Exhibition of the week

Hawai‘i
Some of the most spectacular masterpieces in the British Museum, including feathered war helmets and glaring gods collected by Captain Cook, make this exhibition created in collaboration with Hawaii community leaders and artists entrancing.
The British Museum, London, from 15 January to 25 May

Also showing

Nan Goldin
Dive into desperation in this display of all of Goldin’s images from her classic photobook The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.
Gagosian Davies Street, London, from 13 January to 21 March

Joseph Beuys
When is a bathtub not a bathtub? When it’s a Beuys sculpture that resonates with the violence and tragedy of 20th-century Germany.
Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, from 13 January to 21 March

Georgia O’Keeffe
Graphic works by the great and sensual American artist of landscape and abstraction.
Gerald Moore Gallery, London, from 15 January to 14 February

Marshmallow Laser Feast
Multimedia and multisensory recreation of the worlds within a tree by this tech-savvy collective.
The Chapel, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, until 15 March

Image of the weekJimmy riddle of the sphinx … public conveniences on the Victoria Embankment, London. Photograph: Dirk Lindner/Hugh Broughton Architects

It’s not a toilet – it’s a revolution! These newly upgraded public loos on the Victoria Embankment, London, were designed in the belief that good architecture improves people’s lives. The hope is that the UK will follow in the footsteps of the Tokyo Toilet project, which brought talented architects to design safe, beautiful, accessible public restrooms. Read more here

What we learned

A charity raffle is putting a €1m Picasso portrait up for grabs for €100

A museum in Paris received a surprise donation of more than 60 Matisse artworks

Fela Kuti wanted to open his artist’s mind to marijuana

The former archbishop of Canterbury believes migrants are at the heart of British art

Photojournalist Ed Kashi has had a front row seat to witness history

Belgian artists decried the dismantling of the country’s oldest contemporary art museum

Art can make you happier, healthier and more hopeful

The amateur artist infamous for the ‘monkey christ’ mural mishap, has died

Masterpiece of the week

A Winter Landscape by Esaias van de Velde, 1623

Photograph: GL Archive/Alamy

Winter in 17th-century Dutch art often looks communal and jolly with joyous ice fairs, children sledging and rosy-cheeked crowds. But if those are the scenes that make it on to Christmas cards, this is more suited to the January blues – a disabused recognition of winter’s toughness. Van de Velde paints a dreary and biting afternoon. Isolated figures trudge on an icy road and tree trunks twist eerily in the bleak melancholy light. Even a game on the ice looks dispirited, and the house nearby seems dead and icy rather than offering a warm fire. The chilly realism has a modern sadness that makes you think of later north European artists such as Van Gogh and Munch.
The National Gallery, London

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