Modern & Contemporary Art Exhibitions in London
Discover contemporary and modern art exhibitions in London. Our exhibition guide helps you explore museums, galleries, and artist-run spaces showcasing modern and contemporary art. Whether you're an art enthusiast or a curious visitor, stay informed about what's happening in the art scene in London.
Concrete and Clay: Archiving the Barbican
⇾ 31-12-2025
Barbican Art Gallery
Dirty Looks
⇾ 25-01-2026
Barbican Art Gallery
Encounters: Giacometti
⇾ 24-05-2026
Barbican Art Gallery
Lucy Raven: Rounds
09-10-2025 – 04-01-2026
Barbican Art Gallery
Encounters: Giacometti x Lynda Benglis
05-02-2026 – 24-05-2026
Barbican Art Gallery
Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum
⇾ 11-01-2026
Barbican Art Gallery
Architecture Window
⇾ 29-11-2026
Royal Academy of Arts
- This 40-minute screening programme explores the enduring effects of colonialism through contemporary moving image work from four artists living and working across Latin America: Carolina Caycedo (b.1978, UK), Seba Calfuqueo (b.1991, Chile), Aline Motta (b.1974, Brazil), Regina José Galindo (b. 1974, Guatemala). Addressing historical issues surrounding race, identity, and environmental causes, water emerges as a symbolic thread present across all the films connecting and foregrounding individuals, communities, and regions that have long been overlooked and marginalised, through diverse visual languages and poetic approaches. All films are captioned and visitors are welcome to enter Assembly Room at any time during the screenings.Description
Latin American Film Programme: Estuario
⇾ 09-11-2025
Whitechapel Art Gallery
- Joy Gregory: Catching Flies with Honey, will be the first major survey show of the artist, Joy Gregory (b.1959, UK), winner of the eighth annual Freelands Award and one of the UK’s most innovative artists working with photography today. Spanning four decades, this landmark exhibition brings together over 250 works encompassing photography, film, installation and textiles, all of which showcase and celebrate Gregory’s inventive, culturally resonant and materially rich practice. Since the early 1980s, Gregory has been a pioneering force in contemporary photography, playing a critical role in its development nationally and internationally. Her work explores identity, history, race, gender and societal ideals of beauty, while expanding photography’s aesthetic and material possibilities. Gregory employs a diverse range of media and methods, encompassing Victorian photographic techniques such as cyanotypes and kallitypes, as well as digital media and performance. Conceptually rigorous and visually seductive, Gregory’s work invites important reflection on power structures, representation and cultural memory. The exhibition’s title comes from the proverb, ‘you catch more flies with honey than vinegar’, a phrase that Gregory’s mother used to say to her. It encapsulates her approach to art as political ‘with a small p’; her intimate, visually pleasurable and poetic works encouraging nuanced rather than polemical discussion.Description
Joy Gregory: Catching Flies with Honey
08-10-2025 – 01-03-2026
Whitechapel Art Gallery
- Whitechapel Gallery presents a new commission from artist Candice Lin (b. 1979, Concord, Massachusetts, US) featuring an absorbing and disorientating labyrinth. ... Visitors to g/hosti are plunged into a circular labyrinth made from curved, painted cardboard panels that depict a fantastical world populated by animals and other creatures. The structure towers above head height, while cut-out sections and undulating edges offer glimpses of spaces beyond. Visitors move through the visually lush landscape of brushstrokes and textures as if entering the layers of a painting. Along the way they encounter watchful wolves, tender mice and playing cats – the bright colours, patterns, animal imagery and cardboard materials evoking childhood and play. Yet sinister and sometimes startling images lurk in the detail – including human cadavers that peek out from the shrubbery – creating a relentless environment that threatens to engulf the viewer.Description
Candice Lin: g/hosti
08-10-2025 – 01-03-2026
Whitechapel Art Gallery
- Fierce and Fearless is a textile installation celebrating women as central figures in folklore, myth and legend. Printed and embroidered panels form an immersive tent, illustrated with stories of fearless female protagonists and offering a hub for participatory activities throughout the season. Step inside, join an activity, create new stories. Fierce and Fierce will host school and university groups, and sessions led by local charities and community groups, including the British Bilingual Poetry Collective, 3EIB, Xenia. The installation’s fabric is the inspiration for a collective embroidery project led by artist Jasmin Bhanji in Assembly Room during the half-term holidays (29 October-2 November).Description
Joy Gregory: Fierce and Fearless
08-10-2025 – 01-03-2026
Whitechapel Art Gallery
Edward Burra – Ithell Colquhoun
⇾ 19-10-2025
Tate Britain
Lee Miller
⇾ 15-02-2026
Tate Britain
Turner and Constable
27-11-2025 – 12-04-2026
Tate Britain
Hurvin Anderson
26-03-2026 – 23-08-2026
Tate Britain
James McNeill Whistler
21-05-2026 – 27-09-2026
Tate Britain
The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House
⇾ 19-10-2025
Tate Modern
- Explore the enigmatic world of Edward BurraDescription
Edward Burra
19-10-2025 – 19-10-2025
Tate Liverpool
- The first major exhibition of surrealist Ithell ColquhounDescription
Ithell Colquhoun
19-10-2025 – 19-10-2025
Tate Liverpool
- Explore the creativity of ancient Egypt and how it still influences art, design and popular culture todayDescription
Making Egypt
⇾ 02-11-2025
Young V&A
- A major exhibition featuring more than 350 objects, including precious jewels, historic gemstones, iconic watches and clocks, that chart the evolution of Cartier's legacy of art, design and craftsmanship since the turn of the 20th century.Description
Cartier
⇾ 16-11-2025
Young V&A
- Both a celebration and a call to action, Design and Disability showcases the radical contributions of Disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people and communities to design history and contemporary culture, from the 1940s to now.Description
Design and Disability
⇾ 15-02-2026
Young V&A
- A complex fashion icon, Marie Antoinette's timeless appeal is defined by her style, youth and notoriety. Explore the lasting influence of the most fashionable (and ill-fated) queen in history – with over 250 years of design, fashion, film and art.Description
Marie Antoinette Style
⇾ 22-03-2026
Young V&A
Makers of Modern Gothic: A.W.N. Pugin and John Hardman Jr
⇾ 26-10-2025
Victoria and Albert Museum
Material Cultures: Woodland Goods
⇾ 31-10-2025
Victoria and Albert Museum
Tatreez: Palestinian Embroidery
⇾ 31-05-2026
Victoria and Albert Museum
- The UK's first exhibition on Elsa Schiaparelli spans the 1920s to today, celebrating the innovative designer's influence. It traces the fashion house's groundbreaking origins and its evolution under current creative director Daniel Roseberry.Description
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art
21-03-2026 – 01-11-2026
V&A Dundee
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Ideas Exchange
12-10-2025 – 08-03-2026
V&A Dundee
Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2025
⇾ 12-10-2025
National Portrait Gallery
Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World
09-10-2025 – 11-01-2026
National Portrait Gallery
Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2025
13-11-2025 – 08-02-2026
National Portrait Gallery
Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting
12-02-2026 – 03-05-2026
National Portrait Gallery