Hirst statue unveiled in London

A 35ft-tall, 13-and-a-half-ton Damien Hirst statue revealing the insides of a pregnant woman has been unveiled at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The Virgin Mother has layers removed on one side to reveal the foetus and the woman's skull, muscles and tissue. It will form part of the gallery's Summer Exhibition, themed 'From Life'. Exhibition head Edith Devaney said it was "beautiful" and "life-affirming", adding: "It will be very interesting to see people's reactions." The bronze statue, recalling Edgar Degas's Little Dancer, dominates the courtyard in front of the gallery, and is visible from Piccadilly where passers by stopped to look as a crane hoisted it into place on Monday. "This is the first piece people encounter on the way into the exhibition, and it says everything about the theme," Ms Devaney said "I don't think people will be upset by it - I think it's still very beautiful. Because there is a baby involved, it is very life-affirming." The statue is the second edition of Hirst's The Virgin Mother - the first is on display in New York, with a third edition currently being cast. The Royal Academy version took a year and a half to build, in 18 separate pieces, at a sculpture foundry in Gloucestershire. Rungwe Kingdon, co-owner of the Pangolin Editions foundry, said it was one of the biggest bronzes in the world. The statue would have been vulnerable to buckling at narrow points like the ankles, so a stainless steel structure hidden inside to support the weight of the bronze. "All the effort was worth it," said Mr Kingdon. "Doesn't it look great in this courtyard? It sort of gives it scale." There were mixed reactions from members of the public, with Maciej Zworski, from Berkeley in the US, calling it "gruesome" and "a little bit disturbing". "It's courageous to put it right in the middle of the Royal Academy," he said, adding that the sight of it had made him enter the gallery.

Thomas Kuehn, from Frankfurt, Germany, said the statue was "cool" and also unexpected. "We didn't expect Damien Hirst here - normally you see it at the Saatchi Gallery or Tate Modern - but having it here, you look at it more closely and more intensely." But Christal Wagner, from California, said: "I don't think anybody would say that it's pretty. "I wouldn't have it in my back yard," she added.

The Royal Academy is teaming up with Charles Saatchi for an exhibition celebrating new American art.  The collaboration comes nearly 10 years after their controversial Sensation exhibition helped further the careers of Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst. USA Today, which opens on 4 October, will feature 30 young contemporary artists who work in the US. The exhibition focuses on America's place in the world, and willi nclude painting, photography and sculpture. Among the artists who will be submitting work are Kelley Walker, Rodney McMillian, Inka Essenhigh and Ryan McGinness. Some of the pieces have already attracted attention because of their political messages, such as Jules de Balincourt's Disunited States, a redrawn map of the US. Royal Academy president Sir Nicholas Grimshaw said: "This is a thought-provoking and exciting array of works from tomorrow's big art names." Exhibitions secretary Norman Rosenthal added: "Many of these wonderful pieces are little known or have rarely been seen in Great Britain or Europe. "They present a new vitality of art in the United States and demonstrate a varied array of political and aesthetic agendas of the greatest interest that represent the many vital aspects of life and culture today."

Sensation controversy: The Sensation exhibition, held in 1997, featured Marcus Harvey's controversial portrait of Moors murderer Myra Hindley, painted using children's handprints. Other works included Hirst's Pickled Sheep and Emin's tent creation called Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95, which has since been destroyed in a fire. Some of the works are now housed at the Saatchi Gallery at County Hall, London. Sensation, which was also shown in New York and Berlin, helped spark interest in the Young British Artists movement, many of whom have carved out successful and lucrative contemporary art careers.

The British Museum is to be the setting for a television gameshow based on its galleries and collections.  Codex, due on Channel 4 this winter, will be presented by Time Team host and Blackadder actor Tony Robinson. Each episode focuses on a specific period of history, and contestants will have to use the museum's artefacts to break a code. The programme was devised by Justin Scroggie, who was also responsible for Treasure Hunt and The Crystal Maze. Codex will feature some of the most famous items from the British Museum's vast collection. Amongst them will be the Flood Tablet, a 2,700-year-old clay tablet inscribed with the Babylonian version of the flood story, which is closely related to the story of Noah's Ark.

This is a sketch for the work Study For Adam from the Sistine Chapel.

A Michelangelo exhibition has broken the British Museum's advance bookings record with 10,868 tickets sold. Michelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master, overtook the previous record holder, 2005's Persia exhibition, which had 3,670 advance sales. The Michelangelo show opens on Thursday and features 90 drawings. The artist was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter and architect and he regularly destroyed his sketches to stop his rivals getting hold of them. It is also thought that the Florentine artist did not want people to see the work that went into creating his human forms.

The British Museum said it was its first Michelangelo exhibition in 30 years. Curator Hugo Chapman said: "Michelangelo would have hated this exhibition. He wouldn't have wanted us to understand how he worked. He wanted us to go into the Sistine chapel and be amazed. "But I think he was wrong to destroy his drawings because they bring a further understanding and make us appreciate his genius even more." The works were put together from collections in the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and the Teyler Museum in Holland.

Visitors will be able to see drawings the artist used for teaching students, alongside the pupils' own sketches. On one of these sketches, of the virgin and child, Michelangelo wrote: "Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and don't waste time." Curators added that the tension between Michelangelo's passions for the male form and his Christian faith during his 60-year career was the driving force in much of his art. The exhibition states "Michelangelo was close to a number of young men", adding: "Although we might think of Michelangelo as homosexual, such notions of sexual identity were unknown in the Renaissance. "Homosexual behaviour was common in Florence." The show also features black-and-white chalk studies for the Last Judgement on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel and drawings of the Crucifixion.

Polynesians had no metal before European arrival, yet with tools of stone, shell and shark tooth they carved enormous double canoes and major works of art. On display for the first time will be a 4m canoe composed of 45 sections of wood tied together with coconut husk fibre cord - collected in 1767 during the voyage of HMS Dolphin. The story of the collectors is also told. Who were they, and what motivated their collecting? Included are many artifacts from all three of Captain Cooks voyages (1768-1780), and works collected on the voyages of Captain Bligh, Captain Vancouver (after whom the city is named) and many others. The exceptional collections of the London Missionary Society, held in the British Museum, are also well represented. Polynesians continue to have a vibrant living culture and this exhibition explores an important part of their history while extending appreciation of one of the world's great but little-known art traditions. The exhibition will be shown in both temporary exhibitions spaces, and will also inaugurate the new link exhibition space in the refurbished Sainsbury Centre. The British Museum, from whom some 120 items are being borrowed, is a major partner in the project. From gorgeous Hawaiian feather cloaks to exquisite Tahitian fish hooks, there will be something in this exhibition for everyone to enjoy. Polynesian art deserves to be widely appreciated, and there is no better place to show it than the Sainsbury Centre. Steven Hooper, exhibition curator. Sainsbury Centre Director, Nichola Johnson said: We are reopening The Sainsbury Centre with a brilliant exhibition. Much of the material in Pacific Encounters has never been seen before in public. Our status as a university museum has given us the opportunity to create an international ground-breaking exhibition in Norwich, which combines serious academic research with fabulous eye-catching displays. Pacific Encounters is part of a research project, Polynesian Visual Arts: meanings and histories in Pacific and European cultural contexts‚ sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The exhibition is a British Museum Partnership UK project. British Museum Press will be publishing a fully-illustrated catalogue to coincide with the exhibition.