Visual treats for 2007

Although it must be a nightmare to administer a museum in these philistine and turnstile-obsessed times, the nation’s galleries are still doing their best to provide a service of sorts to the minds and hearts of the populace. If there is a perceptible drift towards dead-cert favourites, who can blame the institutions which now have vast bureaucracies to support, as well as lighting and heating bills to pay? So at the National Gallery, hard on the heels of the prestigious Velázquez exhibition, is a display of Renoir’s landscapes (21 February to 20 May). Well, that should keep the crowds happy, but it’s hardly nourishing fare — spiritually, intellectually or aesthetically. More rewarding, I hope, will be the autumn show Renaissance Siena: Art for a City (24 October to 13 January 2008), with some of Leon Kossoff’s pictures in the Sunley Room (14 March to 1 July) offering a usefully contrasting contemporary take on the Old Masters.