12 Days: Highlights of 2016

Over the 12 days of Christmas, Apollo contributors and guests select their highlights of 2016

The first exhibition I am looking forward to seeing next year refers back to 2015, the 500th anniversary of Aldo Manuzio’s death. A major show focusing on this extraordinary printer and publisher will take place in the spring of 2016 at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice (19 March–19 June 2016).

Another exhibition that will be cleverly curated is the one celebrating the anniversary of the publication of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516), which will take place in the autumn at the Palazzo dei Diamanti (24 September 2016–8 January 2017). This will be a unique opportunity to look at the visual world that inspired Ariosto’s creation and the occasion for many masterpieces to return to Ferrara.

The exhibition on the Le Nain brothers, in Fort Worth (22 May–1 September 2016) and San Francisco (8 October 2016–29 January 2017) will be a revelation and I think the most important and original Old Masters exhibition in the US in 2016.

For me the most beautiful and thoughtful monographic exhibitions over the last decade have taken place at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The one celebrating the 500th anniversary of Hieronymus Bosch’s death will certainly be as remarkable as its predecessors (31 May–11 September 2016).

Much closer to home, I am hugely excited by the exhibition on the gilder Pierre Gouthière – the first ever on the artist – which will take place at the Frick Collection in the autumn (16 November 2016–19 February 2017). All of his extraordinary masterpieces will be on view together for the first time. How can anyone resist the gilt firedogs in the shape of dromedaries made for Marie-Antoinette?

Vase in the Form of a Cassolette from the Duke of Aumont (c. 1775), Pierre Gouthière. Musée du Louvre. RMN-Grand Palais/ Art Resource, NY

Xavier Salomon is chief curator of the Frick Collection, New York.

View the rest of the 12 Days series here

Event Details

‘Aldo Manuzio, le arti, il libro. Il Rinascimento a Venezia’ is at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice from 19 March–19 June 2016.

‘Orlando Furioso 500 anni. Cosa vedeva Ariosto quando chiudeva gli occhi’ is at the Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara from 24 September 2016–8 January 2017.

‘The Brothers Le Nain: Painters of Seventeenth-Century France’ is at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth from 22 May–1 September 2016, and the Legion of Honor, San Francisco from 8 October 2016–29 January 2017.

‘The Centenary Exhibition’ is at the Museo del Prado, Madrid from 31 May–11 September 2016.

‘Pierre Gouthière. Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court’ is at The Frick Collection, New York from 16 November 2016–19 February 2017.