HEADER IMAGE Paolo Carzana, Autumn/Winter 2025, Dragons Unwinged at the Butchers Block. Photograph by Joseph Rigby. Courtesy of Paolo Carzana & The Design Museum
As autumn approaches, galleries and museums across the UK are unveiling some of their most ambitious exhibitions of recent years. From deeply personal explorations of memory and identity to spectacular showcases of fashion, film and global histories, this season’s cultural calendar is brimming with must-see highlights. Whether you’re drawn to intimate sketchbooks, radical installations or iconic design, there’s something to inspire every kind of art lover.
Spanning historic retrospectives and bold contemporary commissions, these exhibitions reveal how artists and creators past and present respond to the world around them – through drawing, sculpture, performance, photography, fashion, and film. Many of these shows also highlight themes of migration, resilience, and storytelling, offering fresh perspectives on both local and global narratives. Here’s a guide to some of the most exciting exhibitions to catch in the months ahead.
Louise Bourgeois: Drawings from the 1960s at The Courtauld, Somerset House
Until 14th September | £14 ENTRY
For artist Louise Bourgeois, drawing was like a form of journaling and has been integral within her practice since she was a young girl. These drawings that were a constant element of her artistic life became her legacy. The Courtauld shows Bourgeois’s drawings from the 60s that are small in size, but carry heavy emotional weight. Bourgeois’ gestural drawings explore memory, desire and intimacy that were the beginning seeds of her later sculptures.
Jane Austen: Down to Sea at Dorset Art Gallery, Dorset
Until 14th September | £13.50 ENTRY
Celebrating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth in 1775, this exhibition will explore the sea as a setting for her fictional worlds and its influence on her. Dorset is the perfect place for this exhibition as viewers get a little glimpse into the author’s life, as she visited several times on holiday. She loved swimming in the sea, which became a source of inspiration for romance and danger. The exhibition space includes costumes from when she was writing, and a first edition of the novel Persuasion, as well as postcards, evening dresses and paintings.
Helen Chadwick: Life Pleasures at The Hepworth, Wakefield
Until 26th October | £13 ENTRY
British artist Helen Chadwick embraced every aspect of the natural world, breaking taboos of beauty within the traditions of art history. This major retrospective will be the artist’s first in over 25 years, exploring her experiments across mediums that were both innovative and unconventional for her time. She used grotesque materials such as bodily fluids, meat, flowers and decaying food to portray aesthetic beauty and express her feminist perspective with masked humour. This exhibition truly highlights her significant impact and contribution to British and international art history with her playful approach to contemporary feminist concerns.
Lubiana Himid with Magda Stawarska: Another Chance Encounter at Kettles Yard, Cambridge
Until November 12th | FREE ENTRY
Himid creates vividly coloured paintings that confront overlooked histories and collective experiences within her paintings that play a pivotal role in the British Black Arts movement since the 1980’s. Over the last decade she has earned international recognition for her depicted figures which explore sometimes invisible aspects of history and the mundane everyday.
In this exhibition at Kettle’s Yard, her newest work centres on what is missing from the telling of life’s stories that sometimes cant be explained through words and the people who are disregarded from the narrative. Her paintings are a strategy to fill in the gaps and objects we can use as clues to create our own ending. There is also a new collaborative installation with artist Magda Stawarska alongside her older works.
Gianni Versace: Retrospective at Arches, London Bridge
Until January 2026 | ENTRY FROM £21
This summer, The Arches opens its doors this summer to the glamorous world of Gianni Versace via one of London’s most anticipated fashion exhibitions of 2025. This retrospective offers an unforgettable journey through the life and legacy of one of fashion’s most revolutionary designers.
Showcasing over 450 original vintage pieces, many of which have never been seen in the UK before, there is a blended display of fashion, culture and history. We can explore the daring runway creations firsthand to rare accessories, behind-the-scenes footage, and candid interviews. Some highlights include iconic looks worn by Princess Diana, striking ensembles made famous by supermodels like Kate Moss, and flamboyant stage costumes designed for music legends like Elton John. Every piece tells a story of extravagance, rebellion, and unapologetic self-expression.
Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine at The V&A Dundee
Until Spring 2026 | FREE ENTRY
The V&A in Dundee explores Tatreez, an ancient practice of intricate hand-embroidery originating in Palestine. Each region of Palestine itself has its own distinctive style making the embroidery a language as much as an art form. These Palestinian dresses reflect a woman’s life story, they are cut, coloured and stitched to tell tales. Written and scored into their garments are signs of grief and expressions of how they feel within their rural life as well as traces of political and social change within their homeland, especially from the late nineteenth century to present.
