Fifteen years ago Paul Noble began to create an imaginary city, Nobson Newtown, with preparatory sketches and drawings in his meticulous pencilled style. Now we have a Noble-ian paradox: in this penultimate contribution to his Nobson Newtown series, the visitor is greeted at the door with a "Welcome to Nobson" sign, and 15 small drawings of the "Genesis" of Nobson Newtown.

Coming as it did over this Armistice weekend, when the soldiers who have died for us are foremost in our thoughts, last night's Art for Heroes: A Culture Show Special was a salutary reminder that soldier-victims are not just those who are killed or sustain terrible physical injuries but also those with psychological wounds which can't be stitched together. It went beyond, however, an exploration of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder into how art therapy is helping some of these veterans process and express and salve their aggression and anxiety.

In 1757, what had previously been the royal collection of manuscripts was handed over to the nascent British Museum. Edward IV, who started the collection in the 15th century, had created a collection of books designed to display the greater glory of God and (by extension) his chosen sovereigns and country: the Yorkist leader in the Wars of the Roses used these books, and the images they contained, to create a propaganda machine to suggest that God was on his side.

Leonardo da Vinci was not a prolific artist. In a career that lasted nearly half a century, he probably painted no more than 20 pictures, and only 15 surviving paintings are currently agreed to be entirely his. Of these, four are incomplete. Indeed one painting, abandoned by the artist but currently hanging in the National Gallery, is so far from being finished that the two figures in it, that of Saint Jerome and the lion in the wilderness (c 1488-90, Pinacoteca Vaticana, pictured below), have been barely touched by paint.

What a curious curate’s egg Tate Liverpool has pulled out of its hat with Alice in Wonderland. And what a complete rag-bag of minor, uninteresting artists.

What is it that makes an exhibition special, keeps you looking longer than you expected, ensures you think about it long after you’ve left? Obviously, the art, or in a history show, the subject, is the first thing. The installation sometimes (although a good show is more usually damaged by poor installation than a poor one is rescued by good). Then there are the juxtapositions, the unexpected nuggets of information, novelty, rarity.

The easiest mistake to make in appreciating George Condo would be to assume that his manic style reflects a manic creation or a manic practice. Some of Condo's paintings and drawings, with their childlike loops and gurning, disfigured faces, look like he made them in a fit of violence or some hysterical trance, but the real surprise of two new shows at the Hayward Gallery and at Sprüth Magers in Mayfair is the care and the calmness that lies behind them.

Many of the images will be all too familiar. Captain Scott writing a diary in his quarters. Three of Shackleton’s men scrubbing below decks. The Endurance lit up in the long polar night. The ice cave shaped like an italic teardrop and shot from within its chilly maw (pictured below). Penguins, dogs, seals, ponies, mostly destined for death. Chaps – above all chaps – four who famously died with Scott, many more who famously survived with Shackleton.

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so ambivalent about a show, and so strongly both pro and con. The pros first, then. This is an astonishing, revelatory exhibition of avant-garde art and architecture in the Soviet Union in the brief but hectic period from the Revolution to the Stalinist crackdown in the 1930s.

The home, and women’s place within it, gained considerable importance for artists of the Dutch Golden Age. Artists such as Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, Nicholaes Maes and Gerrit Dou are among those who placed women at the centre of the well-ordered domestic realm. They featured as servants and mistresses, nursing mothers and coquettish girls, or as serious young women dedicated to the pursuits of home-making and suitable leisure.