A look ahead | 2 January 2010

Andrew Lambirth on artistic delights and pleasures we can look forward to in 2010

The juggernaut of blockbusters at last shows signs of slowing down. In recent years, museums have deluged us with loan exhibitions of often very mixed quality in order to generate the increasingly large amounts of revenue necessary to fund their extended bureaucracies. Too many shows really, particularly when concocted by curators of boundless self-esteem with scant regard for the public. I long for fewer exhibitions chosen with greater discernment, and it seems that the crisis in international finance is finally helping to achieve this. World tours are being cancelled, ambitions checked, sponsorship withdrawn. Initially, this means that there are marginally fewer exhibitions running for longer. Wouldn’t it be marvellous if the Tate could be persuaded to display more of its permanent collection — so little of which is ever on view — perhaps selected by someone outside its blinkered administration? We can always hope.