The Independent Recommends: The Five Best Shows

Van Dyck (Royal Academy, London)

Elegant, melancholy and short-lived portraitist (right) to countless burghers, nobles and royals; court painter to Charles I. To 10 Dec

Notorious (MoMA, Oxford)

One hundred years after his birth, Alfred Hitchcock lives. Group show looks at his legacy in art, most cunningly in the Phoenix Tapes. To 3 Oct

Antony Gormley's `Field' (Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield)

One of the hits of the decade: a sea of 40,000 pint-sized clay folk - obedient, expectant and menacing - which stop dead in a line at your feet. To 31 Oct

Expressionism in Germany (Bolton Art Gallery & Aquarium)

Dark and stormy paintings and prints by the Expressionist groups working through the discord of the early 20th century. To 9 Oct

TRACE: the 1999 Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art (At venues across Liverpool)

This first biennial presents 60 international artists on the theme of memory - personal and historical. To 7 Nov