CRITICAL REVIEW ON AN EXHIBITION

Critical Review on an Exhibition

Critical Review on an Exhibition

Topic

You are asked to write a Critical Review of an exhibition of your choosing. You must include reference to other reviews in the press, written material produced by the exhibition team, plus reference to texts on “museological” and contemporary curatorial history and theory.

Introduction

London is rightly famed for its aesthetic qualities, and when you wander around some of the various galleries on offer you'll see why. From the mainstream to the underground, the diversity of shows on offer never fails to impress. The complaint that too numerous of the exciting exhibitions abroad pass London by, given much of an airing only a year or two ago, has been at best half-true. Certainly London has more than held its own with the likes of Paris and New York over the past two years or so.

If last year was the year of Tate Modern, 2010 may possibly be that of Tate Britain - as we must learn to love to call the earliest thing - with the opening in the spring of the redevelopment of its entire north-west quarter, the reinstatement of something of a synoptic of the British School, and an exhibition programme to match. It kicks off with a definitive retrospective of Stanley Spencer (March 22-June 24), who is now recognized as one of the greatest British artists of the first half of the 20th century. With James Gillray, that peerless draughtsman and dauntless satirist of the Regency; a Michael Andrews retrospective to follow in July; and Exposed: The Victorian Nude to warm the imagination in the autumn, it looks like being a favorable, serious and enjoyable restart.

Local Context of Exhibition

Our local context of the exhibition will include details of the exhibition with respect to the artist, curators, and location of exhibition. As for Tate Modern, the principal show this spring is to be Century City (February 1-April 29), which will review the 20th century by looking at distinct centers at moments of perfect cultural and creative engagement - Paris and Vienna in the 1910s, Moscow in the 1920s; Lagos in the 1950s and 1960s; New York in the 1970s; London in the 1990s. In the summer, the Arte Povera movement of the 1960s is re-examined, and there is also to be a fresh look at the paintings of Giorgio Morandi.

The National Gallery's year begins with Spirit of an Age (March 7-May 13), a thorough celebration of German painting of the 19th century, from Friedrich and Menzel to Corinth and Beckmann, with which school and period we are in general woefully unfamiliar. In June comes a study of Vermeer in the context of the Delft School of painters in the 1640s and '50s, with the great 15th century Italian painter, Pisanello, the subject of the main exhibition of the autumn.

The Royal Academy begins with The Genius of Rome (January 20-April 16), a study of painting in Rome at the dawn of the 17th century - ...