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You don't have to go abroad to find beautiful art and architecture. Much of what you see in Italy and France is mirrored right here in Britain

The ideology of art today, according to most artists, curators and critics, is one that values the familiar. Ordinary objects, everyday pictures, and accessible artists who seem not that different from ourselves are praised, endlessly. The artist next door whose work portrays the average life in the average town is what we are told to admire.

This is why I never can content myself with the modern British art scene. I want art to be elsewhere, I want to travel in search of it. I need it to be exotic, and to show me other worlds, other lives, other times and places. The first exhibitions I saw were in France and Italy, on childhood holidays. Maybe that's why I associate the best art experiences with travel. But what happens in times like these, when many people can't afford to travel abroad? Can there be an art staycation?

I recently heard a talk about John Piper by art historian Frances Spalding . This British painter started as a fully paid up international modernist before turning inward, to the English landscape. In the 1940s he portrayed, eloquently, the ruins of Coventry Cathedral and other bombed churches . Spalding illuminated the reasons – at a time of national crisis, with war blazing overhead – for Piper's choice of a consciously parochial art.

As a journalist I can see Piper's point. Britain is full of hidden beauties. The talk I heard about Piper was at Dartington Hall in Devon, an amazingly well-preserved medieval hall. It would also be possible to argue that much of what you see in Venice can be mirrored in Britain. The glories of Venetian Gothic are much-praised – but what about the English perpendicular? I mean, you can go to Canterbury, visit the cathedral, see all the gothic and Romanesque you like, and then go to the beach in Broadstairs – what more could anyone want?

The French architect Jean Nouvel's Serpentine gallery pavilion was unveiled this morning. Here's a first look around the temporary structure

Local Basque officials rail against decision taken in New York to place new Guggenheim in nature reserve

The Guggenheim Museum has become the emblem of the northern Spanish city of Bilbao and its main tourist attraction, but now attempts to spread its magic by building an extension in a nearby nature reserve have run into fierce opposition.

Provincial authorities want to call an international competition for a museum extension in the bucolic surroundings of the coastal Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, 25 miles from Bilbao, hoping it will help boost the local economy in the same way the Guggenheim helped Bilbao.

"People in Urdaibai are worried because unemployment is growing and traditional industries are in decline. The museum would be a great boost," said Andoni Ortuzar, local head of the Basque Nationalist party.

The move has provoked concern that authorities might choose to place a building as loud and intrusive as the main museum, designed by Frank Gehry, in the unspoilt surroundings of a nature park which boasts some of Spain's finest surfing beaches. It has also run into the opposition of the regional Basque government, which has threatened to veto a competition.

The project has the enthusiastic backing of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which also runs museums in New York, Berlin, Venice and Abu Dhabi. The foundation's director, Richard Armstrong, told a recent conference that he wanted the Urdaibai extension to become the "first important museum of the 21st century".

The foundation, however, sees the extension as very different from the dazzling building that towers over the River Nervion in Bilbao. "It would not be an architectural icon, but a landscape one," Armstrong said.

"The idea is to repeat the success, but not the model," added the Bilbao Guggenheim director, Juan Ignacio Vidarte.

The plan aims to raze a summer camp built in 1925 in the village of Sukarrieta and replace it with "an innovative ecological museum", with an emphasis on the "creative process rather than the finished product", according to the Guggenheim chief curator, Nancy Spector.

Critics have accused the Guggenheim of looking for a free new museum, given that the Urdaibai building would be paid for by local taxpayers.

Some local commentators already complain that the big decisions affecting the Bilbao Guggenheim are made in New York. "In the really important decisions the Basque and provincial governments have only been there to give their approval to what is decided in New York," said a former adviser to the museum, Javier González de Durana.

Provincial authorities said they still hoped to persuade the Basque regional government to go ahead with the architectural competition and that, if they did not get support, they would postpone it until a new government was elected.

This new show is 'a mysterious dwelling infused with subjectivity and desire' featuring artists such as Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Giacometti and René Magritte

Gallery: The V&A museum in London invited 19 architects to submit proposals for small structures to be built full-scale inside its walls

Contemporary visual art amounts to little without the architecture that surrounds it. Maybe we art critics have been looking at the wrong stuff

Is there any difference between art and architecture? I'm wondering this after writing a feature that was as much about architecture as "art" – and in envy of architectural critics off to Rome to see Zaha Hadid's latest wonder, the Maxxi. It is impossible to conceive of the history of art in exclusion from that of architecture. If you were writing about the Baroque style, or the Arts and Crafts movement, or any other major cultural era: just to write about paintings and sculpture and ignore the buildings they were created for would be to trivialise the subject. It's the same today.

