Skip to main content

New Exhibitions in June

Frida Kahlo: Now, there's a name to be reckoned with. More than just a painter, a global phenomenon, a superstar who died too young. And so coming to Tate Modern on June 25 we have  Frida: The Making of an Icon , surely set to be one of the most in-demand tickets in London this year. It's not so much a show about Frida, though, as about the cult of Frida: More than 30 of her works are accompanied by some 200 by contemporaries and those from later generations whom she inspired, and then there are over 200 objects exploring "Fridamania". The show had good reviews when it was on at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and you've got until January 3 to catch it at the Tate.  While we're on the subject of mid 20th-century female icons whose candle burned out long before their legend ever did....  Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait  starts at the National Portrait Gallery on June 4. The Hollywood star would have been 100 years old this year, and this show, running until Sept...

Subscribe to updates

Opening in November

This year marks the centenary of the deaths of both Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, and Vienna has been celebrating both with exhibitions. Now, it's London's turn to get in on the act, and drawings from one of the Austrian capital's great museums, the Albertina, are heading to the Royal Academy. Klimt/Schiele starts November 4 and runs through to February 3.
At the National Gallery, there's a show devoted to one of the great portraitists of the Italian Renaissance, Lorenzo Lotto, known for his rich symbolism and psychological depth. This free exhibition is on from November 5 to February 10.
Another free display at the National, starting November 29, centres on Edwin Landseer's Monarch of the Glen, that most romantic emblem of the Scottish Highlands (or a dreadful piece of Victorian kitsch?), which was bought for the nation from drinks giant Diageo last year. Other Landseer works and Peter Blake's version of the Monarch are also on show until February 3.

Thomas Gainsborough was the first British artist to regularly portray members of his family, and the National Portrait Gallery has gathered more than 50 works, some never previously displayed, to put together Gainsborough's Family Album, charting his career. November 22 to February 3.

At the British Museum, it's time to make way for the most powerful man on earth, the ruler of 6th-century BC Assyria. I Am Ashurbanipal, starting November 8, uses the museum's Assyrian collections to evoke the splendours of his palace in Nineveh, then the largest city in the world. Until February 24.

The Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London features rarely seen works from its extensive Victorian collection to show how attitudes towards children changed and softened over the course of the 19th century. Victorian Children in the Frame starts November 23 and continues until May.

The Queen's Gallery looks at the connections between Russia and Britain and the dynasties that ruled them in Russia, Royalty and the Romanovs, which starts November 9 and runs through to April 28. Portraits and Fabergé miniatures are among the objects on display. Meanwhile, the Queen's Gallery in Edinburgh shows Charles II: Art & Power from November 23 to June 2, documenting Charles's reconstitution of the royal collection after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. We enjoyed this  exhibition when it was on in London earlier this year
Tate Liverpool is staging the first UK exhibition in 30 years devoted to Fernand Léger. Enthralled by the vibrancy of modern life, the Frenchman drew on photography and new forms of communication for his paintings and textiles. November 23 to March 17.
From one northern quayside venue to another: The Lowry in Salford explores LS Lowry's passion for the Pre-Raphs, and places work by his two favourite artists, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown, as well as others from the movement, including pictures that once belonged to him, alongside his own. Lowry and the Pre-Raphaelites is on from November 10 to February 24. And it's free.

Rossetti's sister, the poet Christina, is in focus at the Watts Gallery at Compton in Surrey. Portraits by her brother and art inspired by her writing are on display in Christina Rossetti: Vision & Verse, from November 13 to March 17.

In Cologne, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum has a broad sweep of a show looking at American art from 1650 to 1950. Once Upon a Time in America will bring together about 120 loans, with Thomas Eakins, George Bellows, Mary Cassatt, Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe among the big names, as well as John Singleton Copley. November 23 to March 24.
Not too far away, at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, there's a big, big show devoted to possibly the quintessential German Expressionist, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Imaginary Travels brings together 180 works, which sounds perhaps a little exhausting. November 16 to March 3.

