The year ahead in.... pop
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The forthcoming shows at our museums and galleries will range from the
portraits of Van Dyck to the landscapes of Turner; from new medieval
galleries to Picasso and the old masters; from Spain's exquisite precision
to the mess of contemporaries, from the Aztecs of Mexico to the Court of
Henry VIII.
But, when you contemplate such prospects, do you imagine cultural splendours
unfurling like a classical frieze around spacious walls? Or do you envisage
a Cubist-type outlook: fragmented views of far-distant objects, fractured by
the angles of the shuffling crowd? Has an interest in visitor numbers
supplanted scholarship?
Museum directors, picking an often tricky path between the need to fill
coffers and the desire to satisfy more subtle pleasures, have to be
increasingly sensitive to the piftfalls as they plan their exhibition
programmes.
Not that there has to be a conflict between blockbusters and scholarship, says
Neil McGregor of the British Museum. “I think you can have a mindbuster,” he
suggests. This is certainly what he is hoping for in his upcoming shows.
Shah Abbas: The Remaking of Iran (from Feb 19) brings together an exquisite
range of courtly treasures, many of which have never been sent out on loan
before) to look at the extraordinary life and legacy of a Middle-Eastern
potentate who, like his British contemporaries Elizabeth I and Shakespeare,
helped to forged the notion of national identity.
And later in the year the British Museum's Moctezuma (from Sept 24) will also
explore the politics of power as it revisits and re-evaluates the
pre-Spanish identity of the Mexicans. “The point of this museum,” says
McGregor, “is to ask questions about societies around the world and the big
loan exhibitions allow us to do this. Yes they will get crowded, because
they are only here for a limited period, but we always try to link them to
exhibits in the rest of the museum.” The museum will be guiding visitors
towards its rich hoards of Iranian material as well as to an extraordinary
collection of Mexican prints.
The V&A's director, Mark Jones, also firmly believes that extravaganza and
academia can co-exist. Of course Baroque 1620-1800: Style in the Age of
Magnificence (from Apr 4) will be fantastically opulent. “How could it fail
to be?” he asks. “Baroque is all about drama.”
But the exhibition will undoubtedly be scholarly too, tracing the spread of
this style around the world with colonialism. The V&A's big autumn show
Maharaja: The Splendour of India's Royal Courts (from Oct 10), a spectacular
study of princely patronage, will equally combine luscious visuals with
scholarly perspectives as it explores the history of our tastes from an
unfamiliar perspective.
Temporary exhibitions such as these, Jones suggests, lure people into the
museum who then also start to explore and enjoy its permanent collection,
the improved display of which is a top priority. A room for Buddhist
sculpture will be opening in April, a new ceramics gallery in September, a
medieval and Renaissance gallery in November. “
Nicholas Penny, the director of the National Gallery, also believes that one
important function of the blockbuster is to shed light on the permanent
collection. His gallery's groundbreaking Picasso: Challenging the Past (from
Feb 25) brings a modern master into tradition's hallowed halls to explore
how this radical modernist looks as much to his predecessors as to the
future. “We are keen on having exhibitions of periods or objects that are
not displayed in the permanent collection” Penny says.
From Oct 21, in The Sacred Made Real, sculpture - which the gallery does not
normally show - will be brought into the spaces to cast light on the work of
such painterly masters as Velázquez and Zurbarán. The blockbuster loan
refreshes the collection.
Tate Modern has plenty of space to accommodate the crowds. But the dynamic
jostle and shove of modern life will probably make a couple of its major
shows - Futurism (from June 12), a landmark celebration of the centenary of
the Futurist's first manifesto; and Sold Out (from Oct 1), which takes a
radical look at the commercial legacy of Pop culture - feel more authentic.
Downriver, Tate Britain has a couple of surefire hits up its sleeve. Both Van
Dyck and Britain (from Feb 18) and Turner and the Masters (from Sept 23)
integrate loan works with the permanent collection by looking at famous
artists in the context of a wider artistic sphere. “We don't want just to
show a popular painter,” says the director Stephen Deuchar. “Our challenge
is to change the way people think about the work.
“But we aim also to get a balance,” he insists, “and alongside the most
popular shows we put on the most specialist: such as the Tate Triennial
which will be a huge - and hugely expensive - presenting 35 new artists to a
public who may barely have heard of any of them. We believe that that is
also our role.”
Anniversary celebrations are always an excuse for a blockbuster. To celebrate
the bicentenary of our most famous naturalist, the Fitzwilliam Museum in
Cambridge will in June be presenting what promises to be a fascinating
cross-disciplinary exhibition exploring Charles Darwin's connections with
the visual arts in Endless Forms (June 16). The British Library marks the
500th anniversary of the accession to the throne of our great royal monster
in Henry VIII: Man and Monarch (from April 22), curated by David Starkey.
