Renoir in London, Kanal in Brussels, Ronald Moody in Twickenham

In London, the National Gallery opens Renoir and Love on 3 October, an exhibition devoted to Auguste Renoir. The curators acknowledge that he still divides critical opinion, yet the public response has been strong: the gallery says it has broken its record for advance ticket sales. The show, which will later travel to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, asks where Renoir sits within the radical changes in Parisian art between the 1860s and 1880s.

For painters and draughtsmen, the interest lies less in Renoir as a legend than in how a body of work can remain contested while still holding the eye. The question is one of craft as much as reputation: how a painter shapes light, bodies, movement and shared experience, and why those decisions still matter to viewers now.

In Brussels, the long-awaited Kanal Brussels, a museum of modern and contemporary art and architecture housed in a former Citroën garage, has become the focus of a political dispute over future funding. It is due to open on 28 November. Beyond the institutional debate, the story points to the conditions under which artists show work, make work and meet audiences in a building designed for many kinds of practice.

The episode also turns to Ronald Moody, with Seated Sarong Figure (1938) at Orleans House Gallery in Twickenham, in the exhibition Sculpting Life. The work draws attention to volume, stance and material in sculpture, and Kedisha Coakley’s new film for the exhibition extends that reading by placing Moody within a working context.