What will future cultural historians say about the arts in our time? They will almost certainly see architecture as the backbone of visual culture in the early 2000s. A brilliant moment in museum architecture (they will write), from Frank Gehry's Guggenheim to Zaha Hadid's Roman gallery, was a significant event in early 21st-century art. Visiting a museum became an enjoyment of grand space, a cubist exploration of architectural complexity.

It might have been a great moment in serious visual culture – but it was one that produced few artistic masterpieces in the conventional sense. The best art – from Martin Creed's The Lights Going On and Off to Richard Wright's elusive wall paintings – simply and eloquently comment on the architecture it graces.

Just as 17th-century Baroque paintings are most moving in the context of the architectural and decorative ensembles of southern Italian churches, so the cultural historians of tomorrow will see the art of our day as inseparable from its settings. Art critics might look a bit silly, always reviewing "art" in an age when visual art is so architectural. Art may not be where art is at. All too often, we are reviewing the carpets, and saying nothing about the construction of the house.

The airy halls and Moorish touches of Lord Leighton's house in London show a flair for interior design that surpassed his skill as an artist

Bright, sunny days are not the best on which to visit Victorian museums – unless, that is, they happen to possess a Moorish indoor courtyard with wooden lattice windows, where sunlight plays delicately on blue tiles and a cooling fountain. Lord Leighton's house near Holland Park reopened recently after a generous restoration. I had never been before, and I'm glad my first visit was during the heatwave last weekend: it really made the Islamic atrium resemble the lovely courtyards of Cordoba and Seville.

Frederic Leighton was one of the most acclaimed and financially successful artists of his age. And he knew how to spend it. The house that he built himself is an orientalist's fantasy compounded with a Renaissance prince's studiolo. It is a cultural argument set in stone, gold and Iznik ware. In the glorious domed indoor courtyard is a copy of a Roman statue from the House of the Faun in Pompeii. This makes you see that it resembles the inner world of a Roman villa as much as an Andalusian or Turkish palace. European, Asian and African influences mingle in playful beauty in the open, well-lit living spaces. There's a free flow to the place that anticipates 20th-century architecture: it makes you wish Leighton had designed more buildings, instead of churning out so many industrious history paintings.

But there's the problem. The crowning glory of this wondrous home is Leighton's studio, a great day-lit hall with a gallery from which he could survey his latest masterpiece. Its restored decor includes images of Renaissance art, placed there to inspire him, and fireplaces lovingly decorated with marble inlays. What an incredibly luxurious and well-appointed working space. As for its scale, it looks forward to the warehouses preferred by today's artists.

But an artist's fame and prestige in their own lifetime does not guarantee a place in history. Would this 19th-century art star have minded that his house is more admired today than any of his paintings or statues?

After all, French artists with no reputation and no money were painting canvases immeasurably more worthwhile than Leighton's stately constructions. Another lord, Kenneth Clark, visiting the palaces of the baroque in his venerable television classic Civilisation, opined that "no truly great thing was ever thought or imagined in a really big room". Leighton's studio is a monument to that fact.

Stevie Wonder hits the UK, Toy Story goes 3D, and it's the last ever Big Brother – our critics pick the unmissable events of the season

Pop

Stevie Wonder

Anyone who can't face braving Glastonbury to see the Motown legend's Sunday-night set can head to London's Hyde Park for this headlining show. It's likely to be heavy on the hits, but a little too heavy on the audience participation, if complaints from disgruntled punters at Wonder's recent shows are anything to go by. And be warned: Jamiroquai seems to have been enticed out of retirement to provide support. Hyde Park, London W2, 26 June. Box office: 020-7009 3484.

T in the Park

This beloved Scottish festival is prized as much for its atmosphere as its lineup. And they're certainly wheeling out the big hitters this year: Eminem, Muse, Kasabian, Jay-Z, Black Eyed Peas, Florence and the Machine, La Roux, Dizzee Rascal and Paolo Nutini, among others. Balado, Kinross-shire, 9-11 July. Box office: 0844 499 9990.

Wireless

There are those who would argue that going to a festival with no camping doesn't strictly constitute going to a festival: equally, there are those who wouldn't countenance doing anything else. Either way, this year's Wireless lineup looks strong: it includes Pink, the Ting Tings, LCD Soundsystem, Lily Allen, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, Plan B and Friendly Fires. Hyde Park, London W2, 2-4 July. Box office: 020-7009 3484.

