The situation has been made worse by the curators' decision to display both collections, not in an encyclopedic chronological sequence, but by grouping the works of art in a series of exhibitions based on genres or subjects war, nudes, landscapes, still-life, and so on.

ECONOMIST: British 20th-century art

Continuing the curatorial approach used ten years ago in the first of its new displays, in the British galleries, these 1, 800 objects, from 300AD to 1600, are arranged in a broadly chronological sequence and cover a range of themes including devotion, trade and city life.

ECONOMIST: The new Medieval and Renaissance galleries are a treat