This exhibition is important to Dundee itself as 2025 marks 45 years of Dundee’s twin city relationship with Nablus, Palestine and this exhibition takes the opportunity to spotlight Nabulsi dress and tell the story of the historic connection between Scotland and Palestine, through material from Dundee collections and Palestinian archives.
Manuel Mathieu at Pilar Corrias, Savile Row
12th September – 1st November | FREE ENTRY
Manuel Mathieu showcases his paintings, and sculptural works in his second solo exhibition at Pilar Corrias. His paintings look at the intersection of politics and spirituality and how they are inherited. Mathieu harnesses the power of abstraction to confront home truths, unmaking the fight for self preservation in a world where a collective shared experience of reality seems impossible.
Can We Stop Killing Each Other? at The Sainsbury Centre, Norwich
20th September – May 2026 | FREE ENTRY
This exhibition wrestles with one of the darkest and deadliest aspects of humanity, exploring artists that look at migration and displacement in the world today, whilst looking into why we are so obsessed with depicting images of violence within art. The display explores further than just fine art, including film, television and theatre, reflecting on events from the present and past, from the Holocaust to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It will be a challenging but eye-opening investigation into some of the most horrifying events in human history. Additionally, a series of new paintings by Ethiopian artist Tesfaye Urgessa (b.1983) will also be unveiled, reflecting on the refugee crisis.
Against Erasure – Photographs from Gaza at P21 Gallery, Kings Cross
24th September – 10th October | FREE ENTRY
P21 Gallery is a London-based charitable trust promoting contemporary Arab art and culture, committed to creating visibility for artists worldwide. The gallery’s residency programme, reACT, offers invaluable opportunities for emerging and student artists to contribute their talents and artwork to help build and strengthen cultural ties and to facilitate dialogues between the East and West on terms designed by a younger generation.
Against Erasure – Photographs from Gaza brings to light the extraordinary work of Gaza-based photographers who document the realities of life under one of the world’s most violent genocides. This exhibition is a vivid portrayal of the immense hardships endured, the unwavering resistance displayed, and the indomitable spirit of survival in Gaza, Palestine.
Dirty Looks at The Barbican, Moorgate
25th September – 25th January | £20 ENTRY
We have been long awaiting The Barbican’s adventurous, upcoming exhibition Dirty Looks. The exhibition will explore fashion’s interest in ‘dirt and decay’ over the past 50 years and brings together over 60 pieces featuring the likes of Martin Margiela, Dilara Fındıkoğlu, Robert Wun, and Vivienne Westwood’s ‘The Nostalgia of Mud’. Textile techniques are also explored, including burning and trompe-l’œil embroidery which mimics stains and is used to convey distress and decay.
The exhibition also feature new commissions and installations by designers including Alice Potts, who has pioneered a new technique of crystal embellishment using sweat, exploring the interplay between destruction and luxury, and how fashion romanticises the grit and reality of life.
Cai Guo-Qiang: Gunpowder and Abstraction at The White Cube, Bermondsey
26th September – 9th November | FREE ENTRY
The White Cube has announced a solo exhibition by artist Cai Guo-Qiang from Fujian, China and based in New York since 1995. Guo-Qiang is best known for his monumental paintings and immersive installations that fuse traditional Chinese aesthetics with radical experimentation. His works are an explosion, both literally and metaphorically, of events and narratives that oscillate between the organic rhythms of nature and the complex architectures of society and power.
In this solo show, the work oscillates freely between organic themes of nature and harsh societal structures, drawing on diverse themes such as cosmology, traditional Chinese landscape painting and geopolitics. Cai’s practice blurs boundaries between destruction and creation, chaos and control, the personal and the universal. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to experience the artist’s ongoing exploration of energy and transformation up close.
Wes Anderson: The Archives at The Design Museum, London
21st November- 26th July 2026 | £20 ENTRY
In November, The Design Museum will dive into the fantastical world of Wes Anderson’s personal archive. Built over the last 2 decades, this is the first time that most of these objects will be displayed in Britain. The exhibition will chart the evolution of Wes Anderson’s films from early experiments in the 1990s to recent productions as well as collaborations with key long-standing creative partners. Explore the design stories behind award-winning and iconic films such as The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs.
Over 600 objects will bring together the director’s meticulous craft, melancholic charm and youthful play of filmmaking through original storyboards, paintings, drawings, notebooks, puppets, handmade models and costumes of cherished characters. The Design Museum highlights their personal favourites being the candy-pink model of the Grand Budapest Hotel, the vending machines from Asteroid City, the Fendi fur coat worn by Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums, the original stop motion puppets used to depict the fantastical sea creatures in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Mr Fox wearing his signature corduroy suit, and show dog Nutmeg, alongside miniature sets.
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