Benicassim

If you're prepared to travel abroad for your festival jollies, Spain's Benicassim can offer things no British event can: a beach and guaranteed good weather. This year you can also catch Kasabian, Ray Davies, the Prodigy, Lily Allen, the Specials, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Vampire Weekend, PiL, Dizzee Rascal, Hot Chip, Goldfrapp and the intriguingly named Love of Lesbian. Benicassim, Spain, 15-18 July. Box office: tickets.fiberfib.com

Green Man

Of all the boutique festivals, Green Man is the longest-established. This year's eclectic bill sees something of a shift away from its nu-folk roots – but they presumably know their audience well enough to know what they'll like. Doves, Joanna Newsom and Flaming Lips are among the headliners; also on the roster are Billy Bragg, Fuck Buttons, Wild Beasts and Steve Mason. The traditional end of things, meanwhile, is held up by the Unthanks and Alasdair Roberts. Brecon Beacons, 20-22 August. Box office: 0871 424 4444.

Film

Greenberg

An indie comedy from Noah Baumbach, creator of The Squid and the Whale. Ben Stiller is Roger Greenberg, an unfulfilled middle-aged guy who house-sits for his more successful brother Phillip in LA, and begins a relationship with Phillip's nervy assistant Florence, played by mumblecore star Greta Gerwig. Released on 11 June.

Inception

The Batman movies made Christopher Nolan one of Hollywood's biggest hitters; now, he raises the stakes with this non-superhero film. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Cobb, a guy with a unique gift in a strange dystopian future where corporate espionage has engendered an unsettling new technology. Released on 16 July.

Toy Story 3

The first two Toy Stories were sublime, so hopes are high for the third instalment. Woody, Buzz and his toy pals are facing the much-feared betrayal/abandonment issues hinted at in the previous film. Their owner has grown up, and they are headed for the charity bins, to be played with by kids who do not appreciate them. So the toys plan a daring escape. Released on 21 July.

Mother

This movie from South Korea has acquired cult status on the festival circuit, and makes a welcome appearance in the UK. Kim Hye-ja plays an elderly woman whose twentysomething son still lives with her. When he is charged with murder, it is up to her to right what she is convinced is a terrible wrong, and to track down the real killer. She is a formidable amateur sleuth. But what will she – and we – discover? Released on 20 August.

The Illusionist

Sylvain Chomet, the director of the hugely admired animation Les Triplettes de Belleville, has scored another hit by resurrecting an unproduced script by Jacques Tati and bringing it to life with complete fidelity to his spirit. It is a gentle, melancholy tale about an old-school vaudevillian magician and entertainer who finds that modern showbusiness is leaving him behind. But a young girl still thrills to his act. Released on 20 August.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Comic fans suffering from withdrawal after Kick-Ass can find comfort in this adventure. Based on the graphic novel by Brian Lee O'Malley and directed by Edgar Wright, this stars Michael Cera as the introspective rock musician Scott. He falls hard for Ramona Flowers, but discovers that he has to vanquish her seven ex-boyfriends before he can win her heart. Released on 6 August.

Books

Ghost Light by Joseph O'Connor

In Edwardian Dublin, a young actress begins an affair with JM Synge. This latest from historical novelist O'Connor, author of Star of the Sea and Redemption Falls, is loosely based on the real story of the great Irish playwright's affair with Molly Allgood, moving between 1907 Dublin and 1952 London. Harvill Secker, 3 June.

Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis

Twenty-five years after Ellis burst onto the scene with Less Than Zero comes this sequel to his story of disaffected LA teenager Clay and friends. Middle-aged Clay is now a screenwriter, returning to LA to cast a movie and catch up with ex-girlfriend Blair, childhood best friend Julian (now a recovering addict running an escort service) and their old dealer Rip. Picador, 2 July.

Faithful Place by Tana French

Every holiday needs a good crime novel and French's skilful thrillers are tailor-made to terrify. This follows the story of Frank Mackey, who planned to run away to London with his girlfriend Rosie, aged 19. She failed to turn up; 20 years later he's still in Dublin, working as an undercover policeman. And then Rosie's suitcase is found. Hodder, 19 August.

A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Reasons Why We Can't Stop Reading Jane Austen

Authors from Jay McInerney to Fay Weldon, Alain de Botton and Susanna Clarke ponder Austen's enduring appeal in this collection, edited by Susannah Carson. Martin Amis, for one, dreams of a 20-page sex scene between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, with Darcy "acquitting himself uncommonly well". Particular Books, 3 June.

Visual art

Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception

Belgian artist Alÿs, now based in Mexico City, has pushed a block of ice through sweltering streets, had 500 volunteers move a Peruvian sand dune, and walked the 1948 Armistice line between Palestine and Israel, trailing green paint behind him. This will be the largest survey of his work ever held. Tate Modern, London SE1 (020-7887 8888), 15 June-15 September.

