Got no plans this weekend and need something to do? You can’t go wrong with a trip to one of London’s best galleries or museums. Here are all the best exhibitions on this weekend.
London is filled with great galleries and museums, with iconic institutions like the Science Museum, the V&A, Tate Modern, and the Royal Academy all calling the city home. That means on any given weekend, you’re spoiled for choice with interactive exhibitions, art installations, photography exhibitions and more all happening in the city.
If you like immersive exhibitions, there are some massive ones on this weekend – one is an Infinity Room from Yayoi Kusama at the Tate Modern, there’s one that’s all about inflatable art, and then there’s a bunch of famous artworks to get lost in at Frameless, the city’s first digital art gallery, and all of them are perfect selfie opportunities too. There are also a load of free exhibitions on in London that are perfect for the weekend. With no need to book tickets, you can decide to drop in last minute – very handy for when your plans get cancelled or the forecast is showing wall-to-wall rain.
Whether you’re looking for exhibitions today, exhibitions this weekend or you want to stay on top of all upcoming art exhibitions, we’ve got you covered.
If you’ve been dreaming of some winter sun but aren’t able to escape the city for warmer climes, fear not because the sun is now coming to you instead. Multidisciplinary artist Luke Jerram is bringing Helios, a seven-metre sculpture of the sun, to the Painted Hall in Greenwich’s Old Royal Naval College. Like Jerram’s other astronomical installations, Museum of the Moon, Mars and Gaia, Helios, named after the Greek and Roman sun god, is an incredibly detailed, internally lit model of the sun. At a scale of 1:200 million (that means every centimetre of the model represents 200km of the sun), it’s been made using photographs by NASA and Astrophotographer Dr Stuart Green and allows you to get up close to the surface of the star – yes this is one sun you can actually stare at. Accompanied by a surround sound composition created by Duncan Speakman and Sarah Anderson, Helios is an immersive experience that will allow you appreciate the power of the sun and the impact it has on human life and our mental wellbeing.
The Science Museum is exploring how the Palace of Versailles, famous for its architecture and history, was also a major site of scientific thinking with the Versailles: Science and Splendour exhibition. A range of objects, including timepieces, microscopes, sculptures, maps and Louis XV’s rhinoceros (which will be on display in the UK for the first time), will showcase the role science played at the palace in the 17th and 18th centuries, the figures associated with the pursuit of knowledge, and how science was used as a tool of power.
Over 130 works by ten key Brazilian artists, including Anita Malfatti, Tarsila do Amaral, Alfredo Volpi, Rubem Valentim and Flávio de Carvalho, from the 20th century are going on display at the Royal Academy for its Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism exhibition. By showing these works, many of which have never been exhibited in the UK, the RA is expanding the understanding of Brazilian Modernism and exploring how artists were combining different trends and traditions with their own Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian identities to create a new type of modern art.
Victoria Miro’s ninth solo exhibition of American artist Alice Neel’s works is focusing on her paintings of people from queer communities and those who were a part of their circle. At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World, curated by Hilton Als, showcases Neel’s commitment to depicting the human condition and people from all walks of life, and examines her role within the queer world of her time. The paintings on display include portraits of Neel’s friends as well as of politicians, writers, performers and artists, including Allan Ginsberg, Ed Koch, Frank O’Hara, and Annie Sprinkle.
At its Grosvenor Hill gallery, Gagosian is showcasing new pieces by Takashi Murakami with the Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami exhibition. The works, in which he reinterprets historical Japanese paintings by adding in his own iconography (like his Mr. DOB character), are a way for him to explore Japan’s ancient splendour and the way that it has been impacted by new aesthetics following the country’s opening to the West after the end of the Edo period in 1868.
Picasso may be best known for his paintings but he also produced thousands of prints throughout his career and the British Museum is showcasing them at the Picasso Printmaker exhibition. Around 100 prints will be on show, including some never displayed pieces from his ‘347 Suite’, produced at age 86, exploring his episodic engagement with printmaking over his life, his development of new printing methods, his partnerships with printers and publishers, and his relationships with his wives and lovers.
