Arts review of the year: Rises and falls from Sampha and Turner-prize winner Lubaina Himid to Kevin Spacey

The world lost Chuck Berry, the founder of rock 'n' roll but the year is marked by gains galore

Kevin Spacey in a scene from ‘House of Cards’ – his spectacular fall from grace was one of the year’s low points and, apparently, little surprise to the theatre world (Getty)

The mighty fell. Not so much Harvey Weinstein. Though he was a major player in film globally and indirectly boosted the British film industry with major investments, his was not a household name over here… until his house of cards came tumbling down. No, it was, speaking of House of Cards, Kevin Spacey, very much a household name and a key figure in British theatre as well as Hollywood for more than a decade, whose fall showed that the various sexual scandals, cases of assault and harassment weren’t confined to America.

The list of allegations against Spacey turned the spotlight on to London’s Old Vic theatre that he ran for over 11 years, and led to questions about how much the board knew, how much the theatre world knew and why there had been no action. Another name, once revered in theatrical circles, Max Stafford-Clark, was also tarnished with allegations of harassment.

Allegations against Spacey and Stafford-Clark came, to be frank, as little surprise to those in the arts in Britain. But at least it led to a code of conduct being drawn up in the world of theatre, spearheaded by the Royal Court’s artistic director Vicky Featherstone, even as she was preparing to open a revival by Stafford-Clark’s company of his play Out of Joint.

The confusion intensified when Ms Featherstone decided some weeks later not to stage the play as its association with Stafford-Clark and the play’s theme of grooming made it inappropriate. And as if that wasn’t confusing enough, a few days after that she issued a statement saying she had been “rocked to the core” by accusations that she had censored a “working-class, female voice” (the play’s author, Andrea Dunbar) and was now reinstating it.

Paddy Considine as Quinn Carney and Genevieve O’Reilly as Mary Carney in Jez Butterworth’s ‘The Ferryman’ (Johan Perrson)

And one can be sure that neither the list of alleged culprits nor the confusion are finished with yet. The worthies of film, who have rightly stripped Weinstein of his various fellowships and awards, have yet to answer questions about Polanski or Hitchcock or Chaplin or many others. To avoid being accused of hypocrisy, some awkward conversations have yet to take place across the arts.

2017 will thankfully not be remembered as 2016 was for the number of towering figures who passed away. But we did lose some who were giants in their art forms. Chuck Berry can justifiably be said to have invented rock’n’roll. On this side of the Atlantic, Sir Peter Hall founded the Royal Shakespeare Company while in his twenties and went on to head the National Theatre too. He defined a style of performance, particularly Shakespearean performance. When I last had lunch with him and we talked over his many achievements, we mentioned Shakespeare. He lent across the table, almost conspiratorially, and whispered: “He’s the best, you know.”

An era certainly ended at the Tate, when its long-serving director Sir Nicholas Serota, finally called time. His achievements there were immense, including the opening of the massively popular Tate Modern and also, of course, Tate St Ives. He undoubtedly turned the Tate into a formidable global brand. Sir Nicholas has gone on to chair the Arts Council and it’s to be hoped he will bring to that hitherto unaccountable quango a greater degree of both accountability and transparency in its distribution of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to the arts.

Bertie Carvel as Rupert Murdoch and Richard Coyle as Larry Lamb in James Graham’s ‘Ink’

Sir Nicholas has given early signals that he wishes to do something to correct the balance of money going to London and to the regions. On that note, the year also marked the opening of The Bridge theatre in London by the brilliant former head of the National Theatre Sir Nicholas Hytner. Everything he does will be worth watching but one also wonders why, with London not exactly short of theatres, he wasn’t tempted to make a stand for the regions and open his new theatre outside London.

The theatre world still fails to do enough to address the genuine audience concerns of rising ticket prices and the perennial irritation of booking fees. On stage, though, there were some notable successes. The Ferryman by Jerusalem author Jez Butterworth deservedly triumphed at the awards ceremonies, giving insights both comic and chilling into The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Conor McPherson’s Girl from the North Country to the surprise of all but Bob Dylan fans, showed that his music could be turned into a stage musical. Ink put on stage with comic aplomb a pivotal moment in British social history – the birth of Murdoch’s Sun newspaper. And Bryan Cranston, star of TV’s Breaking Bad, brought his own brand of intensity and charisma to the National Theatre adaptation of the 1976 film Network.

