Norwich has always been an exciting cultural city and 2017 is no exception with a host of fantastic exhibitions, festivals, performances and special events, ranging from a newly restored Baby House at Strangers' Hall - part of the V&A Small Stories exhibition at Norwich Castle - and a quarter of a lost Magritte canvas found late 2016 to a new exhibition - Rembrandt: Lightening in the Dark - featuring the nationally important collection of 93 Rembrandt etchings held by Norfolk Museums Service and The Russian Season at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, revealing how the creativity of Fabergé came to extend from St. Petersburg and the court of the Romanovs, to a dairy on Norfolk's Sandringham Estate.
Paul Nash is among the most important British artists of the first half of the 20th century and a key figure of Modern Art in Britain – he will be exhibiting at the world-class Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts between April and August. A lecture by Dr Giorgia Bottinelli, Curator of Historic Art at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, with freelance conservator Alice Tavares da Silva and MoMA's Michael Duffy, will take place in July following the amazing story that the third quarter of René Magritte's lost painting of two nudes, La Pose enchantée, was re-discovered at Norwich Castle Museum in 2016. La Condition humaine was painted over a quarter of an earlier painting by Magritte entitled La Pose enchantée (The enchanted Pose), which was first exhibited in 1927 and is only known from an old black and white photograph.
Performance will be extraordinary as the Norfolk & Norwich Festival bursts with energy, colour and fabulousness for 17 days in May. Headlining the iconic Adnams Spiegeltent is the latest show Driftwood from Casus - one of Australia's most exciting contemporary circus companies. Driftwood is a colourful concoction of explosive encounters, hidden looks, and humorous discoveries featuring incredible aerial hoop, rope and swings and impressive acrobalance. The riotous Race Horse Company returns to Norwich with Super Sunday, the newest super-fun show from the acclaimed Finnish circus troupe with a reputation for madcap brilliance. Big on flying, big on thrills and big on mind blowing skills, Super Sunday contains enough fear-inducing circus stunts to stop audiences looking away, even for a second. Six shows are on early release with the rest of the programme being announced in spring.
Nelson and Norfolk will gather together some of the most extraordinary and potent objects connected to Admiral Lord Nelson, reflecting his naval victories, his relationships and above all his affection for his native county of Norfolk at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery. Among the important objects on display will be the black velvet drape from his funeral car, a uniform worn by a Greenwich Volunteer who guarded Nelson's coffin during his two day lying-in-state, a model of the funeral barge made by a French prisoner of war at Norman Cross and extensive Nelson funeral memorabilia.
And from October 2017, to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution, the Sainsbury Centre will stage two major exhibitions that will contrast art, life and culture in Russia before and after the Revolution. The first will be Fabergé: From St. Petersburg to Sandringham. This exhibition will trace the story of one of the world's most exquisite jewellery workshops and reveal how the creativity of Fabergé came to extend from St. Petersburg and the court of the Romanovs to a dairy on Norfolk's Sandringham Estate. The second is Avant-Garde Russia - at the same time as Fabergé was producing his jewellery, a very different artistic movement was taking shape in Russia. This exhibition will include pieces produced in the period before 1917, showing the way in which Russian abstraction included specific Russian themes - especially relating to the Russian peasantry.