Martin Creed: Down Over Up

A mid-career survey show of the Turner Prize-winning artist who made the lights go on and off, filled galleries with balloons, and had runners sprinting through Tate Britain. Creed works increasingly with performance, both with his band Owada and with dancers. His art can be funny, touching and outrageous, all carried off with wit, charm and a lack of pretension. Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (0131-225 2383), 30 July–31 October.

Alice Neel: Painted Truths

Alice Neel (1900-1984) was a tough, single-minded and wonderful American portraitist whose subjects included her family and art-world friends, such as Andy Warhol (whom she painted in bandages after he was shot). An artist's artist, her work is idiosyncratic and acute. Expect art schools to be filled with teenage mini-Neels next term. Whitechapel Gallery, London E1 (020-7522 7888), 8 July–17 September.

John Cage: Every Day Is a Good Day

Cage did much more than compose 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. The composer, writer, mushroom-hunter, unconventional artist and collaborator with Merce Cunningham and Jasper Johns is undergoing a major revival. This show is curated by artist, writer and long-time fan Jeremy Millar, and is organised according to Cage's ideas of chance and indeterminacy. Baltic, Gateshead (0191-478 1810) 19 June‑5 September.

Picasso: The Mediterranean Years (1945-1962)

Complementing Tate Liverpool's current Picasso show, this exhibition, curated by Picasso biographer John Richardson and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, focuses on the artist's Mediterranean roots, with portraits, sculptures, ceramics and prints, mostly taken from Picasso's own collection. Gagosian Gallery, London WC1 (020-7784 9960), 4 June–28 August.

Wolfgang Tillmans

Based in London for 20 years, Tillmans takes his relationship with the city as the starting point for this show. Abstract photographs and snapshots, portraits and places, old things and new: Tillmans's subjects are as rich and varied, as surprising and askew as the world itself. Serpentine Gallery, London W2 (020-7402 6075), 10 July–17 October.

Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries

An exhibition for anyone interested in the skulduggery of forgery; the mangling of old paintings to make them fit later taste; or in the science of restoration and CSI-type investigation. The show analyses work from the gallery's own collection. National Gallery, London WC2 (020-7747 2885), 30 June–12 September.

Theatre

Women, Power and Politics

Nine dramatists, including Bola Agbaje, Moira Buffini, Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Sue Townsend, join forces to create a two-part show exploring the role of women in British politics. Given that there are more Lib Dems than women in the current cabinet, it seems a timely venture. Tricycle Theatre, London NW6 (020-7328 1000), 4 June-17 July.

Morte d'Arthur

Having adapted The Canterbury Tales for the RSC, the writer-director team of Mike Poulton and Gregory Doran now give us a compressed version of Malory's epic on Arthurian legend. Expect the round table, the holy grail and the hot, adulterous passion of Lancelot and Guinevere. Courtyard, Stratford-upon-Avon (0844 800 1110), 11 June-28 August.

Alice

Playwright Laura Wade and director Lyndsey Turner have just had a hit with Posh at the Royal Court. Now things get curiouser as the pair collaborate on a new version of Lewis Carroll's novel, in which Wonderland looks suspiciously like Sheffield. Over-eights only. Crucible, Sheffield (0114-249 6000), 17 June-24 July.

Greenwich and Docklands International festival

This outdoor festival can hold its head up proudly among its European peers. French company Ilotopie return with a new show, Oxymer – and there is a dazzling array of work from Catalonia. All events are free. Various sites around London, 24 June-4 July.

The Critic/The Real Inspector Hound

Sheridan is matched with Stoppard in two of the funniest plays ever written about theatre. In the first, a ludicrous play about the Spanish Armada descends into chaos; in the second, two critics get caught up in a Christie-style whodunit. Jonathan Church, who has boldly restored Chichester's fortunes, directs. Minerva, Chichester (01243 781312), 2 July-28 August.

You Me Bum Bum Train

Two hundred performers and an audience of just one – you. This show has been six years in the making, and now gets a full-scale production courtesy of the Barbican's BITE programme. LEB Building, London E2 (0845 120 7511), 6-24 July.

Earthquakes in London

Rupert Goold directs a Mike Bartlett play promising a rollercoaster ride through London from 1968 to 2525. Themes include social breakdown, population explosion and paranoia: a chance for Goold to exercise the expressionist talents he used in Enron. Cottesloe, London SE1 (020-7452 3000), from 28 July.

