Galleria del Costume

The Costume Gallery at the Pitti Palace in Florence has just re-opened after two years of restoration work. The museum, housed in the Palazzina della Meridiana built by Grand Duke Leopold of Lorena in 1776, contains over 6,000 costumes dating from the 17th-century to the present day, and constitutes the oldest collection of its kind. The latest addition is a donation by Gianfranco Ferré of 300 of his own pieces - both clothes and accessories - from haute couture and prêt-à-porter-collections from 1986.

Noir II: New Orleans the City God Forgot

There's plenty of noir in New Orleans and 22 artists in this juried show strive to give make it as visual as possible, using a huge variety of media from painting, sculpture and photography to mixed media and installation. Self-taught artist John Lawson's paintings of street crime and Mike Lea's bleak photos of urbanscapes take the 'noir' mission very seriously, while other work is variously whimsical and unengaged. There's a great deal of passion here but not much insight.

Old South Meeting House