Who will reimagine the British Museum?

Plus: Edith Wharton and the Gilded Age

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Edwin Heathcote on the British Museum's search for a new vision

Currently on display in the Reading Room are models of the five shortlisted entries from an international selection of architects. There is something perfectly appropriate about these miniaturised buildings in vitrines beneath that vast dome, drowning in epic space. The problem is that this was really an ideas competition, with entrants expected to produce not detailed designs but rather a flavour of what visitors might expect, perhaps in a couple of decades' time. It's a curious beginning, a hint of consultation (though it is really no such thing) designed to make us think we are getting an insight into what, once it is underway, will probably be the most expensive cultural project in the UK of its time.

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Helen Gordon on the meteorite that fired up Dürer's imagination

In the late 15th century Albrecht Dürer produced a strikingly strange and unsettling image: an apocalyptic ball of fire hurtling through a dark sky, billowing clouds pierced by murky red rays. Painted on the reverse of his more famous Saint Jerome, it's sometimes interpreted as a reference to the end of the world as described in the Book of Revelation. But rather than biblical prophecy, this may in fact be a recording of an event that the artist witnessed first-hand.

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Keith Miller feels a stab of nostalgia for even more combative times

'Gladiators of Britain', a small and skilfully packaged collaborative touring exhibition, combines a few finds of genuine interest and importance with a lot of contextual material, most of it tailored towards a family audience: a build-your-own wooden Colosseum, helmets to try on and short swords to try out, tasteful screen-printed watercolours of Thracian warriors, net-fighters and the rest. There are also several videos of 'blokes explaining things', as my companion rather testily put it.

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Emily Cox on what Edith Wharton's house says about the Gilded Age

The Mount, a stately three-storey house nestled in the Berkshire Hills, is the author's riposte to the diamond-draped rooms of her youth. Among white walls and terrazzo floors of her own design, she could safely shudder at the memory of 'curtains, lambrequins, jardinières of artificial plants, wobbly velvet-covered tables littered with silver gew-gaws, and festoons of lace on mantelpieces'. Now a museum, The Mount is once again a sanctuary for New Yorkers looking to escape all that – especially in the fall, when towering sugar maples wrap the estate in brilliant shades of orange and gold. When I visited in October, there were no tchotchkes in evidence – though this, I learned, had less to do with Wharton's collecting proclivities than with the fact that the home's contents were dispersed long ago. Period furniture and biographical displays help to fill out the rooms, but a spartan appearance seems to suit the author's austere ambitions.

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Irit Kleiman on an impressive gathering of medieval women

The women in the British Library's current exhibition are queens and abbesses; patrons, authors and scribes; saints and silk merchants; farm labourers, sex workers and rebelling peasants. Their voices resound in the lines of manuscripts and archival documents which comprise many of the 140 objects on display, supported by sculptures, coins, ivories, textiles, jewellery, a golden cup and even the skull of a lion (possibly Margaret of Anjou's pet).

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Matthew Sperling on the Ripley creator's ties to the visual arts

Patricia Highsmith was already known as a giant of suspense fiction at her death 30 years ago this month, in 1995. Since then, while the stock of some of her literary contemporaries has gone down (think of Saul Bellow, Gore Vidal, or Norman Mailer), her reputation as a writer of serious artistic and philosophical achievement has increased. The 21st century – when imposture is at the heart of online life, when self-identification precedes authenticity – seems more and more like the age of Tom Ripley, Highsmith's greatest creation. Less well known, however, is that the final publication Highsmith oversaw was not about murder or secrecy or guilt, but about drawing.

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In the current issue…

Hettie Judah comes to the defence of the more retiring artist

In our current moment it is a received truth that to be successful, an artist must be a socially adept extrovert. The language and practice of the corporate world has migrated into the art world, and artists are instructed to network, to create a strong brand and to market themselves avidly. They are expected to perform on social media, creating diverting videos in which they appear in a state of alluring creative dishevelment in proximity to their work. The route to success is expected to take them through lifestyle shoots in Sunday colour supplements and tearful revelations of minor trauma with chummy podcast hosts. There are only a few artists I know who feel comfortable performing in this way, and – I think this is key – they are far from being those making the most interesting work.

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Who will reimagine the British Museum?

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