The world's darkest building and Virginia Woolf triumphs at the seaside – the week in art

Mark Dion weaves through rainforests and rubbish dumps, the new Kettle’s Yard builds up steam and a Picasso is renamed after a nightclub – all in your weekly dispatch

Exhibition of the week

Mark Dion
Science and history become dreamlike in Dion’s surrealist collections of found stuff.
• Whitechapel Gallery, London, 14 February to 13 May

Also showing

David Milne
Canadian modernism with an almost Scandinavian melancholy and hints of Peter Doig.
• Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 14 February to 17 May

Emil Nolde
Potent light and stormy colour shudder in this expressionist’s apocalyptic paintings.
• National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 14 February to 10 June

Virginia Woolf
Claude Cahun and Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell are among the artists brought together to celebrate this great modern writer.
• Tate St Ives, 10 February to 29 April

The New Kettle’s Yard
New architecture and new ambitions enhance a magical collection of modern art.
• Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, reopening 10 February

Masterpiece of the week

Vanitas Still Life, 1648, by Jan Jansz Treck
Vanity, all is vanity. As if a pipe that has gone out, an hourglass and a straw for blowing bubbles were not enough to suggest the fragility and brevity of life, this Dutch golden age painting also includes a skull to show exactly where we are all heading. In the glare of death, what value do our ambitions or aspirations have? Military courage and boldness are signified by the empty helmet, music by a flute and viol, art by a drawing, science by a shell – yet none of these spheres of human endeavour can hold back death. Chilling thoughts, yet this bizarre collection is painted with a precision and fineness that makes it as lovely as it is provocative.
• National Gallery, London

Image of the week

Hyundai pavilion, Pyeongchang, by Asif Khan
British architect Asif Khan has built the world’s darkest building for this year’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The temporary pavilion (commissioned by Hyundai) is coated in Vantablack Vbx 2, a nanomaterial comprised of optical cavities which, at 1,000th the width of a human hair, absorb 99% of the light that hits its surface.

What we learned this week

The Queen’s Leonardos are going on tour

New York’s Met can keep the Picasso claimed to have been looted by Nazis

Mexican architect Frida Escobedo will design the 2018 Serpentine pavilion

Rolex runs an artists’ mentoring scheme like no other

Edward Burtynsky is 2018’s Master of Photography

Photographer Susan Meiselas sees the world differently from men

Britain may lose Julia Margaret Cameron’s photo album

Ann Hirsch talked about how her art took over her life

A missing Nigerian masterpiece was found in a London flat

SkyPixel aerial photography winners were announced

Jules de Balincourt paints a divided America

New York artist Leon Golub had a nerve

Sonia Boyce shed more light on the removal of Hylas and the Nymphs

A Londoner has renamed a Picasso portrait after his nightclub

Norwich has rediscovered Alfred Munnings’ night school drawings

We asked Google why the Mona Lisa is smiling

The Aftermath Project takes stock of a decade of war

A Yorkshireman’s chapel is his castle

Illustrators are competing to interrogate Sherlock Holmes

Philippe Chancel recalled France’s rockabilly rebels

Photographer Peter Dench warns of the dangers of drink

Ireland’s quirky shopfronts are disappearing

Art and performance have always mixed

Ancient rock art is endangered by industry

Eddie Peake has put his clothes on

Don’t forget

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