Dates for your diary

Andrew Lambirth looks forward to some great exhibitions in the year ahead

There’s a very full year’s viewing ahead to cheer the eye and gladden the heart however bleak the financial prospects. For a start, the National Gallery is mounting a major exhibition focusing on the fascinating relationship that Picasso had with the art of the past. His reworkings of Goya, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Chardin and Delacroix, together with responses to more contemporary masters such as van Gogh and Gauguin, provide a riveting dialogue of minds. Picasso: Challenging the Past (25 February to 7 June) will offer new ways to look at the Old Masters as well as a different take on Picasso. The autumn blockbuster is The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600–1700 (21 October to 24 January 2010). Featuring such artists as Velázquez, Zurbarán, Alonso Cano and Pedro de Mena, and juxtaposing paintings with polychrome sculptures, this should be something of an intensely focused revelation.