New ways of looking

Since 2003, the National Gallery has been organising a series of annual exhibitions in partnership with Bristol’s City Museum and Art Gallery and the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle. (Readers will perhaps recall previous themed shows: Paradise, Making Faces and last year The Stuff of Life.) This initiative has proved so successful that the programme has been extended for a further three years, with Passion for Paint being the first in the new sequence. It has already been seen at Bristol and Newcastle, and now arrives in London minus the early Leon Kossoff painting ‘Children’s Swimming Pool, Autumn Afternoon’ (1971), which was shown at both other venues. The National is planning a Leon Kossoff solo exhibition from March to July 2007, so it was deemed better not to show him now as well. A pity, as the painting is a fine one from the Tate, but its exclusion is a tribute to the NG’s fair-mindedness.