It’s safe to say we’re in the swing of spring and for a real full-on art attack, London has got you well and truly covered. Below, we’ve rounded up all the current and upcoming art exhibitions from London’s major galleries and museums, from the Tate Britain and Tate Modern to Somerset House, the V&A and the National Gallery.
These art exhibitions in London encompass everything from classic works to cutting-edge modern pieces, but all offer something for the curious. Prices quoted are generally for adults in advance. On-the-day, walk-up tickets will be a few pounds more, while students and other concessionary fares may be slightly less. There are even a fair few free art exhibitions for the penny-pinchers among you here – winner, winner!
1. Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Rooms, Tate Modern
The mesmerising mirrored rooms of Yayoi Kusama delight whenever and wherever they appear, and that includes Tate Modern, where a pair of delightfully trippy installations have appeared. The first of these, named ‘Filled with the Brilliance of Life’, has spent plenty of time at Tate Modern, back when the gallery hosted a Kusama retrospective in 2012, and is one of the artist’s largest Infinity Rooms.
The other, entitled ‘Chandelier of Grief’, depicts a Swarovski-encrusted chandelier inside a mirrored room, which gives the impression of endless chandeliers stretching around you, as if one were in the most gloriously OTT dining room imaginable.
📍 Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG.
🚇 Nearest station is Blackfriars.
🎟️ Until April 28 2024. Price £10. More info here.
2. Delight: Media Art Exhibition, Borough Yards
As if Borough Yards wasn’t enough of a vibrant destination already, the district is now home to Delight – ‘an innovative media art exhibition that provides a fresh and creative interpretation of urban city life‘. You can discover 25 immersive and interactive art installations thanks to the use of cutting-edge technology. Visuals, sounds, lighting, and more are coming together to capture the realities of cities worldwide, including reflections on Seoul’s culture and people. Cop your tickets here.
📍 Borough Yards, London
🚇 Nearest stations are London Bridge, Borough, and Southwark
🎟️ Until April 30 2024. From £12.30. More info here.
3. The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks, Lightroom
Ever wanted to go to space with the legendary, two-time Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks? Well, now you can with this fantastic new exhibition, which ‘offers a unique new perspective on humankind’s past and future voyages to the moon‘. Hanks narrates and provides an insight into all the different Apollo missions in intimate detail. Of course, this being Lightroom in King’s Cross, you can also expect some pretty epic projections and installations! Pop this on your list of art exhibitions that you can’t miss.
📍 Lightroom, 12 Lewis Cubitt Square, London, N1C 4DY.
🚇 Nearest station is Kings Cross St Pancras.
🎟️ Until October 13 2024. Price £25. More info here.
4. Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, Commercial 106
One of the most popular art exhibitions of the year has to be this incredible immersive installation dedicated to Vincent Van Gogh, where you can literally step into his paintings.
Treat yourself to this all-encompassing, 360-degree display of the Dutchman’s work – which takes over all your surroundings with the use of several dozen projectors and hyper-realistic VR headsets. Tickets for this exhibition have been flying out faster than any swish of any paintbrush could manage, so grab yours here before they’re gone.
📍 Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, 106 Commercial Street, London, E1 6LZ.
🚇 Nearest stations are Liverpool Street and Aldgate East.
🎟️ Until April 14 2024. Price from £18. More info here.
5. Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads, The Courtauld Gallery
This is the first time Auerbach’s extraordinary post-war drawings, made in the 1950s and early 1960s, have been brought together in a comprehensive collection. They will be shown together with a selection of paintings he made of the same sitters; for him, painting and drawing have always been deeply entwined. The markings of this vigorous process are evident in the finished drawings which can be seen to be richly textured and layered. The characters of the drawings represent the time as people were remaking their lives after the destruction caused by the war.
📍Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN.
🚇 Nearest station is Temple.
🎟️ Until May 27 2024. Price from £14. More info here.
6. Quentin Blake: The QB Papers, Cromwell Place
Following Blake’s first exhibition in decades back in January, the world-renowned illustrator is back again with another exhibition. With the huge popularity of ‘Quentin Blake NOW’, it’s clear that the public has missed the artist’s work, and there’s clearly a treasure trove of material to display! ‘Quentin Blake: The QB Papers’ brings never-before-seen artworks to Cromwell Place, which range in tone, content, and technique. Organised under a series of tongue-in-cheek titles (such as ‘The Alternative Sports Olympics’), the pieces all come from a productive period for Blake between 2017 and 2019. As a plus, all pieces are available for purchase – so if you take a fancy, take it home with you!
📍 4 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, SW7 2JE.
🚇 Nearest station is South Kensington.
🎟️ Until April 28. Free! More info here.
7. Capturing The Moment, Tate Modern
The arrival of photography changed the course of painting forever. In this unique exhibition, visitors can explore the dynamic relationship between the two mediums through some of the most iconic artworks of recent times. From the expressive paintings of Pablo Picasso and Paula Rego, to striking photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto and Jeff Wall, you’ll see how these two distinct mediums have shaped each other over time.
📍 Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG.
🚇 Nearest station is Blackfriars.
🎟️ Until April 28 2024. From £20. More info here.
8. Nick Waplinton’s Living Room, Hamiltons Gallery
Debuting his first gallery exhibition at Hamiltons, Nick Waplington is set to showcase a set of unseen images and new works from his iconic series ‘Living Room’ in 1991. Originally published in 1991, the book featured 59 photographs of the lives of Nick’s friends, families, neighbours on the Broxtowe housing estate in Nottingham, where Waplington spent many years creating thousands of photographs. With the new work following the same sequence of landscape and portrait images – there will be a new set of 59 unseen photos replacing the original taken from the same roll of film. His work sheds light on a time of Thatcher’s Britain – demonstrating joy, sadness, mundane life and everything in between.