Daniel Kaluuya in ‘Get Out’, Jordan Peele’s offbeat take on race and racism (Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock)

On screen Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk showed how great direction and cinematography could add new dimensions to the traditional war film. America’s introspection on its own history of race relations – and indeed current race relations – inspired notable movies. Moonlight triumphed at the Oscars. And I would support the verdict of Sight & Sound magazine in naming Jordan Peele’s debut Get Out its film of the year for the way it referenced interracial couples, the slave trade, suburban racism and police brutality – all in a bizarrely surreal, comic framework.

TV drama continued to challenge the big screen with another year of sustained excellence, from Line of Duty to Doctor Foster, with the multi-Emmy award-winning Big Little Lies one of a number of drama series showing how movie stars as renowned as Reece Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman are as attracted to TV as cinema. And a shout out, as they say, for Motherland, a rare comic exploration of the difficulties of career- and family-juggling, with the added bonus of making one of Britain’s many great actresses, Anna Maxwell Martin, into more of the household name she deserves to be.

In another fine year for art exhibitions, there was a survey of black American art at Tate Modern, a look at Raphael’s drawings at the Ashmolean in Oxford, Michelangelo at the National Gallery, Cezanne’s portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, and a fascinating interchange between Duchamp and Dali at the Royal Academy. But it was, quite rightly, a notable gallery outside London, the Hepworth in Wakefield, which walked off with the Museum of the Year award.

Damien Hirst’s ‘The Diver’ was among the works at his immense, long-awaited show in Venice (Getty)

Damien Hirst attempted to upstage the world’s artists at the Venice Biennale by mounting his own exhibition “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable”. Hirst’s first major show in 13 years, costing him £50m according to some reports, received mixed reviews. The Financial Times seemed sat on the fence in its review, saying “You will either find it fascinating and enriching or pointless and annoying.”

Classical music’s big event of the year must be seen to be the return to Britain of the conductor Sir Simon Rattle. His acclaimed tenure at the Berlin Philharmonic has been followed by Sir Simon becoming music director at the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican.

At least, at the Barbican for the time being. Sir Simon has made clear that he wants a new concert hall and all the right noises are being made by private funders, the City of London and the government. But behind the scenes, I gather that there is still a way to go in raising the necessary cash. And Sir Simon may be at the Barbican for longer than he expected.

Stormzy was forced to apologise for having used homophobic language in the past (Getty)

In the world of opera, Glyndebourne scored a notable success with a new version of Hamlet, and the English National Opera bade farewell to another chief executive. It would be a strange year if the ENO did not have some crisis to manage. Classical music too was not immune to the sexual harassment allegations sweeping the arts. The year ended with the New York Metropolitan Opera suspending its relationship with its conductor emeritus James Levine, while allegations were investigated.

In rock and pop, Taylor Swift appropriately enough enhanced her reputation with the universally well-received album Reputation, a voyage round Taylor Swift and perceptions of Taylor Swift by Taylor Swift. But she certainly did not have the field to herself in a good year for albums: with Rag ‘n’ Bone Man in the top 10 for most of the year; Stormzy broadening the parameters of UK grime; Robert Plant reinventing himself yet again and turning his back on any idea of a Led Zep reunion yet again.

Sampha’s Mercury Prize-winning debut album, Process, showcased rising British talent. St Vincent, like Swift, used her own life experience and romantic disappointments for a fascinating album, St Vincent. And there were welcome returns for The War on Drugs (A Deeper Understanding) and Arcade Fire (Everything Now), even if in both cases the new album did not reach the peaks of their best.

‘Le Rodeur: Exchange’ by Turner-prize winner Lubaina Himid (Getty) (AFP/Getty Images)

There were new books from wunderkinds of years gone by, Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie, giving Amis the opportunity to lecture Britain on its shortcomings from his American home. Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize for Literature to much rejoicing and John Le Carré showed that there’s still considerable life in spy novels and his enduring talent to write them. Arundhati Roy showed that writing takes time, in her case two decades between her new novel and her latest, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

But the year ended on a worrying note. Hull proved to be yet another successful city of culture and hosted the Turner Prize, still managing to keep contemporary art controversial. This year, at long last, the Turner prize dropped its arbitrary age limit for contestants paving the way for 62-year-old Lubaina Himid to win.

If Hull showed how beneficial the designation of the title City of Culture can be for both the local arts and local economy, its success was followed by an unforeseen blow to British cities competing culturally with the best in Europe – namely that Brexit might yet mean that Britain can no longer out-forward cities to be European Capital of Culture. The Government is trying to get the EU to reconsider. For the sake of British culture and its global reputation at the end of another triumphant year, this is a battle that must be won.