Critic's choice: Top 5 exhibitions

The British Museum reveals England's first view of the New World, the National Gallery hosts an exhibition of Leon Kossoff's sketches and Luigi Colani's witty designs are on show at the Design Museum...

New World: England's First View of America
British Museum, WC1
Though daintily executed, the watercolours of gentleman artist John White have mainly their subject matter to recommend them. In the 1580s, he crossed the Atlantic on some of the first English voyages to the New World. Once there, he set about capturing all that he encountered, from the North Carolina Algonquin Indians to local flora and fauna. Not only do his paintings and sketches preserve our first glimpse of America, but they are also the sole surviving visual record of this particular period of American history. Having been hidden away in the British Museum's vaults for the past 40 years, they're now on show alongside objects from the Elizabethan expeditions. (020 7323 8000). Until 17 Jun.

Leon Kossoff: Drawing from Painting
National Gallery
In 1936, a 10-year-old boy named Leon Kossoff wandered from his Hackney home to the National Gallery, where for the first time in his life, he set eyes on a painting. He was enraptured, and has gone on to become one of Britain's best regarded contemporary artists, known for his thickly painted scenes of industrial London and fluid, large-scale drawings in charcoal. Come the war, the paintings were removed for safekeeping but afterwards, Kossoff returned again and again to the scene of his artistic awakening. It was then that he began sketching paintings by Rubens, Degas, Constable and other old masters, producing images that resonate with primal power. Examples of both his drawings and prints are on show here, alongside two paintings that resulted from his sketches of Poissin's Cephalus and Aurora and Rembrandt's Ecce Homo. (020 7747 2885). Until 1 Jul.

Luigi Colani: Translating Nature
Design Museum, SE1
There's something witty and uplifting about the work of this maverick designer. Over the past six decades, he's created biodynamic cars, planes and boats, along with more domestic objects such as chairs, cameras and headphones. Passionate about aerodynamics, he pre-empted contemporary design trends by looking to the natural world for his inspiration, borrowing shapes from sharks, for instance, in his quest to evolve ever-more streamlined objects. 0870 833 9955). Until 17 Jun.

James "Athenian" Stuart
V&A, SW7
This influential architect and designer won his nickname for pioneering Neo-Classicism in England in the 18th century. The son of a Scottish sailor, he was raised in poverty and apprenticed to a fan painter. As a young man, he set off on his first visit to the Continent on foot, later producing a study of Classical Greek architecture that became a well-thumbed source book for fellow architects and designers. Back in England, he embellished town houses with pillars and decorative ceilings, and filled them with specially designed furniture and metalware. Today, he's best known for his interiors of Spencer House in St James' Park, and specially commissioned photographs of those rooms appear alongside a hoard of some 200 items . (020 7942 2000). Until 24 Jun.

Canaletto in England
Dulwich Picture Gallery, SE1
Canaletto arrived in England in 1746 and ended up staying for nine years. Installed in a Beak Street studio he turned his attention to London's teeming streets and enormous parks, the Thames and its warehouses, and the suburban villas of the wealthy. Until 15 April.