Mind-altering montage, Taylor Swift’s costume crawl and Constable goes west – the week in art

A major retrospective of Peter Kennard’s dissenting images, the V&A goes for Swifties and The Hay Wain arrives in Bristol – all in your weekly dispatch

Exhibition of the week

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent
The veteran montage artist and activist gets a retrospective of his incisive images.
• Whitechapel Gallery, London, until 19 January

Also showing

Taylor Swift Songbook Trail
A free fun Swift extravaganza that leads you through the museum’s displays to find her outfits and costumes.
• V&A, London, 27 July to 8 September

An Irish Impressionist
The spontaneous landscape paintings of Belfast-born Sir John Lavery.
• Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, until 27 October

Sculpture in the City
Hilary Jack and Julian Opie are among the artists exhibiting sculpture among the City’s office blocks and medieval churches.
• City of London venues until 2025

Constable in Bristol
The Hay Wain, on loan from the National Gallery, is shown with art by Richard Long, Peter Lanyon and more.
• Bristol Museum and Art Gallery until 1 September

Image of the week

This video still shows an 1645 English civil war coin an art student swapped for a fake at the British Museum. Ilê Sartuzi’s stunt aimed to highlight the large number of foreign objects the British Museum holds and to question what counts as theft. He deposited the coin in the donations box before leaving the museum.

What we learned

The V&A is displaying a trail of Taylor Swift memorabilia throughout the museum

As the Olympics kick off, our art critic ranks the greatest depictions of sport in art

Singaporean artist Niceaunties uses AI to celebrate Asian “auntie culture”

An exhibition devoted to the 1924 Paris Olympics is winning critical medals

Sheila Girling’s art was overshadowed by her husband Anthony Caro’s reputation

It’s very hard not to join in with Oscar Murillo’s huge new interactive artwork

David Remfry’s paintings record the ‘amazing artists’ colony’ of Chelsea Hotel

At 82, Australian abstractionist Lesley Dumbrell is finally getting her due

Masterpiece of the week

Beach Scene by Degas, 1869-70

There’s a radical new informality to this scene of the 19th century seaside. A girl who has been swimming rests while the family maid combs her hair – the kind of natural moment you would look long and hard to find in any British painting from the time when Degas painted this beach in northern France. By 1874, the experimental daring of Degas and others would be labelled Impressionism. But this is not a simple “impression”. On a closer look, a family walking in beach robes look like formally posed figures from a 15th century fresco and a couple by the shore are posed like cartoonish cut outs. Degas said he finished the picture in his studio, not on the beach. It is a provocative blend of observation and irony that shows his rare and elusive artistic mind.
• National Gallery, London

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