The Gospel at Colonus

Classic Greek drama is given a twist by US director Lee Breuer, who relocates Sophocles's tragedy to modern America and throws in a gospel choir, Blind Boys of Alabama, to collectively play the role of Oedipus. Edinburgh Playhouse (0131-473 2000), 21-23 August.

Architecture

The Serpentine Gallery summer pavilion

The gallery's 10th summer pavilion is as red as a London double-decker. It's also Jean Nouvel's first building in Britain, but only just: the French architect, best known for the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, has nearly completed a controversial office block in the City of London. This boldly geometric pavilion will be home to a series of cultural events. Serpentine Gallery, London W2 (020-7402 6075), 10 July–17 October.

Venice Biennale

The 12th International Architecture Exhibition is curated this year by the Pritzker prize-winning Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima. This is one of the most delightful places to encounter the latest ideas in architecture. Venice, 29 August–21 November. Details: labiennale.org

Television

Secret Diaries of Anne Lister

Anne Lister was a woman way ahead of her time. A Yorkshire industrialist, land-owner and traveller, she was also a lesbian and lived with her lover, long before lesbians officially existed. Best of all, she was an avid diarist, recording her life in great detail – and often in code. Maxine Peake stars as Lister in this one-off 90-minute drama, written by Jane English and directed by James Kent. BBC2, June

Big Brother

Love it or hate it, there's no denying BB's influence and impact on the first decade of the 21st century. Remember the chickens, and Nasty Nick? And how much nastier it got over subsequent series? This is the end – the last BB ever. (To be read in Marcus Bentley's Geordie voice: It's D-Day in the Big Brother house ...) Channel 4, June

Father & Son

A four-part thriller written by Frank Deasy (Prime Suspect: The Final Act and The Passion) about an ex-crim who returns to Britain from a quiet life in Ireland, to save his teenage son from prison. Starring Dougray Scott, Stephen Rea, Sophie Okonedo and Ian Hart. ITV, June

Vexed

A three-part comedy drama about a pair of cops (Toby Stephens and Lucy Punch) with a lot of chemistry between them, as well as issues at home. Written by Howard Overman, who penned the hit show Misfits for E4. BBC2, August

I Am Slave

A one-off drama from the people who created the feature film The Last King of Scotland, tackling the issue of slavery in contemporary Britain. Inspired by real events, it tells the story of a young woman's abduction from her home in Sudan to London, where she is enslaved. Channel 4, August

Classical and opera

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Bryn Terfel finally sings a role he was born to play – that of Hans Sachs, in Wagner's most life-affirming work. Welsh National Opera presents Richard Jones's new production in Cardiff and Birmingham, before bringing it to the Proms as a concert performance. Millennium Centre, Cardiff (029-2063 6464), 19 June-3 July; Hippodrome, Birmingham (0844 338 5000), 6 & 10 July; Royal Albert Hall, London SW7 (0845 401 5040), 17 July.

What are Years

The highlight of Pierre Boulez's first-ever appearance at the Aldeburgh festival promises to be the world premiere of 101-year-old Elliott Carter's Marianne Moore song cycle, with Boulez conducting soprano Claire Booth and Ensemble Intercontemporain. Snape Maltings Concert Hall (01728 687110), Aldeburgh, 26 June.

The Duchess of Malfi

English National Opera and the theatre company Punchdrunk join forces to take over a vacant site in London's Docklands for an "immersive" production of Torsten Rasch's new opera, based on John Webster's 17th-century revenge tragedy. Great Eastern Quay, London E16. Tickets are not yet on sale, but you can register your interest here" 13-24 July.

Bach Day

As usual, the Proms will mark most of the year's significant musical anniversaries – Schumann, Chopin, Scriabin, Mahler – and will devote an entire day to Bach. John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Brandenburg Concertos, David Briggs plays organ works and Andrew Litton takes on an evening of orchestral arrangements. Cadogan Hall & Royal Albert Hall, London SW7 (0845 401 5040), 14 August.

Montezuma

The European colonisation of the new world is the theme of this year's Edinburgh international festival – and Carl Heinrich Graun's rarely performed opera from 1754, with a libretto by Frederick the Great of Prussia, fits into it perfectly. A Mexican production team stages this story of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, with a cast drawn from both the old and new worlds. King's, Edinburgh (0131-473 2000), 14, 15 & 17 August.

East Neuk festival

Expect high-class chamber music at this Scottish event, with both the Belcea and Elias quartets in residence. Programmes range across more than three centuries, from Tallis to Britten. Various venues, Fife (0131-473 2000), 30 June to 4 July.

