Aldgate EastBetween 2006 and 2016 over half of London’s LGBTQ+ venues closed and this exhibition looks at how redevelopement is changing the queer scene in London. Featuring archival material as well as original works from the likes of Tom Burr, Prem Sahib, Ralph Dunn, Evan Ifekoya and Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, the show looks over the history of London’s queer spaces, explore what makes a queer space and how these places relate to the LGBTQ+ community.
2nd April - 25th August 2019
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
Charing Cross 
Charing CrossThe National Portrait Gallery is the host of this major Martin Parr exhibition. Parr is one of the most celebrated photographers in the country and the show brings together some of his best known work as well as pieces that have never been exhibited before. Only Human: Martin Parr focuses on people, including portraits of people from all over the world as well as images that tackle Britishness and identity today.
7th March - 27th May 2019
Kensington High StreetThis exhibition at Japan House explores the work of the Yoshioka Dyeing Workshop in Kyoto and how natural dyeing techniques are used to express kasane – the language of Japanese colour combinations. The Japanese have a strong appreciation of colour, nature and the changing of the seasons and the Living Colours display showcases the way that the layering of colours can be used to communicate.
5th April - 19th May 2019
Holborn Russell SquareHe’s most famous for The Scream but this exhibition at the British Museum delves deeper into the life and work of Edvard Munch, known as Norway’s answer to Vincent van Gogh. In the largest show of his prints in the UK for 45 years, you’ll be able to discover how Munch drew inspiration from his bohemian travels across Europe, how he mastered printmaking and how he became on the first proper ‘modern’ artists.
11th April - 21st July 2019
Kensington OlympiaThe Design Museum is hosting Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition, which has been touring the world and it’s jam-packed with archive pieces, original props and costumes, rare photographs, and some objects that have never been on display in the UK before. You can relive iconic scenes from the likes of A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut, and the exhibition also explores Kubrick’s fascination with design and his relationship with England as a filming location – the Vietnam battlefields for Full Metal Jacket, the orbiting space station for 2001: A Space Odyssey and the War Room in Dr Strangelove were all created here.
26th April - 15th September 2019
Sloane SquareStep inside a kaleidoscope at this immersive exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery. Featuring works by nine artists, including the Fata Morgana installation by Laura Buckley (where the mirrored walls reflect and distort the audio and visual effects in the piece), the Kaleidscope exhibition takes the cheap children’s toy up a couple of notches.
15th March - 5th May 2019
Ealing Broadway Ealing BroadwaySir John Soane’s Pitzhanger Manor has recently been restored and for the inaugural exhibition, the gallery has gone all out by hosting a series of sculptures by Anish Kapoor, some of which have never been seen in Britain before. With their use of mirrors and light, the sculptures are designed to challenge the idea of form and space by disorienting the viewer and they celebrate the architecture of the space in a new way.
Until 18th August 2019
Piccadilly Circus Green ParkThe Prude, the first exhibition Anthea Hamilton has held at Thomas Dane Gallery, is an immersive installation made up of objects, sculpture and images with four interiors featuring digitally printed wallpapers and textile clad walls. She also tackles scale with large soft sculptures of moths and butterflies as well as stone and marble wavy boots.
8th March - 18th May 2019
PimlicoThis exhibition at Tate Britain will be the largest display of Van Gogh’s paintings in the UK for almost ten years, and it’ll explore his relationship with Britain and the art he was inspired by here. As well as including some of his most famous works, like Shoes, Starry Night on the Rhône and Sunflowers, the exhibition will also feature works by British artists who were influenced by Van Gogh.
27th March - 11th August 2019
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 liver performances, to explore.
30th March 2019 - 19th January 2020
PimlicoLegendary war photographer Don McCullin is the subject of this major retrospective at Tate Britain. The exhibition features over 250 photographs, all printed by McCullin in his own darkroom, and spans both the work he did abroad in places like Vietnam, Cyprus, Germany and Syria, and photos taken of working class life in the UK.
5th February - 6th May 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
Embankment Waterloo WaterlooPhotographs from the early part of Diane Arbus’ career (1956 – 1962) are being exhibited at the Hayward Gallery. It’ll be the first solo show of her work in the country for twelve years, with many of the images having never been shown in Europe before. Over 100 photos, many of which feature eccentrics, circus performers, female impersonators and outsiders, will be on display, showcasing the perspective that she became rightly celebrated for.
13th February - 6th May 2019
South KensingtonChristian Dior: Designer of Dreams, based on the major Paris exhibition of the same name, will be the largest exhibition on Dior ever held in the UK. The exhibition will cover 1947 to the present day, with over 500 objects going on display. As well as 200 rare haute couture pieces, including the Dior dress that Princess Margaret wore on her 21st birthday, there’ll be photos, make-up, perfume, magazines and Dior’s personal possessions to peek at, and the exhibition will trace the evolution of the house through the artistic directors that have followed Dior, from Yves Saint Laurent to John Galliano to Maria Grazia Chiuri.