The 1980s was a period of significant social and political change in the UK and Tate Britain is exploring how it was documented with The 80s: Photographing Britain exhibition. Against a backdrop of the Thatcher government, race uprisings, AIDS, Section 28 and the miners’ strikes, photographers were using the medium as a method of political activism as well as artistic expression, to help enact social change and give a voice to underrepresented groups, including the South Asian diaspora and the LGBTQ+ community. Almost 350 images from more than 70 photographers and collectives will be on display.
Remember the world pre-internet? That’s what Tate Modern is taking us back in time with its blockbuster exhibition Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet. The show will showcase how artists used machines and algorithms to make art between the 1950s and the early 1990s, engaging with mathematical principles, early digital tech and new computing systems to produce optical, kinetic and sensory artworks. By displaying pieces made with vintage technology, the exhibition also provides a look back at how artists imagined the visual language of the future.
Drawing was a central part of the artistic transformation happening during the Renaissance and you can see how it evolved from workshop practice into an art form in its own right at The King’s Gallery. The Drawing the Italian Renaissance exhibition features the widest range of drawings from this period ever shown in the UK, with around 160 works produced in Italy between 1450 to 1600 from more than 80 artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, on display.
The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence at the V&A is the first major exhibition focused on the artistic achievements of the ‘Golden Age’ (c.1560 – 1660) of the Mughal court. The display will span the reign of three emperors – Akbar (r.1556-1605) Jahangir (r.1605-1627) and Shah Jahan (r.1628-1658) – and will feature over 200 objects (including many rarely seen pieces from the V&A collection), like paintings, illustrated manuscripts, carpets, textiles, vessels and precious metals. All of the items will showcase the quality of the work being produced by Iranian and Hindustani craftsmen in the imperial workshops of the Persian-speaking court, with the exhibition also exploring the impact that European art, introduced by Christian missionaries and merchants, had on the workshops.
The Royal Academy is bringing together three giants of the Renaissance for the Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael exhibition. The artists briefly crossed paths in Florence at the start of the 16th century, with some of the city’s most prominent artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, meeting in January 1504 to advise in a location for Michelangelo’s David. This show, featuring works from all three artists and some of the best examples of Italian Renaissance drawing, will explore the rivalry between Leonardo and Michelangelo and the impact that both artists had on Raphael.
The Gibson Garage, the iconic instrument brand’s biggest shop outside the USA, is hosting a new exhibition featuring never-before-seen images of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. A New World Blazing will showcase the work of renowned photographer Sharon Latham including footage from live performances and rare looks behind the scenes.
Food replicas or sampuru (samples), hyper realistic 3-D recreations of dishes, are commonly displayed outside restaurants in Japan, and now the craft is coming to London with the Looks Delicious! exhibition at Japan House London. The practice of producing food replicas started in the 20th century as a way of introducing Japanese people to new kinds of food, like yōshoku (Western food) and unfamiliar dishes. For this exhibition, food replica manufacturer Iwasaki has made 47 new pieces, one for every prefecture of Japan, including bitter melon stir fry from Okinawa to seafood from Hokkaido. You’ll also be able to learn about the history of food replica culture and the techniques used in the production process, as well as having a go at building your own bento box using a selection of replicas.
If you didn’t manage to bag tickets for the reunion tour, you can still get your Oasis fix by heading to the Town Hall Hotel in Bethnal Green. The hotel is hosting the Definitely Maybe: A View from Within exhibition, featuring work by photographer Michael Spencer Jones in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the band’s seminal album. Spencer Jones worked with the band for several years after first meeting them in 1993 and many pieces from that collaboration will be on show, including the iconic cover for Definitely Maybe and some previously unseen images of Oasis.
