2010 kicks off with a Royal Academy blockbuster: The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and his Letters (23 Jan - 18 April). It will put the letters the artist wrote to his brother Theo, which often included sketches of what he was working on, next to his paintings. In these letters Van Gogh comes across not as the wild-eyed archetypal mad artist he is often portrayed as, but as a lucid, thoughtful man.
Tate Britain begins with a mid-career retrospective for Turner Prize winner Chris Ofili (pictured), probably best known for his intensely coloured elephant dung paintings (27 Jan - 16 May), as well as a major Henry Moore show (24 Feb - 15 Aug). In the autumn comes an Eadweard Muybridge retrospective, centred on his revolutionary photographs of animals and humans in motion, which are still used by animators (8 Sep - 6 Jan 2011). The Tate will also show drawings by Rachel Whiteread at the same time, most of which have never been shown before in a public gallery.
Over at Tate Modern, there is an exhbition devoted to the American abstract Expressionist painter Arshile Gorky, who was born in Armenia and survived the Turkish genocide (10 Feb - 3 May), alongside an exhibition of Theo van Doesburg, a key figure in the Bauhaus movement and the founder of De Stijl (the White Stripes are big fans) (4 Feb - 16 May). His design, typography and architectural work will be shown alongside contemporaries such as Hans Arp, Piet Mondrian, Constrantin Brancusi and Kurt Schwitters.
Also at the Tate, Exposed, Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera is on at the Tate from 28 May until 29 September and includes work by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Nan Goldin, followed by shows of contemporary experimental artist Francis Alÿs (15 June - 5 Sep) and Gauguin (30 Sep - 16 Jan 2011).
The British Museum has Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler until 24 January, followed by Kingdom of Ife: Sculptures from West Africa (4 March - 6 June) and Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings (22 April - 25 July) which looks at drawing as an art form in its own right, rather than as just a tool in the making of a painting.
Don´t miss the Hoerengracht show by American artists Ed and Nancy Kienholz at the National Gallery, which recreates a street from Amsterdam´s Red Light district and finishes on 21 February. The National ends the year with Venice: Canaletto and his Rivals (13 Oct - 16 Jan 2011).
The Hayward Gallery will shut for repairs during the first half of this year, and reopen on 17 June with site-specific work by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto. Move: Art and Dance since the Sixties is next (13 Oct - 9 Jan 2011), including work by Robert Morris and Bruce Nauman.
Of the smaller galleries in London, the Serpentine Gallery will devote its first show of the year to Richard Hamilton (3 March - 25 April), followed by photos by Turner Prize winner Wolfgang Tillmans (26 June - 20 Oct).
Don´t miss Frank Auerbach at the Courtauld Gallery, which finishes on 17 January. It shows his paintings of London building sites made after the war.
This is followed by an exhibition centred on Michelangelo´s drawing The Dream of Human Life, which he probably gave to the Roman nobleman Tommaso de Cavalieri (18 Feb - 16 May), alongside letters and poems addressed by the artist to his lover.
Also interesting will be an exhibition that looks at the making of Cézanne’s Card Players and Man with a Pipe alongside related portraits of Provençal peasants, including rarely seen preparatory oil sketches and drawings (21 Oct - 16 Jan 2011).
