What do we want from art? Is it a frippery or a vital part of national life? Yesterday, plans for the weekend in late September that will launch the Cultural Olympiad were announced. The four-year programme of arts events that will take us through to London’s hosting of the Olympics in 2012 will start with Lord Coe running through Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries as part of the artist Martin Creed’s latest installation.

Is this the best advert for our arts and culture? During the Beijing Olympics, there was outrage over a snatched image of Marcus Harvey’s controversial portrait of Myra Hindley that appeared on a promotional video. But that work – attention-grabbing and provocative – surely stands for something more meaty and interesting than the easy PR hit of our Olympics chief running about in a gallery.

The thinking behind the stunt is so literal – the Cultural Olympiad as a meeting of sport and art – it mitigates against the imaginative and daring. This launch weekend is full of such pleasing, rather than stunning, events. Museums and galleries will exhibit unseen treaures; Blackpool Tower will be illuminated with the 2012 colours. Let us hope that the lame appearance of Leona Lewis, Jimmy Page and a big red bus at the end of the Beijing Games has not set an embarrassingly unambitious precedent.

The question of who, and what, art is for is sharpened by the campaign to save for the nation the two Titians, Diana & Actaeon and Diana & Callisto, from the Bridgewater collection. Some claim that there are more important things to spend £100 million on in such economically trying times. Galleries should counter the carping by indicating just how much revenue their shows help to generate. The Titians’ owner, the Duke of Sutherland, has set a deadline of December 31 to save the works.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, is due to outline his cultural vision. As well as exhibitions about the history of the capital, the focus will fall on the arts in the outer boroughs – unsurprising as it was “the doughnut” vote that helped to get him elected.

The reopening of the Acropolis Museum in Athens this autumn will reignite the argument over whether Britain should return the Elgin Marbles. In December the Government is expected to publish the Heritage Protection Bill, the first for a generation, to streamline rules on listed buildings, ancient monuments and other national assets, giving English Heritage more powers to oversee the system and home owners a right of appeal against listing.

The Government is also expected to announce the successor to Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, the chairman of English Heritage, who died last month. After the furore about its programme of funding cuts, the post of chairman of Arts Council England is also up for grabs, as is the job of chief executive of the South Bank Centre with the imminent departure of Michael Lynch. It is expected that Nicholas Penny, the director of the National Gallery, will reveal the first roster of shows under his leadership. The autumn will bring decisions reached over three controversial listings cases: the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square (which could frustrate any attempt by the US Government to rebuild or move), BBC TV Centre in West London, and the Lloyds Building – at the time of its completion in 1986 a shocking piece of architecture with exterior pipes and lifts and now a gawky eccentric in a sea of glass and steel.

The Find Your Talent scheme, to be launched in ten pilot areas in the autumn, will guarantee young people access to a range of “high-quality” cultural pursuits.

Away from the bubbling pots of arts policy, what should you be going to see? The first starry theatrical event of the season, Rain Man with Josh Hartnett, is underway in the West End. Stevie Wonder comes to Britain for a brief tour, Robert Lepage’s nine-hour theatrical epic, Lipsynch, promises to intrigue. Elton John’s Red Pianotour lands in Britain. Kenneth Branagh has a starring role in Tom Stoppard’s production of Ivanov, while Ralph Fiennes and Clare Higgins feature in Jonathan Kent’s production ofOedipusat the National. David Tennant’s much acclaimed RSC Hamlet arrives in London after its Stratford run.

Major exhibitions include Mark Rothko at Tate Modern, and surveys of the work of Francis Bacon at Tate Britain and the Renaissance at the National Gallery.The TimesBFI London Film Festival opens with Frost/Nixon, starring the talented chameleon Michael Sheen. Will Greg Dyke, the chairman of the British Film Institute, stamp his populist imprimatur on this festival? To round the year off, some dramatic karma: Lorna Luft, Judy Garland’s daughter, stars in the Lowry’s production of The Wizard of Oz as the Wicked Witch.

What is art and culture for? Pleasure, enrichment and provocation. Enjoy it. And – Lord Coe – be challenged by it.