Tate Modern is opening a Leigh Bowery exhibition next year and clearly he’s a hot topic as the Fashion & Textile Museum is doing a show on Taboo, the legendary Leicester Square nightclub that he opened in 1985. Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London showcases the creative scene that converged around the nightclub, which had a ‘dress as though your life depends on it, or don’t bother’ dress code and was known for hedonistic excess. Garments and accessories from Bowery, Boy George, Pam Hogg, John Galliano, Michael Clark, Stephen Linard, BodyMap and more will be on display alongside photography, film and artworks.
The next immersive exhibition to take up residence inside Lightroom will be Vogue: Inventing the Runway, which’ll explore the history of the fashion runway show, from the couture salon presentations of the early 20th century to the large-scale spectacles of today. Blending original animation, immersive sound design, popular and classical music, Vogue’s extensive archive, rare materials from fashion houses, and testimonies from editors, models and designers, the exhibition will take you backstage and front row to showcase how runways revolutionised the way we experience fashion, evolving from an opportunity to see clothes in motion to global cultural events. The likes of Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Burberry, Chanel, Chloé, Christian Dior, Comme des Garçons, Coperni, Courrèges, Dolce & Gabbana, Dries Van Noten, Fendi, Givenchy, Gucci, Jacquemus, Jean Paul Gaultier, Junya Watanabe, JW Anderson, Louis Vuitton, Maison Margiela, Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu, Moschino, Prada, Rick Owens, Schiaparelli, Stella McCartney, Thierry Mugler, Thom Browne, Versace, Vivienne Westwood, and Yohji Yamamoto will all be featured, giving you the chance to get up close to these designers, their identities and their visions in an unprecedented way.
LA-based Lauren Halsey is taking over Serpentine South in what will be her first solo exhibition in the UK. Halsey is known for her maximalist work blends influences like funk, architecture and iconography of ancient African cultures and acts as creative resistance to the gentrification of South Central LA. With emajendat she’ll be transforming the Serpentine South galleries into an immersive maximalist ‘funk garden’ with a live water feature, found objects, sculpture, plants and wallpaper, alongside her first moving image work.
More than six decades after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains one of the influential figures in film, fashion and pop culture – numerous movies have been made about her life, her actual dresses have been worn on the red carpet, and now an exhibition dedicated to her is coming to London. MARILYN – The Exhibition will be the first of its kind in the UK and will feature 250 objects from Ted Stampfer’s collection (he’s the world’s largest collector of Marilyn Monroe’s historical objects of this kind), including love letters, movie props, scripts, childhood drawings, robes, family photos, shoes, outfits, accessories, make-up, memorabilia from her film production ventures in London in 1956 and her meeting with the Queen, and more. The show is promising unprecedented insight into the world of Marilyn Monroe, from her beginnings as Norma Jean Baker to her transformation into a cultural icon
The World of Tim Burton at the Design Museum will not only explore the filmmaker and animator’s legendary on-screen career, but also his work as an illustrator, painter, photographer and author. Organised by Jenny He (who recently curated the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to ‘Pope of Trash’ John Waters at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles), the show comprises pieces from Burton’s personal archive that span the artist’s creative journey from childhood to the present day. Expect to see over 600 items, including drawings, paintings, photographs, sketchbooks, props, sculptural installations, storyboards, set designs, costumes (including 1992’s Catwoman suit and the first ever public display of the Rave’N dance dress worn by Jenna Ortega in Wednesday) and more that encapsulate Burton’s distinct style.
MARY MARY presented with theCOLAB at the Artist’s Garden, on a roof terrace on top of Temple tube station, is the world’s first sculpture garden featuring the work of women artists. Pieces by Rong Bao, Candida Powell–Williams, Alice Wilson, Lucy Gregory, L R Vandy, Olivia Bax, Frances Richardson, Holly Stevenson and Virginia Overton. The show represents a reclamation of space by women artists, both physically and conceptually, whose representation in galleries and collections is below 30%.