Jazz

Wynton Marsalis

Marsalis and the Lincoln Center orchestra celebrate 80 years of big-band jazz history with three big London concerts, as well as workshops and jams at the Vortex Club and elsewhere. The Hackney gigs feature both an afternoon family concert and evening show, while the Glasgow performance is part of the Glasgow international jazz festival. Barbican Hall, London E8 (0845 120 7500), 17-18 June; Hackney Empire, London E8 (020-8510 4500), 20 June; Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow (0141-353 8000), 27 June.

The Necks

Every performance by Australia's cult improv trio the Necks is different – though you can be sure that each will be a seamless episode of free improvisation. Hypnotic hooks emerge and fade from trance-like drones, jazz phrasing is touched on and abandoned, and drum sounds are both textural and rhythmic. It's a unique ensemble, with a big cult following. Tron Theatre, Glasgow (0141-552 4267), 22 June.

Pat Metheny Band

Guitar star Metheny came to Britain with his one-man-band Orchestrion project earlier in the year, but this show represents the Metheny his long-time fans know: the leader of an accessible quartet fusing Latin music, jazz themes and lyrical guitar. Regulars Lyle Mays (piano), Steve Rodby (bass) and dynamic drummer Antonio Sanchez complete the lineup. Barbican, London EC2 (0845 120 7500), 10 July.

Kurt Elling

Jazz singer and multi-award nominee Elling has it all – Sinatra's soaring sound and charismatic cool, a dazzling jazz-improv technique, and an intelligent audacity about picking unusual material. Ronnie Scott's, London W1 (020-7439 0747), 30 June-3 July.

World music

Womad

This festival can either be a miserable mudbath or an easy-going weekend in the Wiltshire countryside – but it's worth risking it for an impressive lineup. From Congo, Staff Benda Bilili play rousing rhumba-rock from their wheelchairs; and from Australia there's the soulful Aboriginal star Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. Plus Nigeria's master drummer Tony Allen, the Kamkars from Kurdish Iran, and great American veteran Gil Scott-Heron. Charlton Park, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, 23-25 July. Box office: 0845 146 1735.

Cambridge Folk Festival

There are dozens of good UK folk festivals this summer – but Cambridge still has the highest profile, partly because it has become an international event with increasing emphasis on American stars. This year the line-up includes country legend Kris Kristofferson, the Carolina Chocolate Drops and the multilingual Pink Martini, along with Malian star Rokia Traoré. The British contingent includes the Unthanks and Seth Lakeman. Cherry Hinton Hall, 29 July to 1 August. Box office: 01223 357851.

Dance

Pleasure's Progress

Will Tuckett visits the dark underbelly of 18th-century England, mixing dance and opera in this homage to William Hogarth. The cast includes the excellent Matthew Hart. Jerwood DanceHouse, Ipswich (01473 295230), 18-19 June, then touring.

Russian ballet in London

Heavyweight Moscow ballet giant the Bolshoi and the St Petersburg featherweight, the Mikhailovsky, fight it out for London's summer ballet audience. The Bolshoi have a new staging of Coppélia and Ratmansky's Russian Seasons, while the Mikhailovsky bring the classic Gorsky-Messerer Swan Lake, as well as Chabukiani's uber-Soviet ballet Laurencia. The Mikhailovsky are at the Coliseum, London WC2 (020-7632 8300) from 13 July; The Bolshoi are at the Royal Opera House, London WC2 (020-7304 4000), from 17 July.

Carlos Acosta

Acosta returns with his latest mixed programme – and his performances include debuts in the beautiful Russell Maliphant solo, Two, and Edwaard Liang's Sight Unseen, with Zenaida Yanowsky. Coliseum, London WC2 (020-7632 8300), from 28 July.

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch: Agua

Following Bausch's death last year, her company opted to continue touring her work. Agua, seen here in the UK for the first time, is a tragicomic take on life played out against Brazilian landscapes. Playhouse, Edinburgh (0131 473 2000), 27-29 August.

Comedy

Penn and Teller

Stand aside, Derren Brown. Perform your disappearing act, Paul Daniels. Las Vegas magic act Penn and Teller are coming to town, for five nights in London this July. The duo's 30-year partnership has yielded multiple Emmy nominations, an appearance on The Simpsons – and, of course, their hit 1990s Channel 4 series, The Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller. This is their first live UK appearance in 16 years. Hammersmith Apollo, London W6 (0844 844 4748), 14-18 July.

Hans Teeuwen

Already confirmed for the Edinburgh fringe this year, the once-seen, never-forgotten Dutch comic Teeuwen unleashes his new show Smooth and Painful on an unsuspecting world. Even if you've seen the twisted cabaret of this demoniacal Nick Cave of comedy before, you've no idea what he'll come up with next. Pleasance Beyond, Edinburgh (0131-556 6550), 4-29 August.

