THE DETERIORATING ECONOMIC climate has already had a sharp effect on auction houses and commercial galleries and dealers. It remains to be seen, however, what impact it will have on exhibitions in public museums. Plans for 2009 are almost certainly too far advanced to allow for cancellation or postponement, although this cannot be ruled out. The financial squeeze will certainly be painful for those who have wallowed in the comfort zone of business sponsorship. From 2006 to 2007 British corporate investment in the arts rose by ten per cent to over £170 million but the last few months of 2008 already showed a decline. In the visual arts this will affect not only exhibitions in well-known museums and galleries but the activities of small-scale institutions. The balloon of optimism set wildly afloat by arts leaders and inflated by reports such as Sir Brian McMaster’s Supporting Excellence in the Arts (January 2008) will have to be tethered more securely to the ground of everyday reality. Some good may come from this – quality over footfall, judgment over measurement, good over the simply new. Although cuts in funding are obviously a matter for regret, the resulting deprivations may lead to a rethinking of priorities, even to a renewed concentration on resources to hand such as permanent collections and to the abandonment of unnecessary museum extensions. Recent press releases from American museums already indicate a focus on their own holdings rather than on the origination or import of loan exhibitions. While large spectacular shows at major museums will probably secure backing, the less flamboyant ones will find it extremely difficult to attract business support. At the time of writing, it has been reported that Andrea Palladio: His Life and Legacy, the admit­tedly flawed exhibition now in Vicenza and opening this month at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, has had to be saved by private intervention when no business sponsor could be found. But even private funding is sure to be curtailed. Other areas likely to be affected are museum acquisitions, publishing (particularly of catalogues), advertising and the philanthropy of charitable foundations with dwindling investments. There is bound to be a slump in attendance figures and the associated activities of gallery-going. What is more difficult to calculate is the psychological effect on people drawing in the horns of personal expenditure.

Within this context it is with some trepidation that we select highlights from exhibition schedules for the new year. A number of touring shows, already safely started on their travels, continue through 2009. One of the most controversial is Picasso et les Maîtres, recently at the Grand Palais, Paris, and opening in a modified version as Picasso: Challenging the Past at the National Gallery, London (25th February to 7th June).1 The Palladio exhibition, mentioned above, marking the architect’s quincentenary, is at the Royal Academy from 29th January to 13th April. The extremely impressive show of Italian Baroque art, seen last year in the Queen’s Gallery, London, continues at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, until 8th March. In London later in the year at The Queen’s Gallery the unrivalled royal collection of Sèvres porcelain, mainly acquired by George IV, will be on view from 23rd May to 11th October and will be followed by an exploration of the English conversation piece, including the outstanding group of works by Zoffany commissioned by George III (30th October to 14th February 2010).

There is a healthy number of – on paper at least – outstanding old-master exhibitions, including two devoted to Rogier van der Weyden. The first, already on show at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt (to 22nd February), compares the artist with works by the Master of Flémalle through a series of audacious international loans; it will be seen in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, from 20th March to 21st June. A larger loan show on Van der Weyden and his contemporaries (18th September to 6th December) inaugurates the new Museum Leuven. A comparative exhibition focusing on the overlapping careers of Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese runs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (15th March to 16th August), transferring to the Louvre in the autumn. An exhibition on the youthful career of Murillo will take place in Bilbao’s Museo de Bellas Artes (19th October to 17th January 2010); and Tate Britain explores Van Dyck’s presence in England and his influence on later British portraiture (18th February to 17th May). The international Baroque style is fully documented at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2nd April to 2nd August); a foretaste of one aspect of that show, on Bernini and the Baroque portrait, is at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, until 8th March.

Turning to more recent art, the exhibition on Van Gogh’s nocturnal paintings, first seen at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (where Van Gogh’s Starry night, 1889, more or less begins MOMA’s permanent collection) will be installed at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (13th February to 7th June). Edvard Munch, often seen in isolation from his European contemporaries, is viewed in a broader context at the Art Institute of Chicago (14th February to 10th May). A substantial touring retrospective devoted to Kandinsky, currently in Munich (to 22nd February) moves later in the year to the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and finally to the Guggenheim Museum, New York. The work of two key figures in avant-garde Russian art, Popova and Rodchenko, is at Tate Modern (12th February to 17th May), followed there by a look at Futurism in Italy, France and Britain (12th June to 20th September), an exhibition at present on view at the Pompidou, where it is given a Parisian slant (to 29th January), before being Italianised at the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome (20th February to 24th May). Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective, currently at Tate Britain, moves to the Prado, Madrid, and then to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in, one hopes, a more felicitous display than the Tate’s. And for those wishing to take the measure of contemporary art, there is the Venice Biennale, if the acqua alta of national debt does not leave many a Pavilion empty.