Each year the Turner Prize is given to a British artist who has created an outstanding exhibition or presentation of their work, and for 2024 the shortlisted artists are Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur and Delaine Le Bas. You can see their work, which includes everything from figurative portraits of Black men and women to immersive environments filled with fabric and sculpture, at Tate Britain, with the winner being announced on 3rd December.
The Wellcome Collection is exploring the experiences of physical work and the impact it has on people’s health in the major free exhibition Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights. Focusing on three areas of work – the Plantation, the Street and the Domestic Space – the show will draw connections between undervalued labour, the people who undertake it and the places where it happens, and examine the way that stigmatised work practices like sex work, prison labour and street vending continue to reinforce health and other societal inequalities. Over 100 objects from around the world will be on display, including artefacts from the Wellcome’s collection as well as contemporary artworks from the likes of Lubaina Himid, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Charmaine Watkiss, Forensic Architecture, Adelita Husni-Bey and Louise Bourgeois, plus new commissions from Moi Tran and Lindsey Mendick.
The British Museum is hosting a major exhibition that will expand the concept of the Silk Road beyond a trade route between East and West. Silk Roads will show how there were multiple overlapping networks linking different communities across Asia, Africa and Europe, including from Japan to Britain and Scandinavia to Madagascar. The exhibition, split into five different geographical zones, will feature over 300 objects, like Indian garnets found in Suffolk, wall paintings from Uzbekistan, and the oldest group of chess pieces ever found, and will explore how the movement of people and objects along these routes shaped cultures and histories.
We’ve already got countless true crime podcasts and docs available to us, and now the genre is taking on a new format. Serial Killer: The Exhibition at The Vaults seeks to explore the motivation behind some of history’s most notorious killers and also showcase how investigative techniques and criminal profiling have evolved over the years. Over 1000 artefacts, including a letter by Ted Bundy and a glasses worn by Jeffery Dahmer, along with crime scene recreations and audio clips are featured in the exhibition, which also promises to honour the memory of the victims of said killers. Can an exhibition centred around the killers really do that? The jury is still out.
LA-based artist Maggie West is showcasing her style of time-lapse photography and colouration effects at Outernet, presenting a series of works showing the detail of the natural world across The Now Building, Now Trending and Now Arcade. The first section, Terra, covers a night on Earth across different climates, from an arid desert to a tropical rainforest. Pools moves from giant landscapes to grains of sand, and the final section, Ultraviolet, illuminates the way plants absorb water by using ultraviolet light and fluorescent ink. The show is accompanied by a dreamlike score by LA-based composer Matt Nordstrom.
You’re locked in every Grand Prix weekend, you’ve binged Drive to Survive and now you need a new way to feed your F1 obsession – we’ve got just the thing, the Formula 1 Exhibition. Set across six rooms and created with contributions from drivers, teams and F1 experts, the exhibition will immerse you in the past, present and future of Formula 1. Cars and artefacts, like Lewis Hamilton’s kart and the burnt-out chassis of Romain Grosjean’s HAAS following his Bahrain crash in 2020, will be on show alongside designs, imagery, films and more. You’ll be able to explore the role of the British Grand Prix in the history of racing, go inside a Formula 1 factory, see the innovations that have been made in the sport, get insights into cutting-edge tech from Pirelli, learn the stories of iconic drivers and relive some of of the greatest moments in F1 history at the Pit Wall. You’ll even be able to feel what it’s like driving an F1 car around Silverstone thanks to state-of-the-art racing simulators.
Each year, the City of London works with artists and partners to curate a new trail of artworks that forms the annual sculpture park, Sculpture in the City. This summer marks the 13th edition of the sculpture park and features the work of 17 world-class artists and spans the Square Mile. New pieces, like an interactive kissing gate from Maya Rose Edwards, a gilded paper bag from Richard Mackness and found objects covered in mosaics from Clare Burnett, will be joining works retained from previous editions of the trail including Jesse Pollock’s striking life-sized model of a traditional grain store, and Oliver Bragg’s bench plaque that reads “In loving memory of a loving memory”. The nature of the sculpture park means that it’s 100% free and open 24/7, so you can stroll up and view the art any time you like.