My Name Is Sue

Winner of a Total Theatre award at last year's Edinburgh fringe, this frumpy cabaret once again unites the talents of composer/performer Dafydd James and director Ben Lewis, of the terrific Inspector Sands theatre group. James dons a blouse and skirt to play the titular housewife, who sits at a piano and whacks out the musical story of her unheralded life. Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff (029 2031 1050), 4 and 5 June. Then touring.

Emo Philips

A UK comedy favourite since the 1980s, Philips returns for the first time since 2006 to play – er, a tent in a field in Suffolk. Signing up the falsetto-voiced man-child is a real coup for Latitude: judging by his last British shows, age (he's now in his mid-50s) hasn't mellowed this relentless dispenser of disturbed one-liners. Latitude festival, July 18, then touring; at the Pleasance Cabaret Bar, Edinburgh (0131-556 6550), 5-29 August.

• Previews by Peter Bradshaw, Alexis Petridis, John Fordham, Michael Billington, Lyn Gardner, Robin Denselow, Brian Logan, Andrew Clements, Sam Wollaston, Judith Mackrell, Adrian Searle, Jonathan Glancey and Alison Flood

• This article/item was amended on 24 May 2010 to remove a box office
phone number at the request of ENO, as tickets must be registered for
online.

The Dutch architect's practice OMA is so prolific with research that it's rumoured to produce a book a day. So what's behind this preoccupation with publishing?

In Britain we're sceptical of the idea of the architect as intellectual. Most people probably aren't aware that there's a whole realm of architecture that doesn't involve erecting buildings. But from Vitruvius in the 1st century BC and Alberti and Palladio in the Renaissance to Le Corbusier in the 1920s, architects have always produced books, not just to publicise their work but to lay down the latest architectural rules.

Often these titles tend to be monographs. Light of text and glossy of photograph, they are hefty volumes, records of achievement – a chance for the architect to say "Look on my works, ye mighty, and leave them casually stacked on the coffee table". But Rem Koolhaas's books, produced with his Rotterdam-based practice Office for Metropolitan Architecture, are different, as a new show at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London's Bedford Square demonstrates. On a plinth in the middle of the room sit 400 volumes bound together in black folders. They look like endless meeting agendas, but they are the complete works of OMA from 1978 to 2010. If you stood this object on the floor, it would be as tall as two people, one stood on top of the other. No wonder the show is called OMA Book Machine.

One look at this column of paper will no doubt confirm for some the suspicion that all architects care about is size. And, when it comes to books, Koolhaas wins the "whose is bigger?" competition hands down. But they are more than that. For a start, most were never published. The large majority are internal dossiers: OMA is famous for the huge amounts of research it puts into each project, to the point where Koolhaas even has his own thinktank, which he named in the mirror image of OMA: AMO. And while every competition the practice enters may not result in a building, it will definitely yield a book. Many of these titles are used to persuade clients to hire the practice, but sometimes they have the opposite effect. The MoMA Charrette, for example, was ostensibly OMA's entry to the competition to redesign the Museum of Modern Art in New York – really, though, it was an acerbic critique of this stuffy temple of culture that proposed turning it into an edgy shopping mall. No wonder Koolhaas didn't win.

Mostly the books are made by the architects themselves using office printers, but other times Koolhaas has worked with some of the best book designers in the business: the Canadian Bruce Mau, the Dutch Irma Boom and the New York-based practice 2x4. Mau was behind the fattest and most influential book on display, S,M,L,XL, OMA's 1995 take on the monograph. This 1,300-page brick of heavily cropped images overlaid with text was seven years in the making. It divided projects by size, like underpants, from houses to urban masterplans, and abandoned any sense of a clear narrative. It's still the only architecture book that every graphic designer has on their shelf. Mau himself has gone on to become something of a guru – the Guatemalan government recently commissioned him to do nothing less than transform the country. S,M,L,XL itself was so popular that it was counterfeited in China and published in a weird bootleg version in Iran. One of the highlights of the Architectural Association show is the email correspondence between OMA and the Iranian publisher, who argued that it was important to share Koolhaas' ideas, even in this illegal, bastardised form.

As the years go by, the books get stranger. There's the Wired Dictionary, an inventory of all the words published in Wired magazine, one of the by-products of OMA's guest editorship in 2001. There's a book called PradaVomit, a mystifying booklet that is one of the many products of Koolhaas's tenure as Prada's court architect and consultant. "Even vomit has some content," says one collaborator in a transcript pinned to the wall; and Koolhaas is probably the only architect to have designed the spring/summer "look book" for a fashion label.Precisely through these book-shaped investigations Koolhaas has blurred the edges of architecture, taking it into fashion, consultancy, journalism and cultural criticism.

