Harriet Cooper's guide highlights 16 free art exhibitions in London for spring 2026, including David Hockney's inaugural show at Serpentine North Gallery, a solo display by designer Simone Brewster at the Design Museum, and Somerset House's 'Holy Pop!' exploring modern idolatry. Other featured shows range from Paula Rego drawings to Gilbert & George works, all accessible without admission charges.
During Frieze week in London, the National Gallery hosted its 'Unexpected Views' talk series, where eight contemporary artists including Grayson Perry, Shirazeh Houshiary, and Haegue Yang gave ten-minute talks on their favorite works. Tracey Emin and British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan held a candid discussion titled 'Confessions in the Museum,' and the art collective Konn Artiss placed ice blocks containing frozen feces outside major galleries and auction houses as a protest against the art market. The week also featured a lavish Frieze Collectors' Dinner with guests including Ari Emanuel, Sadie Coles, and Christian Levett, and a secret performance by musician Sampha.
This article is a seasonal preview of the best art and architecture exhibitions opening in autumn 2025, primarily in London and other UK venues. It highlights major shows including Mona Hatoum's dialogue with Giacometti at the Barbican, a Picasso exhibition at Tate Modern, Kerry James Marshall's first major European retrospective at the Royal Academy, and the Turner Prize 2025 at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford. Other featured exhibitions cover Hilary Lloyd's work on Dennis Potter, Marie Antoinette's image through art and fashion at the V&A, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme's new commission at Nottingham Contemporary, and a Lee Miller retrospective at Tate Britain.
The British Museum has organized a new exhibition titled “Ice Age Art Now,” installed at Cliffe Castle Museum in Yorkshire, England, that presents Ice Age artifacts—carved images, figurines, and engravings dating from 24,000 to 12,000 years ago—alongside more recent artworks, including a print after Goya and a charcoal sketch by Maggi Hambling. Curated by Jill Cook, the show aims to reframe these prehistoric objects as artistic expressions rather than mere archaeological curiosities, highlighting their use of line, space, and scale to capture the observed world and communicate emotion.
Art on Location 2025 is an initiative that brings contemporary art installations to public spaces across multiple cities, transforming everyday environments into immersive artistic experiences. The program features site-specific works by emerging and established artists, aiming to make art accessible outside traditional gallery settings.
The article describes a visit to "Back to the Cave: The Full Spectrum," an exhibition of around 70 sculptures by contemporary artists including Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley, Sarah Lucas, and Maggi Hambling, held in the ancient Clearwell Caves in the Forest of Dean, England. The show was organized by Rungwe Kingdon and Claude Koenig of Pangolin Editions, a sculpture foundry that fabricated many of the works, and required significant ingenuity to install large, heavy pieces in the deep, dark, damp cave system.
British artists Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas, who met at the Colony Room Club in London on their shared birthday 25 years ago, are the subjects of a dual exhibition titled "OOO LA LA" opening Nov. 19 across two London galleries: Sadie Coles HQ and Frankie Rossi Art Projects. The show celebrates their personal and professional bond, coinciding with a Rizzoli monograph on Hambling and a major museum survey of Lucas at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki. In an interview, the duo discusses their friendship, mutual portraits, and creative processes, emphasizing spontaneity, experimentation, and the interplay of darkness and vitality in their work.
Wolterton Hall, an 18th-century Palladian country house in Norfolk, England, has reopened to the public after a restoration completed by its new owner Richard Ellis. The estate is launching a water-themed exhibition titled "Sea State," featuring site-specific works by artists Maggi Hambling and Ro Robertson. Robertson's outdoor steel sculpture "The Swell" will be the first permanent outdoor artwork on the grounds, while Hambling presents new pieces from her "Wall of Water" series and an installation called "Time" dedicated to her late partner. The exhibition is co-curated by Simon Oldfield and Gemma Rolls-Bentley.
Maggi Hambling has unveiled a deeply personal installation titled "Time" at Norfolk's 18th-century Wolterton Hall, as part of the exhibition "Sea State." The installation features a single portrait of her late partner, Tory Lawrence, alongside 40 small paintings called "nightwaves," created in response to Lawrence's death from a brain tumor in autumn 2024. The show also includes new works by Ro Robertson and Hambling's ongoing "Wall of Water" series, marking the first arts and culture program at the historic Palladian house built for Horatio Walpole.
Pallant House Gallery in Chichester is presenting 'Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists,' an exhibition exploring how artists have portrayed one another from the early 20th century to the present. Featuring over 130 artists by at least 80 different hands, the show spans painting, sculpture, installation, photography, drawing, and printmaking, with works arranged chronologically to highlight artistic circles, friendships, rivalries, and collaborations. Highlights include multiple portraits of Francis Bacon by Lucian Freud and Maggi Hambling, candid photographs of Young British Artists by Johnnie Shand Kydd, and a new double portrait by Ishbel Myerscough and Chantal Joffe.