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 World tours are being cancelled, ambitions checked, sponsorship withdrawn.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.

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There are still plenty of pleasures in the year ahead. For me, one of the chief anticipations is Paul Nash: The Elements at Dulwich Picture Gallery (10 February–9 May). The latest in a series of small but expertly chosen shows (past glories include Sickert, Graham Sutherland and John Piper), it demonstrates that Dulwich has taken over responsibility for a whole area of British art currently neglected by the Tate. Can we expect then to see there Modern British masters such as John Armstrong and John Craxton? I would like to think so, though Dulwich has limited resources. The Nash show, curated by David Fraser Jenkins and bringing together some 60 oils and watercolours from all periods of his career, promises much. Later in the year Dulwich presents three generations of a great American painting dynasty, the Wyeths (9 June–22 August), the best-known being Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009), a master realist of intriguing narratives.