Jon Pratty, 24 Hour Museum Editor and Head of Content
The Louise Bourgeois exhibition at Tate Modern was the first in a long time I have seen bringing to life the peculiar talent, skill and craft of a true artist. Everything in her show had been chosen by her, crafted by her, formed by her. It was really inspiring.
The really big story this year was Slavery. It was only shows and museums that opened towards the end of the year that really, for me, began to get to grips with deeper issues around slavery. Key moments were new galleries at Museum in Docklands and at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
The commemoration really came to life in Liverpool. The International Slavery Museum opened in August 2007 with a learning facility dedicated to murdered teenager Anthony Walker. It brought home to me the complexities of race and how for many communities in Britain events that happened in the past still resonate and have meaning today.
Samuel Palmer, The Sleeping Shepherd – Early Morning, c.1854-7. Private collection, formally the property of Paul Drury PPRE
This well thought-out exhibition traced a pastoral pathway through the poetic tradition of Blake, Virgil, Samuel Palmer and the twentieth century Romantics. Full of synergies and packed with great paintings, etchings and lithographs – each illustrating the rich tradition of English pastoral and poetic art.
Still showing at the Imperial War Museum in London, Weapons of Mass Communication also made for an absorbing visit - bringing together a mass of propaganda and protest posters from the IWM’s vast collection.
The dark art of propaganda and protest is full of shocking and sometimes beautiful impact imagery and this clever exhibition, with poster after poster displayed en masse, academy style, shows what an art there is to the promotion and opposition of war.
Finally it was nice to go to my old stamping ground of Manchester for the Art Treasures in Manchester exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery. This was really two exhibitions in one and offered what is for me a priceless thing in any exhibition – context.
On one level it was an absorbing history lesson about Victorian Manchester and the quest to change perceptions of the smoke clogged cottonopolis - with a public art exhibition to rival the Great Exhibition of 1852. On another it was just a wonderful art exhibition that served up masterpieces and other curiosities of Victorian taste. It makes you realise why Manchester is the kind of place it is today and I think every Manc should go and see it.
The intimate display gathered some of his atmospheric portraits of naked, reclining women in rather dark and dubious bedrooms - which were actually all created in his Mornington Crescent studio between about 1902 and 1910. The so-called Camden Town Murder of 1907 gave him the perfect excuse to infer an even more sinister inspiration for these claustrophobic images.
The Making of History at the Royal Academy was a fascinating look at how modern museums and collecting came about, celebrating 300 years of Britian's Society of Antiquaries.
From curiosities to fundraising for conservation and making proper records, the exhibition was a well illustrated eye-opener on the making of a subject of study we take for granted, and it had a smashing section on Stonehenge.
Last but not least, Kew Gardens made an ideal setting for getting to know the ins and outs of Henry Moore's sculpting career. My personal favourites were the completely abstract forms, which glistened very nicely in the sunshine. For others, it was obviously the trademark reclining figures, some of which made better climbing frames for little visitors.
As an antidote to the gloomy perception that religions and cultures inevitably clash and cause conflicts, Sacred at the British Library showed the links and similarities between Judaism, Islam and Christianity through some sublimely beautiful manuscripts and artefacts and was a worthy attempt to educate and breed tolerance.
As well as showing off an incredible array of surreal objects – from luxuriously upholstered wheelbarrows to designs for artichoke houses Surreal Things at the V&A showed how an originally revolutionary artistic movement can become mainstream, both from outside pressures and the artists themselves.
The first major Hogarth exhibition in 30 years at Tate Britain did a fine job in telling the tale of the man and his obsessions – cautionary morality tales, ribald stories, satire and nationalism, and above all, painted a glorious portrait of his greatest subject, the sprawling, chaotic beast that was the London of the early 1700s.
Edmund Dulac, She made her escape as lightly as a deer, from Cinderella in The Sleeping Beauty and other Tales, 1910, watercolour, Private Collection
So many children have grown up with these evocative images impressed upon their imagination, including myself, and this exhibition follows this whimsical, and very English, Golden Age of illustration. Featuring illustrators such as Edmund Dulac, Aubrey Beardsley and Arthur Rackham amongst others, this is a chance to indulge your childhood fantasies.
Perfectly merging art and music, the very canvases in Pallant House’s vibrant Kandinsky, Klee and all that Jazz exhibition seemed to sing. Presented on muted and elegant walls, the pieces of modern art, from artists such as Klee and Piet Mondrian, were allowed to command the attention they deserved in a show that was bursting with vitality and youthful promise, dancing visitors from room to room.
The collection of remarkable photographs from all over the world in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2007, at the Natural History Museum in London reminds us of the sheer scale and variety of wildlife this planet has got to offer, from the sands of the desert to the frozen wastelands of the north.
A great visual advert for Planet Earth but reminding us too of our obligation to preserve the environment, particularly poignant in the heart-rending photographs of struggling polar bears on melting icecaps.
Kay Carson, Journalist and 24 Hour Museum writer in the North West
The North West was treated to a medley of Chinese art in 2007. Collective Identity (Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester, February-April 2007) gave us an in-depth look at the parallels of public and private lives of today's China, while The Real Thing (Tate Liverpool, spring 2007), undoubtedly one of the best exhibitions in the region this year, was a magnificent showcase of contemporary Chinese art, including Ai Weiwei's superb, sparkling, Working Progress (Fountain of Light), a reworking of Soviet Tatlin's Monument to the Third International (1920), both imparting the brave-new-world sentiment.
In the summer, I enjoyed the meticulous film works of Anna Lucas in Here and Your Here (FACT, Liverpool, July-Aug 2007). The slow, hypnotic narrative seemed to draw viewers ever closer to the screen, as though it wanted to whisper its sorrow about the impact of globalisation.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries (Cornerhouse, Manchester, November 2007-January 2008) is always worth a look, as it has been a launchpad in previous years for many of the UK's now-leading artists, such as Damien Hirst and Gillian Wearing.
Of this year's 37 artists, Francisco Lobo's Congo is striking, Jack Newling's prints on cardboard work well and Yohei Yashi's low-tech part-video, part-installation Untitled (a mouse) brings a smile to the lips.
Sara Allen, Journalist and 24 Hour Museum writer in London
Photographer and impresario Joachim Schmid at the Photographers’ Gallery was a brilliant and elegant rehabilitation of found photographs that offered a much needed discussion about the very nature and role of photography itself.
Drawing from Painting at the National Gallery showed that Leon Kossof's works on paper, and the vast oils, sticky and seductive, make a strong case for their permanent inclusion in the National Gallery: for their exposition of the artist's process, but also for the demand to reconsider the works which reside therein.
How We Are: Photographing Britain at Tate Britain - something like a national photo album (cluttered and erratic and necessarily familiar) this sometimes collection of some 500 images traces the proletarianisation of photography and its work in archiving memory. It worked because, ultimately, isn't ‘How We Are’ the question of our age?
