Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, 5 September – 1 December 2016

Bob and Roberta Smith RA is bringing his campaign for better art education for all to Yorkshire. Drawing from the National Arts Education Archive, which is based at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Art for All aims to both stimulate ideas and debate about what an art curriculum for the digital 21st century should look like. Using archival material, Smith guides visitors through 100 years of art education, beginning in the 1700s with a book by Joshua Reynolds PRA, the highly influential painter and art educator. The exhibition also features Smith’s trademark hand-painted signs, as well as new sculptures that depict key players in the history of art education. The large-scale Art Makes Children Powerful (2015, pictured) makes a bold and colourful statement in the open air.

Stephen Friedman Gallery, 4 September – 2 October 2015

Can you be trusted to cradle a newborn baby made from hand-blown glass? In the artwork Us, this fragile sculpture is passed from one visitor to another, its preservation reliant on the care and attention of its handlers. Elsewhere in Jennifer Rubell’s solo exhibition visitors are invited to eat boiled eggs – and even to undress. Inspired by the birth of her second child and rooted in feminist practice, Rubell’s new participatory work invites viewers to engage with the art object in surprising and thought-provoking ways, while drawing connections between making art and motherhood.

David Zwirner, London, 5 September – 3 October 2015

During the 1950s, Cuba shook with massive political and cultural turmoil. The country experienced a military coup, rising nationalist sentiments in reaction to expanding US tourism, and rapid urbanisation. In response, artists sought a new visual language in which art could function as political and social practice, and the abstract painting movement “Los Diez Pintores Concretos” (Ten Concrete Painters) was born. Concrete Cuba includes key works by the eleven artists who were associated with the group, active from 1959–61. The hard-edged, geometric abstract paintings on display were the products of a universal, utopian aesthetic that eschewed forms found in nature in favour of purely intellectual constructs.

The Show Room, London, 3 – 27 September 2015

On 8 March 1979, during the Iranian Revolution, more than 100,000 women marched through the streets of Tehran in protest against the compulsory hijab ruling. Acclaimed photographer Hengameh Golestan was there with her camera to document this event – as well as many other aspects of women and children’s everyday lives in Iran during this turbulent period. This exhibition and events programme at The Show Room offers an opportunity to discover the work of a pioneer among Iranian women photographers, some of which has never been seen in public before, and none of which can be viewed in Tehran.

Waterside Contemporary, London, 2 September – 7 November 2015

The subject of refugees and how they are represented visually in the media could hardly be more topical. Though it was created before the recent humanitarian disasters in the Mediterranean (or at least before such tragedies came to the public’s attention), Fences Make Sense tackles an issue that it is no longer possible to ignore. George Barber’s video installation combines found footage and re-enactments improvised by non-refugees to explore events that take place at international borders, as well as challenging the common debates that surround them.

Anna Coatman (@AnnaCoatman) is Assistant Editor of RA Magazine.