Autumn art highlights: art exhibitions to watch out for in London in 2025
Autumn is always a busy time for art in London, with Frieze Week in October drawing international attention. But beyond the fairs, the city’s museums and galleries are offering a strong line-up of exhibitions worth seeing. From the V&A’s exploration of Marie Antoinette Style to Tate Modern’s major survey of Nigerian Modernism. Dirty Looks at the Barbican examines fashion through the lens of decay and disruption, while Somerset House hosts both Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies, a collaboration between dance and technology, and Jennie Baptiste: Rhythm & Roots, a celebration of Black British youth culture through photography.
There is much to discover across the capital in the months ahead. Here is our guide to the art exhibitions to watch out for in London this autumn, so you don’t miss anything.
Nigerian Modernism
Uzo Egonu, Stateless People an artist with beret 1981. © The estate of Uzo Egonu. Private Collection.
#FLODown: Tate Modern will present Nigerian Modernism, the first major UK exhibition to explore the development of modern art in Nigeria. Featuring over 250 works by more than 50 artists, it reveals how artists responded to colonialism, independence, and globalisation by engaging with Indigenous forms and modernist ideas. The exhibition includes works by early pioneers such as Aina Onabolu and Ben Enwonwu, as well as leading figures like Bruce Onobrakpeya, Uche Okeke, Demas Nwoko, Susanne Wenger, and Yusuf Grillo. It explores key movements including the Zaria Art Society, with its call for a “natural synthesis” of African and Western art; the experimental Oshogbo school; and the Nsukka group, known for its revival of uli design.
Date: 8 October 2025 – 10 May 2026. Location: Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG. Price: from £18. Concessions available. Book now
Marie Antoinette Style
Film still from Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. Photo courtesy of I WANT CANDY LLC. and Zoetrope Corp.
#FLODown: Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A South Kensington will be the UK’s first exhibition dedicated to the iconic French queen and her influence on fashion and culture. Showcasing 250 objects, including rare loans never before seen outside France, the exhibition will feature personal items such as Marie Antoinette’s silk slippers, jewels, and her final written note, alongside lavish fragments of court dress and intimate objects from Versailles. Contemporary couture by designers like Dior, Chanel, Vivienne Westwood, and Moschino, as well as costumes from Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning film Marie Antoinette, will trace the queen’s legacy through centuries of design and media.
Date: 20 September 2025 - 22 March 2026. Location: V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL. Price: from £23 - £25. Concessions available. Book now
Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion
Dirty Looks, IAMISIGO, handwoven raffia-cotton blend look dyed with coffee and mud spring/Summer 2024 Shadows. Photograph by Fred Odede, courtesy of IAMISIGO.
#FLODown: The Barbican will open Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion in September 2025, a bold new exhibition that explores how designers worldwide have turned to dirt, decay and imperfection as powerful forces in contemporary fashion. Featuring over 100 looks from more than 60 designers, including Hussein Chalayan, Vivienne Westwood, IAMISIGO, Robert Wun and Comme des Garçons, the exhibition traces how distressed and decomposed aesthetics have challenged ideas of beauty, luxury and value over the past fifty years. From rusted, buried garments and mud-stained couture to regenerated textiles and spiritually charged designs, Dirty Looks reveals how decay has been reclaimed as a symbol of resistance, renewal and transformation. With scenography by Studio Dennis Vanderbroeck, the exhibition contrasts sleek gallery spaces with raw, eroded surfaces, creating a sensory experience that reflects the tension between fashion’s polished image and its material realities. Emerging designers, including Paolo Carzana, Elena Velez and Michaela Stark, expand these ideas through newly commissioned works that confront environmental collapse, folklore and queer expression.
Date: 25 September 2025 - 25 January 2026. Location: Barbican Art Gallery, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS. Price: Tickets on sale here from August 2025.
Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies
Wayne McGregor's FAR, Company Wayne McGregor (Catarina Carvalho), 2010, Photo Ravi Deepres.
