Best Exhibitions in London
London is full of brilliant art, from blockbuster shows in the city’s major galleries to smaller exhibitions showcasing up-and-coming artists for the first time, and you’ll find all of the best exhibitions in London right here. There are so many great museums and galleries in the capital, which means there are some incredible shows to see; you can take your pick from interactive exhibitions, art installations, photography exhibitions and more, all on in the city right now. And if you like to just drop into something last minute, there are a whole host of free exhibitions in London too.
Current exhibitions include the first museum exhibition on NIGO outside of Japan, a show on the history of Schiaparelli, and the biggest ever exhibition on Tracey Emin.
There’s a major new show on Wes Anderson at the Design Museum, you can dive into the world of Wallace & Gromit, and you can see new works from the legendary David Hockney at Serpentine.
If you’re a fan of an interactive exhibition, there’s one that will immerse you in the land of the dinosaurs. So if you’re looking to stay on top of all the art exhibitions in London this month, plus the all major shows coming soon, we’ve got you covered.
Kew Gardens Is Hosting the World's Largest Outdoor Exhibition of Henry Moore Sculptures
Henry Moore: Monumental Nature will be the largest outdoor exhibition of the artist’s work ever presented, with over 100 pieces, including 30 monumental sculptures, on display. The sculptures will be set amongst Kew Gardens (a pretty stunning backdrop in itself) with more than 70 works on paper, models and smaller artworks displayed in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art. Moore is one of Britain’s greatest-ever sculptors and became famous for his large-scale bronzes depicting abstract figures. The exhibition at Kew, part of a dual-site celebration along with Wakehurst in Sussex, will showcase Moore’s iconic sculptures in the way they are meant to be seen – outdoors, surrounded by nature – as well as dive into his creative process and the connection he had to the natural world.
Explore What the Future Could Look Like at This Barbican Exhibition
Filmmaker, artist and speculative futurist Liam Young is taking over the Barbican to imagine what the future of humanity could look like. With In Other Worlds, his first major UK solo exhibition, Young will be transforming the Silk Street Entrance, The Curve and Car Park 5 into an immersive experience blending world-building, fiction, design and climate science. Created in collaboration with leading voices from film, TV, literature and science, the show features a range of films, audio stories, tapestries, soundscapes and costumes, and constructs a series of imagined futures for our planet, rooted in the consequences and opportunities of the decisions we make today.
Somerset House Is Celebrating Modern Shrines With This Exhibition
With HOLY POP!, Somerset House is diving into the world of modern shrines, exploring the way that we honour heroes and celebrities and the way that ritual idolisation can create community in an increasingly secular society. Featuring pieces that showcase personal devotion and communal mourning, referencing the likes of David Bowie, Princess Diana, Andy Warhol and Harry Potter’s Dobby the Elf, the exhibition is a celebration of the objects that bring us together and our fascination with pop culture.
The V&A Is Hosting a Landmark Exhibition on Art From the Asia Pacific Region
Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific at the V&A, in partnership with Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), is a landmark exhibition bringing together the work of more than 40 artists from 25 countries across the Asia Pacific region. The show will draw on the more than 30 years of QAGOMA’s Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art to showcase the creative landscape of the region. Over 70 works across sculpture, photography, painting, ceramics, weaving and body adornment – many of which have not been shown outside of the region – will be on display, foregrounding First Nations perspectives, highlighting both the commonality and diversity in art making, reflecting local traditions and faith systems, and exploring how artists respond to social and political upheaval.
This Is the First-Ever Museum Exhibition on NIGO Outside of Japan
The Design Museum is hosting NIGO: From Japan With Love, the first ever museum retrospective and exhibition outside of Japan that showcases the career and life of the Japanese creative director, NIGO. One of the first creatives to bridge the gap between streetwear and luxury fashion, NIGO (who founded A Bathing Ape and is artistic director of Kenzo) has defined trends in modern fashion. The show, featuring over 700 objects, including pieces from his vintage clothing collection, ceramics, rare designs, a recreation of his teenage bedroom, and a life-size glass tea house, will highlight his ability to draw on wide-ranging disciplines and cultural references, create iconic brands, and influence the worlds of fashion, music, architecture and interior design.
