Hardrian the bone-grinder

The British Museum depicts Roman Emperor Hadrian as a cruel oppressor of Jews

Think of the Roman emperor Hadrian, and the wall separating England and Scotland might come to mind. Alternatively, you might reflect on his building of that triumph of engineering, the Pantheon in Rome. But if you are Jewish, Hadrian is inextricably linked with the brutal suppression of the revolt against the Roman occupation of Judea almost 1,900 years ago, for which he earned the soubriquet "the bone-grinder".

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The man turning swimming pools into art galleries

Israeli Joel Cahen is placing underwater speakers in public baths in the name of art.

In the world of British contemporary art, where crude shock tactics have long been the dull norm, it takes an awful lot — or a beautifully simple idea — to grab the public’s attention.

Step forward London-based Israeli sound artist Joel Cahen, curator of Wet Sounds, an appealing new art project that does not require anything from audiences except a swimming costume and an open mind.

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The exiles who cut it

By providing a home for Polish painters fleeing the Nazis, Britain’s art scene was significantly enriched

Art in Exile

Boundary Gallery, London NW8

Hitler’s distaste for the avant-garde is well-documented. He regarded all modern-art movements as “degenerate” on the grounds that they were un-German and “Jewish Bolshevist”.  

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Golden age for the art of the States

An exhibition of prints shows the strength in depth of America’s 20th-century artistic talent

The American scene

British Museum, London WC1

This exhibition of prints reveals the talents of a number of less well-known Jewish American artists who were involved in a number of art movements, ranging from modernism to social realism. One of the most memorable images on show is Louis Lozowick’s lithograph, New York. 

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Your festival guide

With the proliferation of arts extravaganzas and open-air concerts, there’s almost too much quality entertainment around this summer. Here’s our pick of what not to miss

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The British reign in Israel, caught on bromide

It is 90 years since the Palestine mandate was set up. We look at a photographic show displaying some of the period’s landmark moments

Amid all the excitement generated by Israel’s 60th anniversary, commemoration of the 90 years since Britain’s conquest of Palestine has passed relatively unnoticed. Spiro Ark is addressing this deficit with a photographic exhibition on the 30 eventful years that followed four centuries of Ottoman rule and led to the birth of modern Israel.

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Now Kitaj haunts his ‘killer critics’

Eight months after he killed himself, R B Kitaj is the star of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition

In 1994, the Tate Gallery in London mounted a major retrospective of the work of R B Kitaj. For the artist, life would never be the same again. Such was the savagery of the reviews that Kitaj blamed the critics for the death of his wife, Sandra Fisher, of a brain aneurysm shortly after the exhibition closed. In disgust he left Britain, his home for 30 years, and returned to his native United States, vowing that he would not set foot here ever again.

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We’re on the telly

A new BBC series shines a light on Britain’s Jews. Director Vanessa Engle talks to our television critic

There cannot be many more surreal moments in documentary history than the scene in Vanessa Engle’s new film The Prisoner, in which a reformed Chasidic drug-dealer wants to demonstrate how easy it is to swallow a condom packed with grade-A substances. With no cocaine-filled package to hand, he uses the next best thing — a pickled cucumber, which he dispatches in one gulp with the help of a sip of water.

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The master of bling

As the UK’s first Klimt retrospective opens, we examine the artist’s appeal for his Jewish patrons

Was it the sensual curves of his zaftig subjects, the fact that he was a bit of a rebel, or simply his unabashed love of “bling” which so endeared Gustav Klimt to the aspirational Jews of Vienna?

Whatever the attraction, without his wealthy Jewish patrons, the world would not have the spectacular body of work which forms the basis of what is the great Austrian painter’s first-ever British retrospective.