Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers includes many of his best known pictures and, amazingly, it is the first exhibition the National Gallery has devoted to this much loved artist. Focusing mainly on paintings and drawings made in the two years he lived in Provence (1888-1890), it charts the emotional highs and lows of his stay in the Yellow House in Arles, and the times he spent in hospital after numerous breakdowns.

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent at the Whitechapel Gallery includes many of the artists’s most iconic political photomontages. Beginning in the 1970s, Kennard created images that by speaking truth to power, gave protest movements like CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), the Anti-Apartheid Movement and Stop the War Coalition the visual equivalent of marching songs.

It’s been a long time since the Whitechapel Gallery has presented three seriously good exhibitions at the same time. Already reviewed are Gavin Jantjes’ paintings on show in the main gallery. He is now joined, in gallery 2, by Dominique White, winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women and in galleries 5, 6 & 7, by Peter Kennard.

The artist Bill Viola died, after a long illness, early in the morning of Friday 12 July. I had the privilege of getting to know him while making a documentary about his life and work in 2001-2003. He quickly became a friend, as did his wife Kira and his sons, Blake and and Andrei. He felt like a kind of brother, who’d grown up through the same changes that shook culture up in the 1960s and 70s. Although he was American, I felt that we spoke the same language.

Ukraine’s history is complex and often bitter. The territory has been endlessly fought over, divided, annexed and occupied. From 1917-20 it enjoyed a brief period of independence before being swallowed up once more by the Soviet Union after a vicious three year war – an example that Vladimir Putin is copying with his monstrous invasion.

Belgian artist, Francis Alÿs has filled the Barbican Art Gallery with films of children playing games the world over. Many of them are familiar; they’re playing five stones in Nepal (pictured below left), conkers in London, stone skimming in Morocco, scissors/paper/stone and musical chairs in Mexico, hopscotch and leapfrog in Iraq, flying kites in Afghanistan and having snowball fights in Switzerland.

Born in Cape Town in 1948, Gavin Jantjes grew up under apartheid. He openly criticised the regime in his work and, forced into exile, was granted political asylum in Germany in 1973.

Two shows at Jupiter Artland, one in a barn, one in a ballroom, showcase two Scottish artists, whose work shares a sense of lightness and joy. The sun was out, there was happiness all round. Laura Aldridge had painted the walls of her barn space a buttercup yellow and applied translucent film to the windows so that to spend time in her bijou show was like being in a solarium. Andrew Sim, on the other hand, offered a suite of cheery pastel works depicting plants, which echoed the decorative plasterwork of his ballroom ceiling to create another totalising space.

Being a successful artist is not Judy Chicago’s primary goal. She abandoned that ambition six decades ago when the Los Angeles art world greeted her with hostility. Now she’s having the last laugh, though. At 84 she is being heaped with accolades, including induction into America’s National Women's Hall of Fame, and is enjoying worldwide celebrity.

Tate Britain’s Now You See Us could be the most important exhibition you’ll ever see. Spanning 400 hundred years, this overview of women artists in Britain destroys the myth that female talent is an exotic anomaly.