What is there to look forward to in 2022 ?

In terms of museum openings, the Burrell Collection re-opens in March after a radical renovation of its building in Pollok Park. The new National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design opens in Oslo on June 11th. combining the collections of the former National Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Norwegian Museum of Decorative Arts and Design. The Barbican will soon announce the results of its architectural competition, which will give an indication as to how radically it plans to re-invent itself, to justify the huge budget allocated to it. And the big extension to the Art Gallery of New South Wales by SANAA is due to open in December.

In London, Gainsborough’s Blue Boy arrives at the National Gallery a hundred years after he left for California, its Raphael exhibition opens, God willing, in April, and it is doing a Lucian Freud exhibition next autumn. The Royal Academy is doing a William Kentridge exhibition in the autumn. And in March, the Barbican is opening what looks to be a radical reappraisal of the character of post-war art in Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-1965, something which Tate Britain should have done. Langlands & Bell are doing an exhibition at Charleston, Cornelia Parker has a retrospective at Tate Britain. And I’m really pleased to see that the Ikon is doing an exhibition on Crivelli, which we were encouraged to do at the RA. Also, don’t miss Gold of the Great Steppe which closes at the Fitzwilliam at the end of January.

In terms of books, I’ve been looking forward to Owen Hatherley’s Modern Buildings in Britain: a Gazetteer, now being published in April. Frances Spalding has written a study of art between the wars, The Real and the Romantic: English Art between the Two World Wars. There’s also a book coming out about Culture as Scandal: the Hermitage Story, co-written by its director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, an intriguing thought.

What else ? There’s the opening of Niall McLaughlin’s Faith Museum at Bishop Auckland, but I don’t know when that’s happening. Also, David Kohn is doing an interesting expansion of New College, Oxford.

There’s much coming up, COVID permitting.