Best of 2019
It’s been a bumper year for me, with my Museum Diary going over my usual double-page diary spread, and a number of trips abroad. With that feast of exhibitions and galleries to choose from, it’s been hard to cut the best down to 10, so I’ve broken my own rules and picked a top 11.
Taken from six different countries, temporary exhibitions, and permanent galleries large and small, my best of the year, in order that I visited are:
1. The Clock by Christian Marclay - Tate Modern (London)
So good I visited twice, and would have gone more if I’d had the time. This extraordinary film piece covers 24 hours in real time, cut from hundreds of snippets of films featuring clocks. It’s a vivid statement of the importance of time in human life, as well as a fascinating insight into the changing technology of clocks (and fun to spot the films you recognise). It was well worth a visit overnight to watch the lesser-seen part of the day too.
2. Diane Arbus (In the beginning) & Kader Attia (The Museum of Emotion) - Hayward Gallery (London)
It may be cheating to pick two shows as one choice, but this was such a beautiful pairing at the Hayward that I enjoyed as a complementary visit. Arbus’s photos were displayed on a forest of pillars, creating striking relationships between her subjects as well as visitors moving around the space. Attia’s works raise related questions about who is represented in museums and galleries, and how. I made a second visit to spend more time absorbing his extraordinary piece The Repair from documenta 13.
3. The Renaissance Nude - Royal Academy (London)
I find that the smaller RA shows in the Sackler Galleries (and now the new spaces in Burlington Gardens) are often the best. They focus the eye and the mind on a perfect selection of compelling works. The Renaissance Nude show was a prime example, with works by Cranach, Titian and more focused on how artists looked at and understood the human body. It got me thinking about some ideas of my own around medical representation too.
4. Emma Kunz: Visionary Drawings - Serpentine Gallery (London)
I discovered this show by accident and it reminded me that I need to visit the Serpentine more often. Kunz was a visionary artist and healer from Switzerland who’s geometric drawings made using a pendulum have a compulsive, compelling quality. Some displayed as individual large-scale works, some in a massed display, these got me thinking about the power and purpose of diagram and illustration in how we understand what we think is ‘art’.
5. Edvard Munch: Love and Angst - British Museum (London)
Definitely one of the highlights of the year, this exhibition was a revelation to me. I only really knew of Munch as a painter, and for his famous Scream, but this showed what an incredible print maker he was - powerful and experimental but sensitive. It gave a sense of the artist and his life behind this extraordinary body of work without overpowering the works themselves, and reminded how excellent prints and drawings shows at the BM always are.
6. Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature (Paris)
This wonderful little museum has long been on my list to visit, and did not disappoint. It takes a difficult subject and historic collection, devoted to hunting, and turns it into a witty and beautiful series of galleries looking at the cultural place of classic hunt animals in human life. Touches of wit and whimsy - often from contemporary artists - keep the displays fresh and thought-provoking.
At the foot of the Buda hills, this lesser-known museum is exemplary of what a municipal museum can achieve. Housed in a beautiful old monastery, it managed to combine very disparate collections - ranging from shop signs to Hungarian fine arts and a historic pharmacy - in a gallery experience that was well-designed, beautifully paced, and taught me a lot about Hungarian art and artists.
8. Furniture in the Museum - Slovak National Museum at Bratislava Castle
This exhibition was particularly unexpected in the heart of a castle that started as a fairly classic heritage experience. Cleverly designed and conceived, it explained the rationale and processes of caring for a historic furniture collection, from catalogue card to exhibition. I found it a complete joy.
9. Prunksaal, Hofburg (Vienna)
I am still mystified why this awe-inspiring space in the old Hapsburg palace is not better known. A soaring baroque library, filled with frescos, rare books, globes, sculpture and carving, it is utterly beautiful and, on our visit, featured a fascinating exhibition on Maximilian I drawn from the library collection.
10. Lee Krasner: Living Colour - Barbican (London)
The main exhibition rooms at the Barbican are a difficult space, and this is one of the only exhibitions that I have seen use it so well. Beautifully curated, the show started you upstairs with Krasner’s smaller works, allowing you to look down to the monumental pieces below. It revealed an extraordinary artist and thinker with a careful and sensitive approach to her life story.
The 2019 biennale was the best I have yet seen. The exhibition ‘May you live in interesting times’ was rare in creating a coherent narrative and visual experience and featured some really exciting and thought-provoking work. The pavilions from Ghana, Brazil and Pakistan have particularly stayed with me, as has work by Ryoji Ikeda and Tavares Strachan.
Of course, two extraordinary projects also opened at the Science Museum this year - The Art of Innovation exhibition, and Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries. As I worked on these, it doesn’t feel right putting them in my top ‘10’, but I think they’re both thoughtful and beautiful, and I hope might make someone else’s.