The best art exhibitions in Sydney this month

The Art Gallery of NSW's Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age attracted 130,000 people last summer, showcasing works from the 17th century held by Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. For this summer, the AGNSW is travelling east and skipping forward a few centuries with 65 paintings from St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum.

The National Palace Museum in Taipei has one of the most impressive collections of ancient Chinese art in the world, with more than 700,000 pieces covering thousands of years and multiple dynasties.

American artist Nick Cave – not to be confused with the Australian singer-songwriter – is bringing 16,000 wind spinners, 24 chandeliers, 10 miles of crystals, thousands of ceramic birds and one crocodile to Sydney. Cave’s Until is a mammoth new installation work coming to Carriageworks.

For this year's big summer exhibition, the MCA is changing directions drastically and presenting an exhibition of mostly black-and-white photos by South African photographer David Goldblatt.

Just one day before it was due to premiere in Melbourne in 2018, Sydney duo Soda_Jerk's latest film lost the support of the philanthropic trust that contributed $100,000 to its development. Now that film is coming to Sydney.

It was more than four decades ago that journalist and anti-development activist Juanita Nielsen disappeared from the streets of Sydney. Nobody knows exactly what happened to her, but it’s believed she met a violent end due to her opposition to the development of Victoria Street, where tenants were being evicted to make way for more apartment blocks.

Brett Whiteley was known for a few things: his boldly colourful, world-conquering paintings; his provocative sculptures; and not least, his often tumultuous personal life. But despite the fact that he could sometimes be divisive, the art world is pretty united in its opinion of his drawing skills: he was one of the best. 

In the summer of 2016, three Sydney galleries joined together for an exhibition all about our city, featuring Australian born and bred artists famous for exploring their connection to Sydney. Now the galleries have rekindled their collaboration with this reimagining of that initial exhibition. Each gallery will show three artists, with more than 130 works across the three locations. At Manly Art Gallery and Museum, you can see Ken Done, Adrian Feint and Ethel Carrick-Fox; Michael Johnson, Robert Klippel and Roy De Maistre’s paintings can be found at Mosman Art Gallery; Wendy Sharpe, Nicholas Harding and Jeffrey Smart’s works are at the SH Ervin Gallery. All of the artists explore what it is to live and work in Sydney. The artists were all selected because of their active engagement with the city, and the way they represent both the harbour and CBD in their works. The idea is that when you travel between the three galleries, you’ll think about the landscape and urban space between each venue. Ethel Carrick-Fox’s work resembles early impressionist painting, exploring light and pastel colouring found along the harbour and beachside suburbs of Balmoral and Manly – which is fitting because you can see her work at the Manly Art Gallery and Museum. It’d be difficult to miss the unmistakably female view of Sydney in Wendy Sharpe’s sensual paintings, which reveal a lot of what’s usually unseen in this city, hidden in the night. You can see Sharpe’s work presented at SH Ervin Gal