BarbicanCabarets and clubs have featured widely in modern art and this major exhibition at the Barbican, spanning the 1880s to the 1960s, celebrates the spaces where artists pushed the boundaries. Over 200 pieces, many of which are rarely shown in the UK, are on display featuring Cabaret Fledermaus, the Berlin clubs of Weimar Germany, jazz clubs in Harlem, Mbari clubs in 1960s Nigeria and more, and there are also life-size recreations of spaces, complete with live performances, to explore.
4th October 2019 - 19th January 2020
Blackfriars 
BlackfriarsThe Tate Modern is hosting a major exhibition on Nam June Paik, the innovative artist known for his pioneering use of TV and video. Over 200 of his pieces from his 50 year career will be on show, including robots made from old television screens and room-sized installations like Sistine Chapel 1993. The exhibition will also explore his collaborative, cross-discipline works with the likes of cellist Charlotte Moorman, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Joseph Beuys.
17th October 2019 - 9th February 2020
Oxford CircusThe Photographers’ Gallery is exploring the history of food photography with its major Feast For The Eyes exhibition. The show is divided into three themes – Still Life, Around The Table and Playing With Food – and features everything from fine-art to commercial photography from the likes of Nobuyoshi Araki, Nan Goldin, Martin Parr, Man Ray, Cindy Sherman, Wolfgang Tillmans and Weegee.
18th October 2019 - 9th February 2020
Temple24/7 at Somerset House is a major exhibition exploring the non-stop nature of our modern lives – we’re on screens more, sleeping less and our connection to the people and the world around us is being disrupted. A range of contemporary designers have pieces on display, including Marcus Coates, Mat Collishaw, Harun Farocki, Pierre Huyghe, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Kelly Richardson, Pilvi Takala and Addie Wagenknecht. The exhibition features a meditative isolation chamber from Tatsuo Miyajima, an immersive orchestration of a machine-generated dawn chorus from Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, and I heard there was a secret chord from Daily tous les jours’, where people join listeners around the world to hum the chorus of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.
31st October 2019 - 23rd February 2020
South KensingtonThe 55th Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition is being hosted at the Natural History Museum. The display features awarded images selected from almost 50,000 entries and it showcases the beauty and diversity of the natural world, with everything from Canadian racoons to Japanese long-tailed tits to African cheetahs depicted in the photographs.
18th October 2019 - 31st May 2020
Covent GardenIf you’ve not gone on one of the Hidden London tours of abandoned tube stations, you can now experience it above ground at the Hidden London exhibition at the London Transport Museum. The exhibition will feature the largest number of archive photos, film posters, objects, tiles and diagrams from disused stations in one location, and there’ll also be immersive elements like a recreation of Churchill’s dining room at Down Street station and the ticket office from Aldwych station, complete with original 1930s ticket booth and tiles.
11th October 2019 - January 2021
High Street Kensington 
Kensington OlympiaYou’ve seen The Martian, now experience life on the red planet for yourself at the Design Museum with its exhibition Moving to Mars. The exhibition will feature a full-scale Mars home and around 200 other objects including NASA’s 3D-Printed Mars Habitat Challenge winners AI SpaceFactory, robotic builders by Foster & Partners, the first spacesuit designed for the Martian surface, Christopher Raeburn’s new Mars-inspired collection and more.
18th October 2019 - 23rd February 2020
Piccadilly CircusThis major Anthony Gormley exhibition at the Royal Academy will feature a mix of works from his 45-year career as well as brand new installations made for the gallery. The show will explore his use of organic and industrial materials like iron, steel, seawater and clay. It’s designed to make the visitors aware of their own bodies through a series of experiential installations, including Clearing VII, made from kilometres of coiled metal that you have to find a path through, and Lost Horizon I, made from life-size figures set on the walls, floor and ceiling.
21st September - 3rd December 2019
PimlicoTurner Prize-winning artist Mark Leckey is taking over Tate Britain with a new large-scale installation exhibition. Featuring new work, including a life-size replica of a bridge on the M53 in the Wirral and an audio play inspired by foklore and his pre-teen experiences, as well as his seminal pieces Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore 1990 and Dream English Kid 1964–1999 AD 2015, the show will be an atmospheric audio-visual experience.
24th September 2019 - 5th January 2020
Oxford CircusExplore Soho’s diverse culture and history at a time when the area itself is being radically transformed at the Shot in Soho exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery. The show features work from William Klein, Anders Petersen, Corinne Day, Kelvin Brodie, Clancy Gebler Davies and John Goldblatt, drawing on the area’s controversy, eccentricity and unpredictability.