2nd February - 1st September 2019
Oxford CircusSketch is hosting an exhibition of photographs, films and wallpaper designs by Marcus Tomlinson spanning thirty years of his career. His highly-stylised work, including fashion photographs featuring the effects of movement and wallpapers from the Dance series where still sequences are used to create the effect of a dancing repeat, will be on display.
21st March - 10th May 2019
Russell Square Goodge StreetThe UK’s first major exhibition of postcard art is being held at the British Museum. The World Exists To Be Put On A Postcard: Artists’ Postcards From 1960 To Now is made up of over a 1000 donated pieces from curate Jeremy Cooper, and it features works from Andy Warhol, Gilbert & George, Yoko Ono, Rachel Whitehead and Guerrilla Girls, many on show for the first time.
7th February - 4th August 2019
Piccadilly Circus Oxford CircusThough her seven-decade career as an artist features work across a range of media, including textiles, photography, film and performance, this exhibition at Hauser & Wirth features Geta Brătescu’s work from the past decade, a time where she focused on working with the line. The pieces on show reflect the different ways she used the line to create a flow of shapes, forms and silhouettes.
©Geta Brătescu. Courtesy the artist, Ivan Gallery, Bucharest and Hauser & Wirth
27th February - 27th April 2019
Mornington CrescentThis major exhibition at Jewish Museum London explores the role of money in Jewish life and tackles the myths surrounding the association of Jews with money, from biblical times up to the 21st century. A range of manuscripts, prints, ceremonial objects, literature, film and art will be on display, including Rembrandt’s Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver, which is rarely seen in the UK, and a new video piece from Jeremy Deller.
19th March - 7th July 2019
Blackfriars BlackfriarsThe Tate Modern is celebrating the work of irreverent artist Franz West with this exhibition of his sculptures, collages and large-scale works. Replicas of his papier-mâché Passstücke, which are designed to picked up and moved around, will be on display, as will his pieces that incorporate everyday objects and the large absurd sculptures he created for public spaces in the later stage of his life.
20th February - 2nd June 2019
Blackfriars Blackfriars SouthwarkThe Tate Modern is hosting the first major Dorothea Tanning exhibition for 25 years. The show features 100 works from her remarkable seventy year career, including her early surrealist paintings like Birthday and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, her ballet costume designs, her fabric sculptures and the room-sized installation Chambre 202, Hotel du Pavot.
27th February - 9th June 2019
TempleA new photography exhibition exploring the feeling of “being lost in translation” by two most acclaimed fashion photographers Hanna Moon and Joyce Ng is coming to Somerset House. Driven by the feelings of being immigrants in London, the work showcased by the two artists will celebrate the vitality of international perspectives within our multi-cultural society, challenging the concept of ‘otherness’ and the power fashion photography holds in shifting our perceptions of beauty, style and taste.
25th January - 28th April 2019
Waterloo WaterlooA huge exhibition dedicated to Nelson Mandela is having its world premiere in London at 26 Leake Street. Timed to coincide with the centenary year of his birth and the fifth year since his passing, Mandela: The Official Exhibition will cover the life and legacy of the icon, from his early years in Mvezo to his struggle against oppression to his time as president of South Africa. Many unseen artefacts will be on display including pieces that have never left South Africa before, so this a chance to get up close and personal to Mandela like never before.
8th February – 2nd June 2019
Oxford CircusFashion Space Gallery is hosting Mundo Latinx, an exhibition curated by White Lines Projects that showcases the diversity of Latin American identity. With pieces from a range of disciplines, including film, illustration, photography and textile design, the show will challenge the stereotypical portrayals of Latin American culture and explore the ideas of identity, politics and power.
8th February - 4th May 2019
Blackfriars Blackfriars Mansion HouseTo coincide with the anniversary of the end of WWI, the Tate is hosting a year-long (and FREE) exhibition of art from Weimar Germany, where expressionism gave way to more unsettling and emotional imagery. Works by the likes of Otto Dix, George Grosz, Albert Birkle and Jeanne Mammen will be on display and a lot of the pieces included aren’t normally on public display so it’s one not to miss…luckily you’ve got plenty of time to see it.
30th July 2018 - 14th July 2019
Blackfriars Blackfriars Mansion HouseThis year the Artist Rooms at the Tate are dedicated to Jenny Holzer, with works from across her 40-year career on display. She’s known for her text-based works and pieces from her Truisms and Diagrams series as well as her Redaction Paintings and LED installations. A painting created with NY graffiti artist Lady Pink will also be on display for the first time in the UK. Entry to the rooms is free and it’s gonna be open for a year, so it’s defo one to pop into next time your in the Tate.
23rd July 2018 - summer 2019
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.
Opens 6th October 2018
