The year 2025 marks the 75th anniversary of the most influential of all art books, Ernst Gombrich’s The Story of Art. The way things appeared back in 1950 is, however, very different to the way they look now. Gombrich’s book went on to sell eight million copies and run to 16 editions (and counting), and while it remains a fascinating primer for Western art, it has fallen out of step with the times. Importantly, the first edition contained no female artists and very little on international art or contemporary practitioners. Today, these three concerns are dominant in the wider art world.
As if to corroborate, what are notably scarce among the exhibitions scheduled for 2025 are solo shows devoted to white, male artists firmly established in the canon. There are some – for example, on the 250th anniversary of his birth, JMW Turner gets a showing at the Whitworth in Manchester (“In Light and Shade”, 7 February – 2 November) and is paired with his great rival in “Turner & Constable” at Tate Britain (27 November 2025 – 12 April 2026) – but elsewhere Italian or northern European artists from the 15th to the 19th centuries are as rare as hens’ teeth.
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