That early 17th-century master portraitist Anthony Van Dyck is the subject of a show at the Sabauda Gallery in Turin that has more than 50 works on display to illustrate his work as a court artist in Italy as well as to Charles I in England. Van Dyck Pittore di Corte is on from November 16 to March 17.

In the Netherlands, the first big exhibition for 2019's Rembrandt Year, marking the 350th anniversary of his death, opens on November 24 at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden. Rembrandt & Saskia -- she was from the city -- tells the story of their marriage, and portraits and personal objects give a picture of  love in the Dutch Golden Age. Until March 17.

Finally, Renoir Father and Son at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris explores the relationship between Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste and filmmaker son Jean, creator of La Grande Illusion. This show got good reviews when it was on previously at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. November 6 to January 27.

Images

Egon Schiele, Seated Female Nude, Elbows Resting on Right Knee, 1914, Albertina Museum, Vienna
Lorenzo Lotto, Triple Portrait of a Goldsmith, about 1525–35, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. © KHM-Museumsverband
Cristofano Allori, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1613, Royal Collection Trust. (c) Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018
Fernand Léger, Two Women Holding Flowers, 1954, Tate. © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2018
John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1782, Detroit Institute of Arts; Founders Society Purchase, Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. Fund. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What's On in 2026

Coming up in 2026: Lots more big exhibitions starring women artists, including Frida Kahlo, Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington and Gwen John , as well as a host of names from the 17th-century Low Countries. And women almost certainly embroidered the Bayeux Tapestry, a contender for this year's hottest ticket in London.   Here's a selection of shows that have caught our eye around Britain and Europe, in more or less chronological order; as ever, we make no claim to comprehensiveness, and our choice very much reflects our personal taste. January We'll start the year at the Fondation Beyeler on the outskirts of Basel, where they're devoting an exhibition to Paul Cezanne . Focusing on the artist's later years, the show will bring together some 80 oil paintings and watercolours. January 25 to May 25.  February Two leading British women artists feature in exhibitions opening this month, with the National Museum in Cardiff honouring the best-known female painter Wales has pr...

The Highs and Lows of the Nahmad Collection

It's widely referred to as the world's most valuable private art collection : the one assembled over decades by the Nahmad brothers, dealers Ezra and David . Worth an estimated $3 billion or more, it's said to include hundreds of Picassos. Some 60 works from it are now on display at the Musée des impressionnismes in Giverny as  The Nahmad Collection: From Monet to Picasso . Intended, apparently, to demonstrate how art developed from the early 19th century through Impressionism and on to the start of the modern era, towards the liberation of colour and form, this is an exhibition that ends up coming across as somewhat incoherent. We're not really told much about the Nahmads or their collecting choices -- and as you search the Internet, things become slightly mysterious: Is Ezra alive or dead? The art, presumably, is supposed to speak for itself, but it's a rather eclectic, if not confusing, selection; some of the works are fantastic, some are distinctly ho-hum.  Let...

Carrington: You've Met Leonora, Now Discover Dora

Carrington: She only wanted to be known by her surname, unwittingly posing a conundrum for art historians, curators and the wider world a century later.  Because it's another somewhat later Carrington, the long-lived Surrealist and totally unrelated, who's recently become Britain's most expensive woman artist. But today we're at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester to see an exhibition not about Leonora but about Dora Carrington. She hated that name Dora -- so Victorian -- but with Leonora so much in the limelight (and the subject of a  recent show at Newlands House in Petworth, just a few miles up the road), the curators at the Pallant didn't have much option, so they've had to call their retrospective  Dora Carrington: Beyond Bloomsbury .  Leonora was a bit of a rebel, as we found out in Petworth. Dora too. But we ought to respect her wish. Carrington, then, has been a bit neglected recently; this is the first show of her works in three decades. And while ther...