Best of 2020

It certainly hasn’t been the year that I imagined ahead, when I looked back this time last year on the bumper visits of 2019. 2020 has been a real challenge for all of us, and I realise how lucky I am that my main stumbling blocks have been staying at home through lockdown, furlough, distance from family and friends, and museum closures, although the latter threatens to change our cultural landscape permanently. 

I was surprised and delighted on looking back over my list for this year that I had managed to engage with so much culture and could easily compile a list of favourites (although more London-centred than I would usually think reasonable). Given the year it’s been, I thought I’d treat myself to a top 11, as a testament to the cultural access that we must never take for granted. 

1. Hospital de los Venerables (Seville, Spain)

Spending time in Seville last New Year now feels like a different world, and I was so lucky to stumble upon the Hospital while avoiding the enormous queues for the Alcázar palace. This gem of a museum is housed in a 17th-century residence for priests, with a beautifully frescoed chapel, a tiled courtyard, and the Velázquez Centre, dedicated to the city’s famous painter.

2. W.E.B. du Bois: Charting Black Lives - House of Illustration (London)

On my first visit to this small but perfectly formed museum in Kings Cross, they had a brilliantly compelling exhibition about the man who used infographics to challenge racism in the USA around the turn of the 20th century. Not only did it show beautifully the power of image and diagram, it also anticipated the renewed Black Lives Matter protests this summer that look set to bring lasting change.

3. Trevor Paglen: From ‘Apple’ to ‘Anomaly’ – Barbican (London)

I have been fascinated by Paglen’s work for some time, and his show in the Barbican’s Curve far exceeded my expectations. The installation of about 30,000 photographs along one whole wall of the space was visually stunning and completely compelling in showing how image datasets and trained AI dangerously affect how we see and analyse our contemporary world. 

4. Cars: Accelerating the Modern World – V&A (London)

I partly went to see this exhibition out of duty, but found it to be the perfect example of what the V&A does so well. Beautifully designed, packed with incredible objects, this show made a powerful argument for how cars have changed the world, not only in terms of transport, but design, lifestyle, infrastructure, work patterns and so much more. 

5. Out of the Crate – Manchester Art Gallery

The exhibitions at MAG are always brilliant, and this show did an excellent job of opening up how museums catalogue, store, research and care for collections. Focusing on the sculpture collections, and coming out of work that is happening nationally to add sculpture to ArtUK, this was quite a simple show that nonetheless made a powerful case for why museums and objects matter.

6. Tullio Crali: A Futurist Life – Estorick Collection (London)

The Estorick is another gem of a museum, with a collection of Italian modern art housed in a Georgian town house in north London. This exhibition show-cased rarely seen works by a lesser-known Futurist artist, who was particularly inspired by the technology of flight. It was a feast for the eyes, and told a compelling story of art and technology in dialogue. 

7. The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and the Cosmic Tree – Online Camden Art Centre

A feast of online versions of exhibitions became available to us during the first lockdown of 2020, with differing success. Camden’s The Botanical Mind online was by far my favourite, offering a different approach to the eventual physical show, on an excellent online platform, that showed compellingly how we need to rethink the ways in which we categorise the world. 

8. Tavares Strachan: In Plain Sight - Marian Goodman Gallery (London)

I first came across this artist’s work at the Venice Biennale in 2019 and was immediately struck by his take on histories of science and technology. I was therefore delighted for his first major UK solo exhibition, which was an immersive treat. Playing with histories of science, exploration, image-making, sculpture and narrative, this work was visually stunning and foregrounded the histories of contributions made by black people to modern science.

9. Evgenia Arbugaeva: Hyperborea - Stories from the Russian Arctic - The Photographers’ Gallery (London)

I didn’t visit the Photographer’s Gallery to see this show, but it’s the one that blew me away. Beautifully curated in a dark, atmospheric gallery, Arbugaeva’s photographs offer glowing, eery and mesmerising scenes of a different world. She shows the remote land and people of the Russian Arctic, from light houses and deserted towns, to walruses and the aurora borealis, in images that are steeped in colour and energy.

10. Remembering a brave new world - Chila Kumari Singh Burman’s Winter Commission for Tate Britain (London)

We all needed some light in the darkness this November, and Burman’s commission on the outside of Tate Britain brought joy alongside important political messages. Covering the Millbank building’s façade with a digital mosaic, neon writing and figures she combined Hindu mythology, Bollywood imagery, colonial history and personal memories in celebration of Diwali.

11. The Covid Letters: A Vital Update – The Foundling Museum (London)

I wasn’t sure if I’d want to visit an exhibition about the Coronavirus, but Jonny Banger’s display of covid letters was a breath of fresh air. Each letter had been decorated by a child over the top of the Prime Minister’s letter to every household at the start of lockdown. Touching, funny and full of pithy observation they were surprisingly rude and political, encapsulating for me the phrase ‘out of the mouths of babes’.