All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life at Tate Britain, 28th February to 27th August 2018

Billed as a landmark exhibition, All Too Human showcases how some of Britain’s most celebrated artists from Sickert and Spencer, via Auerbach and Kossoff, to Freud and Bacon, and newer female artists like Paula Rego and Jenny Saville, have captured life’s most intense experiences in paint. The trouble is that while there are many fine individual paintings on display, the thematic coherence of this show completely disappears from view under the sheer number of exhibits.

Living with gods: people, places and worlds beyond at The British Museum, 2nd November 2017 to 8th April 2018

Arguing that belief in spiritual powers has been part of every known human society, this brave show attempts nothing less than to survey the history of religious belief. So pervasive is this instinct to find meaning, the show’s argument is that we might equally call ourselves ‘homo religiosus’, rather than solely ‘homo sapiens’. Focusing both chronologically and thematically on mundane, even trivial, items that attest to the power of belief, this show’s message of tolerance and respect is much needed in our fractious world. Ultimately though this is a show undermined by the contradictions of its assumptions. It might be about homo religiosus but it is for homo sapiens.