work, comprising 49 paintings, especially made for the Serpentine Gallery by Gerhard Richter, born in Dresden in 1932, and who is without question "one of the world's greatest living artists." This work has parallels with Richter's design for a stained glass window in Cologne Cathedral destroyed during the Second World War and unveiled in 2007.
Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA. Tel. +44 (0)20 7402 6075. (Open daily) 23 September - 16 November.

Cut & Paste: European Photomontage 1920 - 1945. Long before the days of the complex opportunities offered by New Technology, George Grosz, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, John Heartfield and others used scissors, scalpels and brushes to create disturbing political and social images.
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 39A Canonbury Square, London N1 2AN. Tel. +44 (0)20 7704 9522. (Open Wed - Sun) 24 September - 21 December.

The Skin She Wears: Naiza H. Khan. The first solo exhibition in Europe of sculptures and drawings by the celebrated Pakistani artist Naiza H. Khan who lives and works in Karachi, and has already shown successfully in Dubai, Hong Kong, Islamabad, Mumbai and New York. Her theme and object of emotional meditation is the female body - through its clothing.
Rossi & Rossi, 16 Clifford Street, London W1S 3RG. Tel. +44 (0)20 7734 6487. 24 September - 25 October.

*Cold War Modern: Design 1945 - 75. Can the Sputnik really have been so small? A replica hung high at the exhibition's entrance reinforces the ironic fact that it was the launch into space by the Soviet Union of such a tiny object that literally sent shock waves throughout the Western world. Barely a decade later US men stepped first on the moon.

Irresponsible media suggestions in recent months that the world was faced by another cold war are put in their place by this very fine exhibition - as brilliantly selected as it is designed and in total no small tribute to the depth of curatorial enterprise and inspiration at the V&A.

This then is the first exhibition devoted to presenting examples principally of design and architecture from both sides of the iron curtain during the Cold War. In the years that followed the Second World War not only were we threatened by nuclear annihilation, we began to see the results of the intense technological rivalry between communism and capitalism.

Despite much individual and political gloom and anxiety, the innate human capacity for looking on the bright side meant that cheerfulness kept breaking out; that students and others could self-indulgently revolt, that designers and architects could make ephemeral artefacts, construct ever-higher buildings and think utopian visions. From the Vespa motor scooter to the inflatable Oasis 7, by way of Reg Butler's Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner and Nicolas Schoffer's kinetic Chronos 8 this is an exhibition to savour and provoke.
Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL. Tel. +44 (0)20 7942 2000. (Open daily; late Wed) 25 September 2008 - 11 January 2009.

*Mark Rothko. To be impressed by the size and power of Rothko's paintings is one thing, to take time to reflect on them is quite another but necessary. The artist's son Christopher stresses this point.

The chance closure for refurbishment of the Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art in Japan was the catalyst for this great exhibition which brings together Tate's own series of Rothko murals painted for the Seagram Building in New York, with a selection of others from the Kawamura Museum and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Predominantly worked in brooding red and black, these are all displayed in one large gallery to monumental effect.

In 1958 Mark Rothko (1903 - 1970) was commissioned to paint murals for the (very) exclusive Four Seasons Restaurant in New York's Seagram building designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. Although he completed the works, Rothko decided to withdraw from the commission convinced that the projected site was inappropriate for the contemplative nature of his paintings.

Eventually, Rothko's close friendship with Sir Norman Reid, the Tate's then director, led to his presenting to the London gallery - just before the artist's death - nine of the murals which have been hung ever since in a single room. As the exhibition's curator Achim Borchardt-Hume remarks, this exhibition provides an opportunity to "see" the Tate's own great Rothko's (fiercely loved by some regular visitors) "in a new light."

Other galleries offer their own journeys: one hung solely with Black-Form paintings is totally enthralling, as in a different way is another devoted to a series of Black on Gray paintings. Both reveal much to the visitor determined to take time also to study their careful layers and tones and textures. A selection of works on paper and another of smaller paintings add immeasurably to overall value of this exhibition.
Sponsored, proudly, by Fujitsu Services with additional support from Access Industries; and with a donation from The Daedulus Foundation, New York.
Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG. Tel. +44 (0)20 7887 8888. (Open daily; late Fri & Sat) 26 September 2008 - 1 February 2009.

IN and OUT: Contemporary British Glass. Despite the antiquity and native strength of the medium it is only in recent years that artists in Britain have begun to make sculptural glass, and even more recently felt encouraged to make glass sculptures for siting out of doors. Venturesome collectors will be inspired by the opportunity of seeing more than 60 examples of contemporary glass for interior and garden settings - split between locations in the old market town of Cirencester and the Cotswold village of Quenington - only nine miles away east of Cirencester, north of Fairford.
IN: New Brewery Arts, Brewery Court, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 1JH. (Open daily) OUT: Quenington Old Rectory, Cirencester, Gloucesteshire GL7 5BN. (Open Sat & Sun) 27 September - 1 November.

Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry. I like to remember things my own way. How I remember them. Not necessarily the way they happened. Exhibition of new video works, drawings and a sound installation by Swedish artist Karin Kihlberg and English artist Reuben Henry - who have been collaborating since 2004, are based in Birmingham, UK, and have been widely shown in solo and group exhibitions.
CITRIC, Via Trieste, 30 25121 Brescia, Italy. Tel. +39 030 5030 943. (Open Wed - Sat) 27 September - 8 November.

*Disposable People: Contemporary Global Slavery. The Clore Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall is the slightly unlikely opening venue for this disturbing exhibition of images by Magnum photographers initiated and commissioned by the non-profit making agency Autograph ABP. Eight projects remind comfortable western visitors with culture in mind that today and everyday, some 27 million individual human beings are bound in slavery: "the violent domination of one person by another - for profit."

The examples so startlingly portrayed include child labour in Bangladesh, chattel slavery in Sudan, the trafficking of young people from Eastern Europe, and Indonesian women working as domestic servants in Singapore. The photographs document persons without hope - this is what is shocking: faces without expression, regardless of gender or age. Why? Because their only refuge is dark and deep within themselves.

An associated illustrated book sets modern slavery into its international perspective and explains the genesis of this unusual and very important exhibition.
Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX. (Open daily) 27 September - 9 November.
This Hayward Touring exhibition travels to Plymouth, Newcastle, Carlisle, Nottingham and Aberystwyth - until January 2010. It should be seen elsewhere...

*Turner Prize 2008. In all the years since the first award in 1984, I cannot remember seeing a Turner Prize exhibition that is so intellectually challenging. It is not an easy view and study of the accompanying illustrated booklet will be essential, given that you should make up your own mind about the winner. A glazed installation, a room-sized sculpture, and a series of films - comprise this year's offering by the short-listed artists: Runa Islam, Mark Leckey, Goshka Macuga and Cathy Wilkes.

The enthusiasm of the Tate curators is infectious. Faced with the jury's choices, individual curators then have the difficult task of working with the artists to create displays that are not only sufficient unto themselves, but reflect as far as possible the presentations that originally attracted the jurors during "the twelve months preceding 6 May 2008."

The winner of the £25,000 prize will be announced on Channel 4 television on 1st December the others short-listed receiving £5,000 each. Mountains of publicity is assured, to the benefit of the artists as well as the continuing vitality of contemporary art in Britain.
Supported by Tate Patrons.
Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG. Tel. +44 (0)20 7887 8888. (Open daily) 30 September 2008 - 18 January 2009.