Critic's choice: Top 5 exhibitions

East meets West in the A Slap in the Face! exhibition, the V&A traces the influence of surrealism on design and Camouflage takes us from the battlefield to the catwalk...

A Slap in the Face! Futurists in Russia
Estorick Collection, N1
East meets West in this sparky look at the relationship between Italian and Russian Futurism. Futurism's Italian founder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, envisioned personally leading the movement across Europe. The Russian Futurists, who included poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov, were a fiercely independent lot, however, and differed from the Italian Futurists in several key respects. Though fascinated by all things urban and mechanical, they retained a keen interest in folk art and rural themes, resulting in such seemingly contradictory concepts as the Futurist peasant. The exhibition takes its title from their manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, which was bound in sackcloth. (020 7704 9522). Until 10 June.

Surreal Things
V&A, SW7
Visual art "-isms" often spill over into other art forms, but surrealism has had a unique impact on design. This sleekly produced exhibition traces its influence on fashion and architecture, advertising and interior design, and though you'll find paintings by Magritte, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali, it's the objects themselves that are its focus. Almost 300 in all, they take their cues from dreamscapes and subconscious fears and desires. There's a larky joyfulness to Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone, for instance, while darker, fetishistic notes creep in via other exhibits - pieces like Elsa Schiaparelli's Tear Evening Dress, with its decorative motif of torn flesh. 020 7942 2000). Until 22 July.

Camouflage
Imperial War Museum, SE1
The story of camouflage begins in 1915, when the French army set up the "camoufleurs" unit: mainly artists, who deployed Cubist techniques to make themselves and their equipment less visible. They even created dummy heads, poking them up above the trenches to help locate German snipers during the First World War. Our own Army also used artists, including marine painter Norman Wilkinson, whose "Dazzle" designs aimed to confuse German U-boat commanders as they tried to calculate the speed and course of British ships. It's all told in this supersize exhibition, which goes on to chart camouflage's journey from the battlefield to the catwalk, via art, music and film. (020 7416 5320). Until 18 November.

A 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, where he set about capturing all that they 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 assorted objects from the Elizabethan expeditions. (020 7323 8000). Until 17 June.

LAST CHANCE: Canaletto in England
Dulwich Picture Gallery, SE24 By the time Canaletto arrived in England in 1746, his luminous paintings had already made themselves at home here, brought back as Venetian souvenirs by so-called Grand Tourists. He was to end up staying for nine years, installed in a Beak Street studio where he painted scenes from back home and also turned his attention to his immediate surroundings. London's teeming streets and enormous parks, the Thames and its warehouses, and the suburban villas of the wealthy - all appear in this gently revelatory exhibition. Until 15 April.