NOT quite in 2017, but in a year’s time a collection of the world’s most ravishing jewels – diamonds, emeralds, rubies – is coming to the National Gallery with “Cartier: The Exhibition”, opening in March 30 to July 22, 2018. 

The fashion for blockbuster art shows and high-selling musicals shows no sign of abating in 2017 and Canberra will enjoy its fair share of them.

The NGA continues with the third National Indigenous Art Triennial: “Defying Empire” opening in May and “Hyper Real: Sculpture 1973-2017”, on display from late October.

Across the lake, the Canberra Theatre will bookend its subscription season with Tim Finn’s David Jones-inspired musical “Ladies In Black” in late March-April and the Australian premiere of a completely new production of “Mamma Mia” in November. Here Canberra Theatre director Bruce Carmichael is hoping to attract audiences from interstate and surrounding regions.

For those who like their theatre tough and confronting, the West End smash-hit adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan will tour to Canberra in July.

Bell Shakespeare’s Peter Evans, tells us we’ll be seeing “Richard 3” in April, controversially starring Kate Mulvany as the Machiavellian manipulator who charms us, even as he slaughters his family, marries his victim’s widow and betrays his allies.

Music at the refined end of the spectrum will be brought to us by Musica Viva, with four-time Grammy-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird coming in February and pianist Angela Hewitt continuing her mission to perform the complete solo keyboard works of Bach in May.

You can fairly predict packed houses when Bangarra Dance Theatre presents a new work based on the life of Woollarawarre Bennelong, choreographed by artistic director Stephen Page, highlighting, they say, “the extraordinary curiosity and diplomacy that led an Aboriginal community to survive a clash of cultures”.

Canberra is home to many smaller arts festivals, but the biggest of them all is the Easter National Folk Festival, which is embarking on “an exciting new edgy initiative, “FringeWorld”, supported by Events ACT.

The biggest ticket number on the local theatre scene is surely Caroline Stacey’s staging of the world-premiere season of “Cold Light”, adapted by Alana Valentine from the novel by Frank Moorhouse, a project commissioned by The Street Theatre. Sonia Todd will play the fictional protagonist Edith Campbell Berry.

The 85-year-old Canberra Rep traverses the theatrical genres with everything from Arthur Wing Pinero’s famous 19th-century play “Trelawney of the ‘Wells’” to Arthur Miller’s tough play about immigrants, “A View from the Bridge”.

For some Canberra arts organisations, the big question for 2017 is going to be funding, with drastic cuts at the Federal level that have left many floundering and looking at new ways, sadly usually involving more unpaid work for artists. Canberra Contemporary Art Space’s laudable practice of paying its exhibiting artists will doubtless come under pressure.

You can fairly bet the funding drought will lead to smaller, more intimate ventures, but we were pleased to hear that the very entrepreneurial choreographer and dancer Liz Lea is staging “Big Bang” with 60 hip hop artists and drummers for Dance Week, 2017.

And will Canberra artists be reaching out to the rest of Australia?

Canberra Youth Theatre certainly is, with plans to tour its “The Verbatim Project”, created by CYT teens and Canberra Dance Theatre’s GOLD troupe.