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!
Exhibitions in London now
1. Portraits to Dream In, National Portrait Gallery
Until 16 June 2024
Two of the most influential women in the history of photography are no doubt the likes of Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron. Even though they lived a century apart – Cameron in the UK and in Sri Lanka from the 1860s and Woodman in America and Italy from the 1970s, both women explored portraiture using their own creativity and imagination. Going beyond the notions of beauty, symbolism, storytelling and transformation – Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In spans the career of both artists showcasing while showcasing more than 160 rare vintage prints.
📍 National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, WC2H 0HE.
🚇 Nearest station is Charing Cross.
🎟️ Price from £8.50. More info.
2. Delight: Media Art Exhibition, Borough Yards
Until 2025
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
🎟️ From £12.30. More info here.
3. The Last Caravaggio, The National Gallery
Until 21 July 2024
Copyright: © Archivio Patrimonio Artistico Intesa Sanpaolo / foto Luciano Pedicini, Napoli
In May 1610, Caravaggio was in Naples working on the last masterpiece he’d ever paint. Two months later and under mysterious circumstances, he died. It is generally agreed that during his final tumultuous years, Caravaggio made some of his best and most striking works. The Baroque master painter was known for his dramatic lighting and dramatic scenes which can be seen in this last painting of his. Depicting an intricate scene of guilt and violence, the final masterpiece returns to London for the first time in 20 years and will be displayed alongside a letter that describes its creation by the artist.
📍Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN.
🚇 Nearest stations are Charing Cross.
🎟️ Free. More info here.
4. Unravel: The Power & Politics of Textiles in Art, The Barbican
Until May 26 2024
In a major group exhibition, 50 international artists use textiles to communicate ideas and stories about power, resistance and survival. You can expect the likes of Louise Bourgeois to LJ Roberts, Tschabalala Self to Tracey Emin in the exhibition that emphasises on the role of textiles in both preserving the past, history and future. From hand-crafted pieces to large sculptural installations, these works offer insights into the narratives of violence, imperialism and exclusion while bringing awareness to stories of resilience, love and hope.
📍Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS.
🚇 Nearest stations are Barbican.
🎟️ Price from £18. More info here.
5. The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks, Lightroom
Until October 13 2024
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.
🎟️ Price £25. More info here.
6. Soulscapes, Dulwich Picture Gallery
Until June 2 2024
Presenting work from the African Diaspora, the exhibition seeks to redefine landscape art through contemporary perspectives, featuring over 30 works including large-scale pieces and a site specific installation.The works span across painting, photography, film, textile and collage in the Dulwich space – from leading artists including Hurvin Anderson, Phoebe Boswell, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Kimathi Donkor, Isaac Julien, Marcia Michael, Mónica de Miranda and Alberta Whittle.
📍 London, SE21 7AD.
🚇 Nearest station is West Dulwich.
🎟️ Price £17.50. More info here.
7. Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, Commercial 106
Until June 29 2024
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.
🎟️ Price from £18. More info here.
8. Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads, The Courtauld Gallery
Until May 27 2024
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.
🎟️ Price from £14. More info here.
9. Yoko Ono: Music Of The Mind, Tate Modern
Until September 1 2024
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.
🎟️ Price from £22. More info here.
10. Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection, The V&A
Until January 5 2025
The V&A will showcase 300 never-seen-before prints from 140 photographers taken from Sir Elton John and David Furnish’s private art collection. The exhibition hopes to tell the story of modern and contemporary photography across a variety of subjects such as fashion, celebrity, reportage and the male body.
📍 Cromwell Rd, London SW7 2RL.
🚇 Nearest station is South Kensington.
🎟️ Price £20. More info here.
11. The World Press Photo Exhibition 2024, Borough Yards
Until May 27 2024
The World Press Photo Exhibition has returned to London after a seven-year hiatus, taking over Borough Yards this spring. The renowned exhibit showcases some of the best photojournalism and documentary photography from around the world, connecting visitors to stories that matter. The collection of photographs asks the viewer to leave the news cycle at the door and delve into important topics that are affecting people across the globe. With over 60,000 entries by 3,581 photographers, from 130 countries worldwide, and be sure to mark your calendars because it’s only in the capital for a limited time.
📍 Stoney St, London SE1 9AD.
🚇 Nearest station is London Bridge.
🎟️ Price from £15. More info here.
12. Nick Waplinton’s Living Room, Hamiltons Gallery
Until May 25 2024
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.
🎟️ Free. More info here.
13. And the Winner is…, 45 Park Lane
Until May 16 2024
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.
🎟️ More info here.
14. Mantegna: The Triumphs of Caesar, National Gallery
Until 2026
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.
🎟️ Free! More info here.
15. Art Of The Brick, Boiler Room
Until July 14 2024
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.
🎟️ Price from £16. More info here.
16. SKATEBOARD, the Design Museum
Until May 19 2024
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.
🎟️ Price from £16. More info here.
So there you have it – a rundown of some of the best art exhibitions in London now and the rest of 2024. So what are you waiting for culture vultures? Get out there and explore!