#FLODown: Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies, opening at Somerset House in October, will celebrate the 30-year career of visionary choreographer Sir Wayne McGregor CBE and mark the grand finale of the venue’s 25th anniversary. The exhibition will fuse choreography with cutting-edge technologies such as AI, robotics, and motion capture to create immersive, multi-sensory installations and new commissions. There will be live activations by McGregor’s world-class dance company, as well as On the Other Earth, a 360-degree cinematic installation at Stone Nest in the West End. Created in collaboration with leading artists and technologists, Infinite Bodies will offer a bold exploration of the future of the human body and identity through dance.
Date: 30 October 2025 - 22 February 2026. Location: Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA. Price: TBC. For more information about the exhibition, visit somersethouse.org.uk
Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World
The Second Age of Beauty by Cecil Beaton, British Vogue February 1946 © The Condé Nast Publications Ltd. Condé Nast Archive London.
#FLODown: Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World is the first major exhibition dedicated to Beaton’s influential career in fashion photography, illustration, and costume design. Opening at the National Portrait Gallery in October 2025, it showcases over 170 works including Vogue spreads, royal portraits, and Oscar-winning film costumes from My Fair Lady and Gigi.Celebrated as “The King of Vogue,” Beaton captured the elegance of interwar society, post-war glamour, and Hollywood icons. Curated by Robin Muir, the exhibition explores Beaton’s collaborations with leading designers and his lasting impact on the visual language of fashion.
Date: 9 October 2025 - 11 January 2026. Location: National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 0HE. Price: Tickets not yet on sale yet, npg.org.uk
Howard Hodgkin: In a Public Garden
Howard Hodgkin, In a Public Garden, 1997-8, hand painted etching with carborundum.
#FLODown: Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery will present Howard Hodgkin: In a Public Garden this October, marking the most extensive institutional exhibition of the celebrated British artist’s original prints to date. Curated by Richard Calvocoressi, the exhibition will feature around 60 hand-finished works spanning five decades, installed across both the contemporary gallery and the historic rooms of the Manor. Hodgkin’s emotionally charged, painterly prints—many of which blur the line between print and painting—offer a rich exploration of memory, colour and abstraction. Highlights will include the lyrical Venetian Views series and Swimming (2011), created for the London 2012 Olympics.
Date: 1 October 2025 - 22 February 2026. Location: Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, Ealing Green, London W5 5EQ. Price: from £12. Concessions available. Book now
Jennie Baptiste: Rhythm & Roots
Jennie-Baptiste, 1995. Photo taken from a series for fashion designer Wale Adeyemi.
#FLODown: Jennie Baptiste: Rhythm & Roots, opening at Somerset House in October, will be the first major solo exhibition by pioneering British photographer Jennie Baptiste. Spanning over three decades, it will showcase both iconic and previously unseen portraits that celebrate the sound, style, and spirit of Black British youth culture—from 1990s Brixton to today. Featuring striking images of artists like Roots Manuva, Estelle, Ms Dynamite, and NAS, the exhibition also includes Revolutions @33 1/3 rpm, Baptiste’s seminal series on London’s hip hop DJ scene, and Black Chains of Icon, a conceptual exploration of Black identity and legacy. Accompanied by DJ-curated soundtracks and a public programme of talks and creative responses, Rhythm & Roots will affirm Baptiste’s impact on British photography and the cultural landscape.
Date: 17 October 2025 – 4 January 2026. Location: Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA. Price: Pay what you can. somersethouse.org.uk
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories
Kerry James Marshall, Untitled, 2009, Acrylic on PVC panel. 155.3 x 185.1 cm. Yale University Art Gallery, Purchased with the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund and a gift from Jacqueline L. Bradley, B.A. 1979. © Kerry James Marshall
#FLODown: A major retrospective of Kerry James Marshall will open at the Royal Academy of Arts in October 2025, celebrating the artist’s 70th birthday. The exhibition will present the most extensive survey of Marshall’s work ever staged in Europe, featuring over 70 paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures. Renowned for centring Black figures and histories often excluded from Western art, Marshall reimagines the traditions of history painting with striking visual narratives. The exhibition will include School of Beauty, School of Culture, a newly completed series on the transatlantic slave trade, and a selection of new works created specially for this landmark occasion.
Date: 20 September 2025 - 18 January 2026. Location: Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BD. Price: from £23; concessions available; under 16s go free. Book now
Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists
Helene Kröller-Müller. © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands.
