Anytime you find yourself arguing for truth in national stereotypes, Deutsche Bank and their corporate collection policy is a good example to have to hand. In their Frankfurt headquarters – two tall skyscrapers – the German bank have devoted each floor to a German artist, in descending order of their birth. As you go down the lift, you go forward in art history, from Beuys to Baselitz, Becher to Nicolai. Germans, eh? The British headquarters, meanwhile, shows British artists alongside German ones – a Freud room, a Struth room, for example – and the US shows American artists with their German counterparts. As much as the size of their corporate collection – which is overseen by Alistair Hicks and comprises 50,000 works of art (Deutsche Bank collect museum-scale pieces but much of this number is in works on paper) – Deutsche Bank are known for being active sponsors of exhibitions, biennials and institutions. In this past year, they sponsored the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, where Isa Genzken showed her installation Oil, as well as the Istanbul and inaugural Athens biennials. They have also been the but art critics who can express their own opinions in a clear and concise manner are rarer still. Beyond the glitzy world of glossy magazines and awards, Saltz managed to maintain his ongoing campaign for more equality between men and women in the artworld (while gallantly admitting to ArtReview that his wife, Roberta Smith, was more equal than him when it came to this list), to let off a broadside against what he calls ‘Biennial Culture’ and um… to continue to bash the Guggenheim’s Thomas Krens.