Look Back on the Wildest Year of Britain's Wildest Decade at This Exhibition
Three decades on, the Barbican Music Library is looking back at 1996, the wildest year of the 90s and the height of Cool Britannia with the 1996: 30 years on exhibition. Curated by author, broadcaster and former editor of The Sun Dominic Mohan, the free exhibition is the place to relive the 90s and the time when London was the epicentre of music, fashion, football, politics, and art. Check out original costumes worn by the Spice Girls; previously unseen Oasis memorabilia; photography by Jill Furmanovsky and Derek Ridgers, and personal items the likes of Paul Oakenfold, Dave Pearce and Judge Jules.
The New V&A East Will Open With an Exhibition on Black British Music
The Music Is Black: A British Story will celebrate 125 years of Black music in Britain and showcase the contribution that it has made to culture both here and around the world. The immersive exhibition will use a mix of never-before-seen items, instruments, equipment, personal possessions, photography, film, and fashion to take visitors through a range of genres, including jazz, reggae, 2 tone, drum & bass, jungle, trip hop, garage, dubstep, grime and drill. The stories of a whole range of musicians, from early pioneers like Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Emile Ford and Janet Kay to pioneers like Goldie, Massive Attack, Jah Shaka and Saxon Sound to today’s groundbreaking artists like Sampha, Kano, Stormzy, Little Simz, Ezra Collective and FKA Twigs, will be explored in the show. Nodding to the museum’s location, the exhibition will also spotlight the impact of East London on Black British music – Rinse FM was born in Bow, Lord of the Mics began in Jammer’s Leytonstone basement, Metalheadz bought us drum & bass at The Blue Note on Hoxton Square, and All Points East in Hackney has become one of the biggest festivals in the UK calendar.
An Immersive David Bowie Experience Is Coming to London
It’s been ten years since David Bowie died but London’s love for the iconic artist is stronger than ever and now a new immersive experience is coming to Lightroom. The King’s Cross gallery is hosting David Bowie: You’re Not Alone, which will take people inside the mind of the visionary artist. The presentation features a mixture of famous, rarely seen and never-before-exhibited material taken from the David Bowie Archive in New York along with photography, drawings, lyrics, personal notes and audio recordings. Bowie’s is the sole voice of the experience and the structure of the show offers a unique insight into his thoughts on topics like theatricality, spirituality, songwriting and creativity. So as well as looking and sounding incredible – there’ll be 360° visuals and reconfigured tracks for the gallery’s spatial audio system – it’s promising to be an “intimate and revealing self-portrait”.
David Hockney Is Showing at Serpentine For the First Time
David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, opening at Serpentine North, is the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery. The show will feature new works from Hockney – five still lifes and five portraits of people in his close circle – all sharing a similar frontal composition and a recurring gingham tablecloth motif. The gallery will also display Hockney’s ‘A Year in Normandie’, a ninety-metre-long frieze inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, depicting the changing of the seasons at his former studio in the French region. Working on his iPad, Hockney produced over a hundred images during the first Covid lockdown in 2020, recording the changes in light and weather during the spring. As lockdown lifted and the seasons shifted, he continued to digitally capture the whole cycle of the year, showcasing the ways that art and technology can come together and highlighting the beauty in the everyday. The whole digital print will be shown in the North Gallery, with a large-scale printed mural highlighting a scene from the spring cycle being presented in the garden.
See Portraits by Catherine Opie at the National Portrait Gallery
The National Portrait Gallery is hosting the first major museum exhibition of American artist Catherine Opie’s work in the UK. Her work explores topics like home, family, intimacy, identity, politics and power structures and over the past 30 years, she’s photographed queer communities, surfers, political crowds, children, high-school footballers, and often herself too. In Catherine Opie: To Be Seen, works from across her career will be displayed, including her first major piece ‘Being and Having’, her Hans Holbein-inspired portraits of LGBTQ+ friends and her Baroque-like portraits of artists.
A Major Schiaparelli Exhibition Has Come to the V&A
If you’ve been loving the Schiaparelli designs that Daniel Roseberry has been sending down the catwalk, then you won’t want to miss this – the V&A is hosting the first-ever UK exhibition dedicated to the fashion house. Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art will trace the history of the brand, founded by Elsa Schiaparelli in 1927, from its origins to its present-day operation helmed by creative director Daniel Roseberry. The show will explore Schiaparelli’s radical creativity and her connection to the art world through more than 400 objects, including garments, jewellery, accessories, paintings, photographs, furniture and more. The ‘Skeleton’ dress, the ‘Tears’ dress and the hat shaped like an upside-down shoe, all conceived by Schiaparelli in collaboration with Salvador Dali, will be pulled from the V&A’s collection for the exhibition, alongside artworks by Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Man Ray.