#FLODown: The National Gallery will host its first-ever exhibition dedicated to the Neo-Impressionist movement. The exhibition will feature major works from the renowned Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, bringing together paintings by Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Théo van Rysselberghe, and Jan Toorop. Seurat’s iconic Le Chahut (1889–90) will be shown in the UK for the first time, alongside other works that demonstrate the movement’s radical approach to colour and technique. With additional loans from major international collections, the exhibition will offer a rare opportunity to explore the bold vision that helped shape the course of modern art.
Date: 13 September 2025 – 8 February 2026. Location: Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN. Price: from £25. Concessions available. Book now
A Story of South Asian Art – Mrinalini Mukherjee and Her Circle
Mrinalini Mukherjee and works in progress at her garage studio, 1985. Mrinalini Mukherjee Archive. Courtesy of Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation and Asia Art Archive. Photo: Ranjit Singh.
#FLODown: A Story of South Asian Art: Mrinalini Mukherjee and Her Circle explores the legacy of sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee (1949–2015) and her place within a wider network of South Asian modernists. Opening at the Royal Academy of Arts in October, the exhibition will feature her distinctive works alongside those of her mentors, peers, and family, including Benode Behari and Leela Mukherjee, K.G. Subramanyan, Nilima Sheikh, and Jagdish Swaminathan. Highlighting the artistic dialogues that shaped a pivotal period in South Asian art, the exhibition offers a fresh perspective on the region’s modernist movement. A major retrospective will follow at The Hepworth Wakefield in 2026.
Date: 31 October 2025 – 24 February 2026. Location: Royal Academy of Arts, Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries, Burlington House, London, W1J 0BD. Price: from £17. Concessions available. Book now
Tanoa Sasraku: Morale Patch
Morale Patch, a new solo exhibition by Tanoa Sasraku to open at The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in October 2025.
#FLODown: A solo exhibition by Tanoa Sasraku will open at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in October. Morale Patch, opening in the Lower Galleries, will feature process-driven works on paper, sculpture, and found objects, through which Sasraku explores the symbolic and political power of oil, and its connections to war, national identity, and memory. Emblems and mementoes will serve as recurring motifs in this meditation on seduction, destruction, and national myth-making. Further information about the exhibition and its accompanying public programme will be announced in due course.
Date: 7 October 2025 – 11 January 2026. Location: The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), 12 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH. Price: TBC. For more information about the exhibition, visit ica.art
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: Gaming Futures
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, UNCOMFORTABLE HONESTY, 2024. Ink on paper, digitally enhanced © Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley.
#FLODown: Gaming Futures, a major exhibition and collaborative video game project by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, will open at Serpentine North in September 2025. The London and Berlin-based artist is known for using video game technology to centre Black Trans lives through interactive storytelling. The narrative will be shaped through player choices, highlighting how individual actions can influence collective histories. Combining animation, sound, performance, and research, the project explores the creative and civic potential of gaming. It is produced in collaboration with artists, technologists, and interaction designers as part of Serpentine Arts Technologies’ ongoing programme.
Date: from 1 September 2025, with further details to be announced.Location: Serpentine North Gallery, London, W2 2AR. Price: Free. serpentinegalleries.org
Yto Barrada: Thrill, Fill, Spill
Yto Barrada, A day is a day, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery.
#FLODown: The South London Gallery will open Thrill, Fill, Spill, a solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist Yto Barrada, in September 2025. Spanning sculpture, textiles, film and painting, Barrada’s work explores resistance, cultural identity, and environmental fragility. The exhibition includes textile works dyed at her eco-residency The Mothership in Morocco, and Tangier Island Wall (2019), a sculpture exploring climate change. Also featured are sculptural works inspired by Moroccan human pyramids and Tintin in Palestine, which reinterprets colonial imagery through hand-dyed silk grids. Opening ahead of Barrada’s presentation for France at the 2026 Venice Biennale, Thrill, Fill, Spill, offers a timely reflection on history, memory and collective resilience.
Date: 26 September 2025 - 11 January 2026. Location: South London Gallery, 65–67 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH. Price: Free. southlondongallery.org
