MATTHEW COLLINGS critic, arts broadcaster and author of many books on contemporary art, including This Is Modern Art and It Hurts: New York Art from Warhol to Now
My cultural highlight was undoubtedly the Georg Baselitz show at the Royal Academy in London. This forgotten German guy who was an international hit in the early 1980s comes back seeming vibrant, pure and free. Most of it was the same old upside down stuff we always knew about but the installation in the high-walled rooms of the Academy, wit its witty and beautiful contrasts and harmonies along great long grand vistas, and the burst of outrageous punky energy in the last years of GB's work, combined to make it all seem like something totally new and alive. The Thomas Shutte thing on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square was another highlight; the first time something's gone up on this site that actually has any quality of the visual about it. The other ones were all ideas of various kinds, some quite entertaining, but this one actually looks good.
DAVID GRYN the director and founder of Artprojx, an organisation devoted to exhibiting artists' films and videos in the context of the cinema.
My favourite exhibitions and events in 2007 include 'Darkness Visible' at Southampton City Gallery (featuring Jane Bustin, Mark Wallinger, Gillian Wearing etc), Christian Marclay at White Cube, The Animation show at Parasol Unit.
SUSAN BRIGHT writer and photography curator whose recent exhibitions include 'How We Are: Photographing Britain' at Tate Britain and 'Face of Fashion' at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Having just moved to the States Taryn Simon's show (and book) 'An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar' has taken on deeper significance and resonates more with me now. When I saw it in Britain at The Photographers Gallery in London, it had a certain type of 'exoticness' and now it seems to offer oblique and intriguing clues to an identity which is new to me. I loved the elegance in which it was displayed and the bookishness of the captions which demanded both time and patience from the viewer. Random in its inventory of subject matter and scale, it is in turn funny, disturbing, intriguing and ultimately rather threatening.
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