After the cultural phenomenon that was the Barbie movie – a release that had the whole world talking – the Design Museum is hosting a major retrospective on everyone’s favourite doll. Three years in the making, the exhibition will retrace nearly seven decades of history to tell the story of the iconic brand, with a particular focus on its design, in celebration of its 65th birthday. The show is being presented in collaboration with Mattel Inc. which has granted the Museum special access to extensive Barbie archives, meaning that there’ll be a lot of rare and unique items on display. These will appear alongside other key loans and acquisitions, all of which will come together to explore the story of Barbie, as well as fashion, architecture, furniture and vehicle design. A rare first edition Barbie from 1959 will feature among the dolls on display, as well as a one-of-a-kind Talking Barbie prototype and the best-selling Totally Hair Barbie
Naomi Campbell has had an unrivalled career that’s spanned almost four decades and now the V&A is honouring that with an entire exhibition dedicated to the supermodel. The show, titled NAOMI In Fashion, has been produced in collaboration with Campbell and will focus on foregrounding her voice and perspective. Campbell has granted the V&A access to her extensive collection of haute couture and leading ready-to-wear ensembles. These will be displayed alongside loans from designer archives as well as objects from the V&A’s own collection. In total, there’ll be around 100 looks from the likes of Alexander McQueen, Azzedine Alaïa, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Gianni and Donatella Versace, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Karl Lagerfeld, Kenneth Ize, Valentino, Virgil Abloh, Vivienne Westwood, Yves Saint Laurent and many others. The exhibition will also feature a fashion photography installation curated by Edward Enninful OBE and recognise Campbell’s mentors who inspired her to fight social injustice, champion diversity and support emerging creatives.
Tate Modern is hosting an exhibition on Anthony McCall where you’ll be able to step inside his immersive light sculptures. McCall is known for his work that blurs the boundaries between film, sculpture and performance, and the Solid Light exhibition gives you a chance to experience his light installations. Beams of light are projected through a thin mist, which shift and move as people pass through the space, creating new perspectives for the viewer.
After the pandemic forced this exhibition on visual activist Zanele Muholi – the first major one in the UK – to close early, Tate Modern is staging it once again. The non-binary photographer has been documenting the lives of the Black LGBTQ+ communities in South Africa for twenty years, capturing their love, empowerment and strength alongside the trauma they have often endured. The exhibition includes over 260 of Muholi’s photographs from across their career, including the self-portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama that explores themes of labour, sexual politics and racism. Works featured in the original 2020-2021 exhibition have been joined by new pieces produced by Muholi since then.
The London Transport Museum is opening its Global Poster Gallery, its first permanent gallery dedicated to the history of poster art and design, with the How to Make a Poster exhibition. The inaugural display will explore poster commissioning and creativity in the pre-digital age, with more than 110 pieces on show. The Underground’s first ever pictorial poster, John Hassall’s 1908 work ‘No need to ask a p’liceman’ by John Hassall alongside posters by designers and artists like Edward McKnight Kauffer, Man Ray, Hans Unger, Abram Games, Tom Eckersley, Paul Catherall, and Dora M Batty. The various techniques used in poster production will also be showcased in the exhibition as well as the way the posters were displayed and the reception they received from both London travellers and the art world.
Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience has been a hit in the States and in Europe and now it has come to Spitalfields. The exhibition sees more than 300 of Van Gogh’s works projected across a floor-to-ceiling two-storey space so you’ll be able to soak up the art from all angles. There’s also a drawing studio and a VR experience that takes you through a day in the life of the artist and explores the inspiration behind some of his most iconic paintings.
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25th January – 25th March 2025
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