The best art and architecture of 2023

Our critics’ high points include a ceramic wedding cake you can climb inside to Alice Neel’s fearless portraits, plus a new children’s V&A and a school with lumpy yellow walls
• More on the best culture of 2023

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Johannes Vermeer attracted over half a million visitors to the Rijkmuseum between February and June this year. Not bad for an artist who only produced about 37 known paintings over a 20-year period between 1654 and 1674. An exhibition of quiet intimacies and domestic mysteries, beautifully installed and spread over 10 rooms, 28 of these mostly small, interior scenes and occasional street views were presented in this stupefying exhibition, the largest ever of the artist’s work.

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