Meanwhile, as the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich celebrates an
international “Year of Astronomy” with a series of events, two of this
year's most tempting overseas adventures celebrate the marvels of the night.
The Palazzo Strozzi in Florence puts on Galileo: Images of the Universe from
Antiquity to the Telescope (from March 13), while Van Gogh and the Colours
of Night at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (from Feb 13) send the
imagination whirling away into the great night works of this most passionate
of painters.
Other highlights abroad in the upcoming year will be the opening of the
long-awaited new Acropolis Museum in Greece and of course the Venice
Biennale but rather than join the mad throng you could just stay home and
revel in Dulwich Picture Gallery's Sickert in Venice (fvrom March 4). The
Royal Academy will stage a rigorous study of neoclassicism in Andrea
Palladio: His Life and Legacy (from Jan 31). The National Portrait Gallery
is holding Gerhard Richter: Portraits (from Feb 26). The Hayward Gallery
will host an adventurous contemporary programme which includes a quirky
group show curated by Turner Prize winning Mark Wallinger (from Feb 18), a
solo exhibition by the influential French artist Annette Messager (from Mar
4) and a celebration of 50 years of painting by the old man of Pop, Ed
Ruscha (from Oct 14).
Outside the capital there is also much to offer. Tate Liverpool plays about
like a primary school child with the poster paints in Colour Chart (from May
29), a show looking at the role of colour in post-war art history. Tate St
Ives takes custody of an eloquent little traveling exhibition of work by Ben
Nicholson (from Jan 24). Compton Verney in Warwickshire has an impressive
programme that ranges from a show themed around Diana and Actaeon (from Mar
21) through Constable Portraits (from June 27) to The Artist's Studio (Sept
26). And the Whitworth in Manchester explores the legacy of surrealism in
contemporary art in Subversive Spaces (Feb 6).
Must-see: Picasso: Challenging the Past
From February 25 at National Gallery www.nationalgallery.org.uk
The National Gallery will break new ground as it stages a spectacular Picasso
show. By tradition, 1900 had been this museum’s end point. After that, by
tacit agreement, art was left up to the Tate. But now curators court a new
audience with a blockbuster — this radical Spaniard’s relationship with the
Old Masters. The sheer modernity of Picasso’s style was probably the most
striking thing about him in his day. But actually he was curiously averse to
selecting modern subject matter. He was a painter of traditional portraits,
still lives and nudes, their compositions often borrowed and adapted from
famous Old Master paintings. This is a show to refresh the gallery’s
permanent collection as much as public perceptions of our most celebrated
modernist. Pictured: Les Femmes d’Alger (1955)
Ben Nicholson: A Continuous Line at Tate St Ives. www.tate.org.uk
Andrea Palladio: His Life and Legacy at the Royal Academy. www.royalacademy.org
Aftermodern: Tate Triennial at Tate Britain. www.tate.org.uk
Subversive Spaces: Surrealism and Contemporary Art at the Whitworth Art
Gallery, Manchester. www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk
Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivismat Tate Modern. www.tate.org.uk
Van Gogh and the Colours of Night at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Van Dyck and Britain at Tate Britain. www.tate.org.uk
Mark Wallinger: The Russian Linesman at the Hayward Gallery. www.haywardgallery.org.uk
Shah Abbas: The Remaking of Iran at the British Museum.
www.britishmuseum.org
Picasso: Challenging the Past at the National Gallery. www.nationalgallery.org.uk
Gerhard Richter: Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. www.npg.org.uk
Sickert in Venice at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.
www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk
Annette Messager: Les Messagers at the Hayward Gallery. www.haywardgallery.org.uk
Galileo: Images of the Universe from Antiquity to the Telescope at Palazzo
Strozzi in Florence. www.palazzostrozzi.org
Diana and Actaeon at Compton Verney. www.comptonverney.org.uk
Baroque 1620-1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence at ther V&A. www.vam.ac.uk
Henry VIII: Man and Monarch at the British Library www.bl.uk
Futurism at Tate Modern. www.tate.org.uk
Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today at Tate Liverpool.
www.tate.org.uk
Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts at the
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. www.fitzwilliam.cam.uk
Constable Portraits: The Painter and his Circle at Compton Verney. www.comptonverney.org.uk
Ceramics Galleries opening in September at the V&A. www.vam.ac.uk
Turner and the Masters at Tate Britain. www.tate.org.uk
Moctezuma at the British Museum. www.britishmuseum.org
Sold Out at Tate Modern. www.tate.org.uk
Maharaja: The Splendour of India's Royal Courts at the V&A. www.vam.ac.uk
Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting at the Hayward Gallery. www.haywardgallery.org.uk
The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700 at the National
Gallery. www.nationalgallery.org.uk
Medieval and Renaissance Galleries opening in November at the V&A. www.vam.ac.uk