📍 Hamiltons Gallery, 13 Carlos Place, W1K 2EU.
🚇 Nearest station is Bond Street.
🎟️ Until May 25 2024. Free. More info here.
9. And the Winner is…, 45 Park Lane
To celebrate awards season, iconic celebrity photographer Andy Gotts has curated a new exhibition exclusively for 45 Park Lane. Drawn from across 30 years of his work, these are his favourite portraits of accolade-winning actors Robert Di Niro, Rami Malek, Olivia Coleman… you name it.
📍 45 Park Lane, 45 Park Lane, London W1K 1PN.
🚇 Nearest station is Green Park.
🎟️ Until May 16 2024. More info here.
10. Mantegna: The Triumphs of Caesar, National Gallery
Considered to be among the finest achievements in Italian Renaissance art, a total of nine exquisite canvases were painted by legendary artist Andrea Mantegna in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. For the first time ever, six of them are leaving their Royal palace abode, the UNESCO-listed Hampton Court, while the Mantegna Gallery is under renovations. This means dear reader that you can get to see them with zone one – in none other than the National Gallery we might add – plus, it’s free to enter! Win, win.
📍 The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London, WC2N 5DN.
🚇 Nearest station is Charing Cross.
🎟️ Until 2026. Free! More info here.
11. Zineb Sedira: ‘Dreams Have No Titles,’ Whitechapel Gallery
Zineb Sedira’s Dreams Have No Titles addresses the turning point in the history of cultural and avant-garde film production in the ’60s and ’70s in countries such as France, Italy and Algeria. Sedira blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality with the use of cinema and performance to foreground the importance of “collective shared experiences” while also aiming to raise a word of caution about “the failure of the emancipatory dream,” a promise which for many people remains an unfulfilled dream. Originally a film, the Gallery space will be turned into a series of film sets.
📍 Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX.
🚇 Nearest station is Aldgate East.
🎟️ Until May 12 2024. Price £12.50. More info here.
12. Art Of The Brick, Boiler Room
Art of the Brick is a world-travelling exhibition of over 150 LEGO® artworks, currently located at the Boiler House (the irony of a LEGO® exhibition on Brick Lane was not lost). “Fortunately, there are no rules in art!” says Nathan Sawaya, the artist behind Art of the Brick. Here, this is exactly the kind of sculpture you’ll see, and it is incredibly impressive. The artworks span original works – fun pieces, and thought-provoking comments on Nathan’s life – as well as recreations of some of the world’s most iconic art, each in themed galleries. Expect stunning reimagined versions of some of the world’s most iconic masterpieces such as Michelangelo’s David to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa – not to forget the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton.
📍 The Boiler House, 152 Brick Lane, London E1 6RU.
🚇 Nearest station is Shoreditch High Street.
🎟️ Until May 12 2024. From £16. More info here.
13. Yoko Ono: Music Of The Mind, Tate Modern
This striking new exhibition at the Tate Modern delves deep into the “powerful, participatory work of artist and activist Yoko Ono”. Spanning over seven decades, ‘Yoko Ono: Music Of The Mind’ ranges across some of the most important moments in her life, including meeting John Lennon, and her creative practices in the United States, Japan, and the UK. There are over 200 works included in the exhibition, with everything from instrumental scores to films, photography, and more. Dive into the artistic world of one of the most misunderstood and maligned creative forces in recent history.
📍 Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG.
🚇 Nearest stations are Blackfriars and Southwark.
🎟️ Until September 1 2024. £22. More info here.
14. Holbein at the Tudor Court, The Queen’s Gallery
Hans Holbein was considered one of the most talented artists of the 16th century – he painted none other than Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas Moore after all. This fascinating exhibition at none other than Buckingham Palace showcases one of the most important surviving collections of his work, and includes drawings, paintings, miniatures and book illustrations too. This is one you really don’t want to miss!
📍 The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, SW1A 1AA.
🚇 Nearest stations are Victoria and St. James’s Park.
🎟️ Until April 14 2024. Price £17. More info here.
15. SKATEBOARD, the Design Museum
The Design Museum’s SKATEBOARD exhibition explores seven decades of the history of skateboarding and the evolution of the designs at the centre of the sport. Central to it all is a custom-built skate ramp inside the museum that was designed especially for the exhibition. Experienced skateboarders can even become part of the exhibition in the open skate sessions. These allow them the opportunity to skate the ramp inside the museum. How many art exhibitions give you the opportunity to do that?!
📍224-238 Kensington High Street, W8 6AG.
🚇 Nearest station is High Street Kensington.
🎟️ Until May 19 2024. From £16. More info here.
16. When Forms Come Alive, Hayward Gallery
‘When Forms Come Alive’ traces 60 years of sculptural history, illustrating the connecting line between the forms and movements of the world and the exciting sculptural pieces they inspire. The pieces droop and undulate and fall about and hold a wealth of physical energy and activity inside themselves. ‘When Forms Come Alive’ is bold, at times bizarre, and truly brilliant. We reckon it’s more than earned its spot on the list of London’s best art exhibitions, and is well worth seeing in all its gorgeously gooey glory.
📍Hayward Gallery, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX.
🚇 Nearest stations are Waterloo and Embankment.
🎟️ Until May 6 2024. From £18. More info here.
So there you have it – a rundown of some of the best art exhibitions in London to see in 2024. So what are you waiting for culture vultures? Get out there and explore!
Also published on Medium.