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A look ahead to 2008

Andrew Lambirth

Wednesday, 12th December 2007

Dates for your diary

Photography gets the best deal at the National Portrait Gallery. Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913 to 2008 (14 February to 26 May) is self-explanatory, as indeed is Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life 1990–2005 (16 October to 25 January 2009). Sandwiched somewhere in between is Wyndham Lewis: Portraits (3 July to 19 October), an exhibition worth waiting for, by one of our most radical and difficult artists.

Meanwhile, the Tate offers its usual cornucopia of very mixed delights. The year starts well with a Rose Hilton retrospective at Tate St Ives (26 January to 4 May), a tribute to the gentle School of Paris lyricism of this intensely feminine and intuitive painter. At Tate Liverpool is the first major UK showing of the flamboyant French artist, Niki de Saint Phalle (1 February to 5 May). Modern Painters: The Camden Town Group at Tate Britain (13 February to 4 May) should be an eye-opener for those who disparage English painting, while Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia at Tate Modern (21 February to 26 May) examines the spirit of Dada, the root cause of so much of today’s nonsense. As usual, there are far too many Tate exhibitions to list them all. Look out for Peter Doig, Klimt, Cy Twombly and Rothko.

The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, that enjoyable small museum in north London, celebrates its tenth anniversary with a show reflecting the strengths of its permanent collection, focusing for the first time on the interesting but little-known Massimo Campigli (A Decade of Discovery, 16 January to 6 April). This is followed by a survey of Italian printmaking (16 April to 15 June), then Daring to be Different: 55 Years of Missoni (25 June to 14 September) and European Photomontage (24 September to 21 December). Always worth a trip.

The BM continues to pack in the visitors to China’s Terracotta Army (until 6 April), following that with a less obvious crowd-puller Hadrian: Empire and Conflict (24 July to 26 October). Like the Terracotta Army, it will be staged in the Round Reading Room, itself inspired by one of Hadrian’s architectural masterpieces, the Pantheon in Rome.

The Wallace Collection offers various Old Master displays and then comes up with an autumn snorter: Cartoons and Coronets — The Genius of Osbert Lancaster (2 October to 11 January 2009). If that doesn’t play to packed houses, I’m a Pont Street Dutchman.

The Whitechapel is in the middle of its rebuild (scheduled to reopen in spring 2009) but is nevertheless managing to mount a series of smaller shows of film and photography. Among forthcoming events is Cornelia Parker’s filmed interview with Noam Chomsky (13 February to 30 March).

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