Tate Britain Is Hosting the First Major Show on Hurvin Anderson
More than 80 paintings from across Hurvin Anderson’s entire career are going on display at Tate Britain in what will be the first major show on the artist. The youngest of eight and the first to be born in the UK after his family moved to Birmingham from Jamaica in the 1960s, Anderson’s work reflects his experiences of belonging and diaspora. His rich, colourful works often include family members, experiences from his youth and places of significance, like the barbershop, which he sometimes layers as a way of exploring the ideas of memory and tension around cultural heritage.
See How Wallace & Gromit Come to Life at This Aardman Exhibition
Dive into the world of Aardman, the studio responsible for some of the most-loved characters of all time, with the Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends exhibition at the Young V&A. The show, coinciding with the studio’s 50th anniversary, will take you behind the scenes of the animation process, covering development, storyboarding, model making, filming and post-production, exploring how the likes of Morph, Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep come to life. Over 150 items, across sketches, concept art, puppets, props, scripts, and set models, will be on display, including development sketches for Morph; Wallace & Gromit’s motorbike and sidecar from Vengeance Most Fowl; a storyboard for the train chase in The Wrong Trousers; and set pieces from Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
The Biggest Ever Tracey Emin Exhibition Has Come to Tate Modern
Tracey Emin: A Second Life, the biggest show of Emin’s career, will look back over her 40-year career. Over 90 works will be on display, including paintings, videos, neons, sculptures and textiles, showcasing the way she uses art and the female body to explore love, passion, trauma and healing. Many pieces connected to Margate, where she now lives and has free studio-based art school, will feature in the exhibition, alongside works that address her experience of sexual assault and abortion. Her quilt ‘The Last of the Gold’, emblazoned with an ‘A to Z of abortion’ will be displayed publicly for the first time. Her seminal installations, ‘Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made’ and the Turner-Prize nominated ‘My Bed’, act as a bridge from Emin’s first life to her post-illness and surgery second life. This second life is represented with her large-scale paintings, and pieces that explore her experiences of cancer, surgery and disability, including her 2024 bronze sculpture ‘Ascension’ and a new documentary showing the stoma she now lives with.
The British Museum Is Hosting a Major Exhibition on Hawai'i
To mark 200 years since King Kamehameha II (Liholiho) and Queen Kamāmalu travelled from Hawaiʻi to London (the first Hawaiian monarchs ever to visit the UK), the British Museum is hosting the Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans exhibition. The show brings that journey and the cultural exchange between the two nations, to life, through a range of objects not seen in the UK before. Two royal treasures – a red feathered cloak gifted by King Kamehameha to King George III (which has not been publicly displayed since 1900) and the letter in which he petitioned the British Crown – reunited for the first time since the 1800s form the heart of the exhibition.
Look Back Over Wes Anderson's Work at the Design Museum
Calling all Wes Anderson fans! The Design Museum is hosting a landmark exhibition on the director, featuring objects from his personal archives that will be displayed in Britain for the first time. Wes Anderson: The Archives will look back over his career, from his early experiments in the 90s to his most recent films, with over 600 objects, including storyboards, sketches, polaroids, puppets, models, costumes, notebooks, props and more, on show. They include a pink model of the Grand Budapest Hotel, the fur coat worn by Gwyneth Paltrow in the The Royal Tenenbaums, the vending machines from Asteroid City, and stop-motion sea creature puppets used in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The exhibition will also include a screening of Anderson’s first short film Bottle Rocket, as well as work-in-progress material and maquettes.
Marvel at the Diversity of the Natural World at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition
The 61st Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition is being hosted at the Natural History Museum. The display features awarded images selected around from over 60,000 entries and it showcases the beauty and diversity of the natural world. See everything from penguins journeying across an ice shelf to a lion facing down a snake in the Serengeti depicted in the photographs.
Get Up to Close to the Dinosaurs at This Immersive Exhibition
Travel back in time to the era of the dinosaurs with Prehistoric Planet: Discovering Dinosaurs at Lightroom in King’s Cross. The immersive exhibition. Produced in collaboration with Apple TV+, the experience features some of the best scenes from the first two seasons of Prehistoric Planet alongside new material, extended CGI scenes and bespoke illustrations. With Lightroom’s state-of-the-art 360-projections, you can see Ammonites, Mosasaurs, Adaltheriums and Tyrannosaurus Rexes like never before as you discover the role they played in shaping our world from 66 million years ago.
Our INSIDERS can get 25% off tickets to the exhibition here.
