Theresa Thompson previews a year of stunning Ashmolean shows

There’s nothing like the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists to kickstart a new exciting year of exhibitions. Ever a crowd-pleaser, Paul Cézanne with his rhythmical style and engaging palette, coupled with a selection of modern masterpieces never before exhibited in Europe, opens the 2014 exhibitions programme for the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The 50 works in Cézanne and Modern Masters — 19 artists including Degas, Modigliani, Soutine, and Toulouse Lautrec — come from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection, Princeton, New Jersey.

Some 24 works by Cézanne are the core of the exhibition, which is making its first stop of a European tour at the Ashmolean. Two thirds of them are watercolours: and what we will see in Oxford is one of the finest remaining groups of watercolours by the French master. Among highlights are Cézanne’s beloved Mont Sainte-Victoire, the watercolour Three Pears, and a stunning Van Gogh of the Tarascon Diligence.

“It’s a very personal collection — not at all a lesson in art history,” said Colin Harrison, senior curator of European Art at the Ashmolean. On from March 13 to June 22.

‘Tutmania’ raged around the world in the 1920s, particularly in America. It’s set to start again this summer in Oxford when Discovering Tutankhamun opens on July 24 (until October 26). The exhibition plans to tell the story of the discovery of the boy king’s tomb in 1922, and how the name of Tutankhamun soon was everywhere with covers shouting from newsstands, and Tutankhamun ruling again, this time in film, music, fashion and advertising. But crucially, it also explores how Egyptologists are still working today to interpret the evidence. Five thousand objects were discovered; only 20 per cent has been studied and published, said Dr Paul Collins, assistant keeper of the Ancient Near East, making a clarion call to future Egyptologists.

The exhibition marks 75 years of the Griffith Institute, Oxford University’s centre for Egyptology, using photographs from its extensive archive of the excavations along with sketches and notes from Howard Carter such as his handwritten diary entry recording the momentous discovery on November 5: “Discovered tomb under tomb of Ramses VI / Investigated same and found seals intact.”

The summer sees world-class 17th-century embroideries from the Feller family’s renowned collection (you may recognise the butcher’s name from the Covered Market) which make a rare appearance alongside pieces from the Ashmolean.

The Eye of the Needle: English Embroideries from the Feller collection, from August 1 to September 30, presents virtuoso embroideries from the two collections, with Micheál and Elizabeth Feller’s collection being shown for the first time in public. One of the Ashmolean’s strengths for years has been its Chinese paintings collection. Professor Michael Sullivan, a world authority on modern Chinese art who died last September aged 96, has bequeathed to the museum his outstanding collection of over 400 paintings, built up with his wife Khoan over 70 years. The Sullivan gift makes the Ashmolean the leading institution for the display of modern Chinese art in the west, said Dr Shelagh Vainker.

Paintings, drawings, and prints will be displayed in rotation from March 11 with a tribute to Michael Sullivan: A Life of Art and Friendship (until September 14).

And of the other free temporary displays, coming very soon, from January 17, there is an astonishing assortment of sculptural jewels (rhinoceros, parrot, dodo…) in Kevin Coates: A Bestiary of Jewels; from April 10 Joerg Immendorff and Joseph Beuys (in the ground floor gallery presently showing Malcolm Morley’s paintings); Islamic art from the Christopher Gandy collection (April-July); and in the Coin Gallery, medieval coinage from the Ilchester mint (on view until May), plus from June a commemorative display of First World War coins and medals.

The year ends with the seminal figure of William Blake, printmaker, painter and poet. A major exhibition of more than 90 of his works opens on December 4 (until March 1, 2015) in an examination of his life and work curated by Colin Harrison. But a month or so before that, the year-end will undoubtedly see another examination of life and work — for this September Professor Christopher Brown CBE steps down as director of the Ashmolean after 16 years at the helm.