EDITORIAL

Cities of the future

The Aga Khan’s vision for the future of our cities is firmly focussed on the repair and enhancement of existing buldings, something that urban planning visionaries in the developed world still neglect.

CONTEMPORARY ART

Collector as king

Everyone is now a collector, complains charles saatchi. how long can it be before boom turns to bust?

ARCHITECTURE

Vanishing point

Moscow’s historic architecture is being mutilated as russia chases a capitalist future, but international concern is now mounting.

Around the Galleries

A rare panel by Brueghel the Younger, newly discovered Old Master paintings and sumptuous illustrations of Milton’s Paradise Lost are all on offer this December, writes Isabel Andrews.

Market review

London sales suggest that the Islamic market is resurgent, and the new Shanghai Fine Jewellery and Art Fair got off to a brave start.

Miami preview

With works by over 2,000 artists on offer beside the sea in Florida sunshine, it is no wonder that Art Basel Miami Beach attracts what locals like to call the art world’s vvvips, writes Susan Moore.

Dutch and Flemish old master paintings

Collectors from other areas are flocking to this market, which is driven by new discoveries and the quest for the best, writes Isabel Andrews.

Asian Art Market

A new art and antiques fair, makes its debut in Dubai, writes Susan Moore, and a group of Orientalist pictures comes up for sale in London.

Victorian melodrama

‘The World of Sacheverell Sitwell’ ran over three issues of apollo in late 1980. In the November issue, Denys Sutton examined the art historian’s preoccupation with the macabre.

Exhibition of the year

By examining the way that Picasso’s approach to portraiture evolved in relation to trends in 20th-century European portraits, this exhibition proved a rare survey of the under-examined subject of modern portraiture.

Book of the year

An astonishingly ambitious survey of post-war art collecting in Europe and the USA provides a vivid and revealing picture of the personalities of the leading collectors, writes Michael Hall.

Palazzo Madama Turin

The complete restoration of Palazzo Madama and its reopening is a magnificent accomplishment, writes Robert Oresko.

Museum Acquisitions in 2007

Simon Sainsbury’s bequest to the National Gallery, London, and Tate is apollo’s acquisition of the year. A Rubens study for the Norton and the Fogg’s early Titian are among the other highlights.

'Gross False Pretences'

Several of the greatest collectors of Old Master paintings in turn-of-the-century America were sold fakes or wildly misattributed works by Leo Nardus. Drawing on newly discovered documents, Jonathan Lopez explains how Nardus was exposed and discusses the impact of his chicanery on the art market.

Modernism for Old Masters

The Bode Museum in Berlin has been reopened to show European sculpture and Byzantine art in a new minimalist installation by Heinz Tesar. Bruce Boucher assesses the latest instalment in the revival of the Museumsinsel, at the heart of the city.

Personality of the year

This year the Aga Khan celebrated his 70th birthday and his golden jubilee as spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims. His extraordinary investment in arts and architecture includes plans for a museum of Islamic art, writes Lucian Harris.

Touched by art

Paul Walter has filled his home in New York City with treasures acquired over many years, from American decorative arts to Indian postcards. A ‘hands-on’ collector, he likes to use the works he buys – and enjoys even more the pleasure of giving them away.

Sex sells

The Barbican’s ‘Seduced’ exhibition wrenches the fig-leaf off works of art from ancient Rome to the present day. Huw Lewis-Jones explores the boundaries beween eroticism and pornography.

Sorceress among cities

A well-staged exhibition at the National Gallery, London, on the neglected subject of art in renaissance Siena is full of decorative, sophisticated pleasures, writes Tom Henry.

The triumph of tapestry

A spectacular exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum places tapestry at the heart of baroque court culture, writes Helen Wyld.

Treasures in Manchester

Giles Waterfield visits a 150th anniversary celebration of the biggest-ever art exhibition.

After Ophelia

Tate’s retrospective fully justifies its claim that Millais was the greatest Pre-Raphaelite painter, writes Simon Poë.

Canada’s collections

The Royal Ontario Museum asked collectors and institutions from around the country to select pieces for a new exhibition on the nation’s art collections, but does it say ‘Canada’, asks John Norris?

Art that scared Picasso

Corinna Lotz applauds a catalogue of Picasso’s collection of African and Oceanic art, which throws much light on the complex, puzzling impact that ‘primitive’ art had on him.

1,000 years of faith

Roy Strong visits 10 rural parish chuches to provide a dazzling account of England’s changing religious life over 10 centuries, writes Tim Mowl.

Architects and friends

The context of T.G. Jackson’s career takes precedence over analysis of his buildings in this new study, writes Peter Howell.

The Making of Sculpture

In 2004 the Victoria and Albert Museum opened the Gilbert Bayes Sculpture Gallery, designed to elucidate the materials and techniques used by sculptors.