18th October 2019 - 9th February 2020
Bond Street Green ParkBASTIAN is showing five of Joseph Beuys’ sculptures from the 1950s that have not been exhibited in the UK before. Presented alongside documentary photographs, the exhibition is a rare chance to see some of his early works and understand how he used mythical references to explore spiritualism in modern life.
20th September – 16th November 2019
PimlicoTate Britain is hosting the largest exhibition of William Blake’s work for nearly two decades, featuring over 300 original pieces. The printmaker, painter and poet is responsible for some of the most iconic works in British art and this show displays his art in the way it was meant to be seen – as well as an immersive recreation of the room he first showed his art in 1809, there’ll also be the large-scale displays he dreamed of, made possible using digital technology.
11th September 2019 - 2nd February 2020
South KensingtonThe V&A is hosting a big solo exhibition of British fashion photographer Tim Walker. Not only will Walker be showing new photographs, inspired by the collections housed at the V&A, but the exhibition will also explore the impact of his collaborators, models, designers and muses on his images. Walker is known for his inventive and fantastical photographs – he shot the 2018 Alice in Wonderland-inspired Pirelli Calendar – so this is sure to be a knockout show.
21st September 2019 - 8th March 2020
Green Park Piccadilly CircusDamien Hirst’s Mandalas, his first major solo show in London in seven years, is being hosted at White Cube Mason’s Yard. A continuation of the themes presented in his Kaleidoscope series, the exhibition features paintings from his Mandalas series, for which he has taken inspiration from the symbolic representation of the universe.
20th September - 2nd November 2019
Blackfriars BlackfriarsHe’s brought the sun and the ice to the Tate Modern and now Olafur Eliasson is back at the gallery with a major exhibition. Over 30 works will be on display, covering a key theme or topic Eliasson has explored through his career, including perception, movement, architecture and the environment. As well as the installations on show inside the gallery, there’ll be a work displayed outside on the terrace, and the Studio Olafur Eliasson team will also create a special menu for the Terrace Bar based on the organic, vegetarian and locally sourced food they eat in the Berlin studio.
11th July 2019 - 5th January 2020
Piccadilly Circus Green ParkGet a glimpse behind the scenes of some of your fave TV shows and films with this exhibition of costumes, models, scripts and more at BAFTA. Behind The Screens will feature that pink Molly Goddard dress worn by Villanelle in Killing Eve, hair and make-up design for The Favourite and research and prep that Chiwetel Ejiofor undertook for 12 Years A Slave, as well as celebration of The Clangers to coincide with the show’s 50th anniversary. The exhibition will be running for two years and will be regularly updated with new pieces.
Opens 17th September 2019
Forest Hill Forest HillA coral reef, an ancient Egyptian pyramid, the International Space Station an two Horniman icons are just some of the 50 models created entirely out of half a million LEGO at the Brick Wonders exhibition at the Horniman Museum.
Until 27th October 2019
South KensingtonLuke Jerram’s touring artwork Museum of the Moon, a six-metre model featuring incredibly detailed NASA imagery of the moon with ambient moonlight and soundscape, is residing in the Natural History Museum to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Credit: Trustees of the Natural History Museum/ Dare & Hier Media
17th May - 1st January 2020
South KensingtonIt’s a celebration of the sixties at the V&A as the museum hosts a major retrospective of revolutionary fashion designer Mary Quant. Credited with popularising the mini skirt, Mary Quant changed the face of the British high street. Over 200 garments and accessories, including unseen pieces from her personal archive as well as original items loaned from the public will be on display.
6th April 2019 - 16th February 2020
Piccadilly CircusThe famous Body Worlds exhibition, created by Dr Gunther von Hagens and featuring real body parts preserved with plastination, is on display in Piccadilly. The 200 exhibits cover the reproductive, nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory, locomotive and metabolic systems in an insane amount of detail, so if you want to get a true insight into what happens inside the human body, this is place to come.
South KensingtonFOOD: Bigger than the Plate at the V&A explores how food goes from farm to table, how we experience and enjoy it, and how we can help create a more sustainable food future. The exhibition features over 70 projects, split into four sections – Compost, Farming, Trading and Eating – with exhibits including an urban mushroom farm using coffee grounds from the museum cafe to grow mushrooms, which’ll then be served on the menu; cheese made from human bacteria; and a new range of sausage designs to make eating protein more sustainable. As well as brand new installations, the show will also feature historic prints, ceramics and illustrations from the museum’s collection.
18th May - 20th October 2019
