Discover Degas & Miss La La review

National Gallery, London
This ingenious high-wire act of a show is a thrilling celebration of French impressionism, Black women and modernity – boasting an aerialist who could lift a cannon with her teeth

The National Gallery is pulling out the stops to celebrate its bicentenary – but an old-school circus? With dancing dogs, clowns and elephants? Yet that’s what greets you in its ingenious and thrilling show about French impressionism, Black women and modernity.

You walk in expecting paintings but are confronted by posters for circuses and music hall performances, all booming Victorian graphics and surreal imagery. This includes two butterflies with human faces performing at the Cirque d’Hiver while at the Hippodrome, you could see Ben Hur-style chariot races. We think of late 19th-century Paris as all cancan and chansons, absinthe and mirrored bars. But circus, this show reveals, was just as essential to the city of light.