The paradox at the heart of Koolhaas' obsession with the book as a format is that he reveres it and disrespects it in equal measure. We think of books as precious things that take months of painstaking assembly, whereas OMA throws them together with careless abandon. This was particularly true of 2004's Content, which was laid out like a magazine, even down to the adverts – the "boogazine" has since become a much-imitated format. Then came 2007's Al Manakh, a book about the development boom in the Gulf states, which looked like it had been dragged off the internet and onto the page. These days, OMA and AMO are rumoured to produce a book a day, sometimes within four or five hours.

In some ways, Koolhaas is swimming against the tide. As publishing has gone mainstream on the one hand, focusing on Dan Browns and celebrity biographies at the expense of riskier projects, and digitised on the other, sucked into Kindles and iPads, there has been a growing counter-trend for books as luxury objects. Taschen, the publisher of Content, has been churning out giant tomes – such as GOAT, on Mohammed Ali – in limited print runs with price tags of hundreds, sometimes thousand of pounds. It's as though, somehow, we have to try and make books special again. Unlike the internet, they have tactility and weight. And yet, although OMA's books are rapid and slapdash, they betray enormous faith in the book as a medium at a time when print is under siege.

For Koolhaas and OMA, books aren't luxuries – they are the residue of a process. These are architects trained to think and work through books as just another material, like concrete and glass. The vast amounts of research regurgitated by the OMA machine gets sifted and refined in book form, keeping the method transparent and the information easy to re-use. Nothing is ever wasted, and in that sense there is no such thing as failure. If the research doesn't turn into a building, there's always the book.

French president hails landmark Paris gallery's Metz outpost as culturally and economically important to deprived region
In pictures: the all-new Pompidou in Metz

Nicolas Sarkozy hailed a renaissance of one of France's most overlooked regions today as he inaugurated the Centre Pompidou Metz, the first regional outpost of Paris's landmark gallery and a project expected to give a much-needed boost to the north-eastern Lorraine.

The distinctive building with its undulating roof was designed by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban and his French colleague Jean de Gastines. It has been variously compared to a Smurfs' house, a magic lantern and a Chinese hat, and its high-calibre modern art exhibitions are expected to attract around 200,000 visitors a year to the out-of-the-way city.

"The Lorraine has suffered greatly in recent decades from restructuring, transfers, changes, the textile and steel industries, the mines, the military," said the French president, standing inside the entrance hall of the new gallery ahead of its official opening to the public tomorrow.

"This museum, which is a strong cultural gesture, is at the same time part of a strategic policy of economic development ... In this remarkable architectural gesture, we will from now on be able to take hold of the renaissance of Metz and the renaissance of the Lorraine," he said.

The first step in France's attempts to decentralise its cultural treasures away from the capital, the Parisian flagship's €72.5m (£62.2m) sister gallery was inspired by the Guggenheim Bilbao – the Frank Gehry structure that turned the struggling Basque seaport into a sophisticated citybreak destination. Just as the Louvre hopes to do in the former mining town of Lens, where it is planning to open its own offshoot in 2012, the board of the Centre Pompidou Metz (CPM) is determined to emulate the Bilbao boom.

Metz, a military city long fought over by France and Germany, is located in an unglamorous part of the country and is expected to be hit hard by cuts to the armed forces brought in by Sarkozy's government. Although connected since 2007 by high-speed rail to the capital in 80 minutes, it has yet to experience the TGV "electroshock" from which other French cities have benefited.

"The Pompidou is going to radically alter the image of our town," said Jean-Marie Rausch, the city's former mayor, who believes that as many as 400,000 people could flock to the CPM each year. In a literal sense it already has – growing out of former wasteland, the tent-like structure with its white Teflon roof dominates the Amphithéatre district.

While it will not have a permanent collection of its own, the CPM will be able to borrow from its Parisian equivalent in order to put on exhibitions which its directors say will be of the highest quality. As Europe's biggest modern art museum, the Centre Pompidou in Paris has a dazzling collection of around 65,000 works and only enough space to show a fraction of that at a time.

For its inaugural exhibition, entitled Chefs-d'oeuvre? – Masterpieces? – director Laurent Le Bon has acquired around 700 works from its sister gallery and dozens from other institutions in an exploration of what constitutes a masterpiece. Paintings by Picasso, Braque, Kandinsky and Miro are amongst those on display. One, Henri Matisse's final self-portrait called La Tristesse du Roi, was transported to Metz despite its great fragility and value.