As cities empty and crowds flock to secluded beaches, these are the exhibitions to visit this August, in London and beyond.
Including activist Yoko Ono’s pioneering work taking over the Tate Modern, the first female contemporary artist at Rome’s Galleria Borghese, and Elton John’s private photography collection in London – 2024 has proven to be a good one for exhibitions. These are some of the best in London and Europe to visit this month.
Exhibitions in Europe
Louise Bourgeois: Unconscious Memories, Galleria Borghese, Rome
Within Rome’s expansive Borghese Gardens, amongst primed rose bushes and a blue lake decked with paddle boats, is Galleria Borghese, once the private home of art enthusiast Scipione Borghese, and now one of Rome’s most visited galleries. Over 100 years since opening, Louise Bourgeois: Unconscious Memories is the first dedicated exhibition to a female contemporary artist in the gallery’s history. The French-American sculpture artist is a forerunner for much of contemporary art as we know it today, someone who took the art world by storm with pieces that rejected the conventional and instead focussed on twisted, exorcist styles. This exhibition displays many celebrated pieces including Spider and The Welcoming Hands in the gallery’s Meridiana Garden, laid out across several gallery spaces – including Casino Borghese – to encourage viewers to move through the space like Louise Bourgeois herself once did. Unconscious Memories uniquely places Bourgeois’ works next to the permanent collection to show how her work was influenced by Italian sculpture, with each piece tied together through themes of metamorphosis and memory.
The Birth Of The Department Store, Musée Des Arts Decoratifs, Paris
The Olympics may have taken over Paris at the moment, but with this exhibition, we’re returning to the true heart of the French capital, shopping. Whether your sport of choice is sprinting between boutiques (bags in hand), or you’re looking for an interlude between the Olympic triathlons, swing by Musée des Arts Decoratifs on shopping street Rue de Rivoli for a deep dive into the history of some of Paris’ most iconic haunts. Pinnacles of modernity and consumerism, these department stores were born in the mid-nineteenth century and have subsequently changed the way we shop for the past 200 years. At Musée des Arts Decoratifs, a staggering 700 artefacts are on display from Au Bon Marché, Les Grands Magasins du Louvre, Le Printemps, La Samaritaine, and Les Galeries Lafayette dating back to 1852, and they include silk evening bags in their original boxes, sketched fashion advertorials, and children’s toys.
Dalí Universe, The Atkinson Museum, Porto
Dalí, the internationally known artist recognised as much for his surrealist art as his signature moustache, is welcomed to Porto this summer, with sketches, paintings, sculptures, and advertorials hung at The Atkinson Museum in the center of the city. Excitingly, alongside these pieces is a rare and intimate addition: a series of photographs taken between 1955 and 1985 of the artist by French photographer and friend Robert Descharnes, which paint a lesser-known picture of ‘the man behind the myth’ showing the artist behind the scenes, outside of his work environment.
Point of View, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Amsterdam’s celebrated Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands, is presenting a summer exhibition to make you think. Point of View selects 150 works from the museum’s own collection spanning the 16th to the 21st century and places them in conversations around gender. They include a portrait of William of Orange and the work of contemporary South African painter Marlene Dumas, alongside lots of furniture, drawings, photographs and other objects, covering everything from the clothes we wear, the poses we make, and the things we like – to challenge the ever-changing traits of gender.
On Show In London…
Beyond Fashion, Saatchi Gallery, London
Fashion photography is not just about the clothes; static shots of garments on mannequins and rigidly-poised studio sets remain from a time of grainy-printed women’s publications for commercial use only. Instead, for the last seventy or so years, cultural moments, moods, creative signatures – and more – have been woven into the photographs, elevating them to both ephemera from, and markers of, the wider zeitgeist. Beyond Fashion at Saatchi Gallery spotlights the photographers behind some of fashion’s most celebrated images, including Ellen von Unwerth, Peter Lindberg, Viviane Sassen, Juergen Teller and Miles Aldridge. With over 100 photographs on display, the exhibition is divided into four sections – Allure, Fantasy, Realism, Surrealism – which capture how fashion photography has become a visual language. From the tongue-in-cheek shot of Victoria Beckham’s legs hanging out of a Marc Jacobs’ bag to Yelena Yemchuk’s image of Tokyo’s famously busy crossroads, these photographs are dynamic and transformative. A section of the exhibition spotlights moving images by SHOWstudio from iconic British photographer Nick Knight; one of the first to pioneer 3D graphics and video. The exhibition concludes with an installation by students from ÉCAL/University of Art and Design.
Fragile Beauty, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
The private collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish is now on public view at the V&A; thirty years of collecting in the making, the exhibition collates some of the most poignant and powerful portraits of masculinity. Including portrayals of celebrities, cinema, music, AIDS activism and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the exhibition contains more than 300 rare prints from 140 photographers – some of which have never been shown before. Contemporary work from photographers such as An-My Lê, Trevor Pagan and Tyler Mitchell hang alongside photographs by Irving Penn, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin. Carefully selected from an archive of over 7,000 images, these key cultural snapshots also offer a unique insight into the collectors’ own tastes and interests.
Vanessa Bell: A Pioneer of Modernism, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London
A key member of the Bloomsbury Group, Vanessa Bell was at the centre of conversations and inspirations that informed author (and her sister) Virginia Woolf’s work, as well as the work of Roger Fry during the pivotal modernist era. Recognised as a pioneering artist in her own right, The Courtauld is placing Vanessa Bell’s art centre stage with paintings – including her masterpiece A Conversation (1913-1961) – woodcuts, and works on paper. Her paintings unify the decorative and frivolous with the peace of everyday life, dipping between elements of cubism, post-impressionism, abstraction, and fauvism along the way.
Now You See Us: Women Artists In Britain 1520-1920, Tate Britain, London
Traversing an incredible 400 years, including those of women’s suffrage, the First World War and the Society of Female Artists, more than 200 artworks by over 100 artists are displayed here, spanning Victorian realism, sculpture and oil painting. The exhibition takes you straight to the Tudor court of the 1520s with French Renaissance miniaturist Esther Inglis, whose miniatures (small, decorative paintings) and manuscripts form the earliest known self-portraits by a woman artist in Britain. The exhibition continues to some of the first female gallery owners (in the 18th century), to the admittance of women to art schools (in the Victorian era), and finally to 20th-century modernism by the likes of Gwen John, Vanessa Bell, and Helen Saunders.
Naomi: In Fashion, V&A Museum, London
One of fashion’s most iconic figures, Naomi Campbell, has carried fashion through some of its greatest eras and designers under the esteemed ‘supermodel’ title, and is trading runways for the marbled hallways of the V&A. Sponsored by fashion label Boss, Naomi: In Fashion traces Campbell’s extensive four-decade career – from becoming the first Black model to feature on the cover of Vogue Paris in August 1988 aged just 18, to transforming the runway with her legendary, confident strut (featured in the exhibition via a series of video clips) and launching her own perfume line. The exhibition uses many different mediums to tell her story, including video, photography and clothing, and moves from Naomi’s childhood to the present day. Highlights include a selection of photography by Arthur Elgort and Patrick Demarchelier – curated by Edward Enninful OBE – as well as dresses made specifically for Campbell by the likes of Valentino and Azzedine Alaïa. In a recent press conference Naomi Campbell says the show is for – and tributes – “everyone who has been good to me.” This is a beautiful time capsule of some of fashion’s greatest people and moments.
Terence Donovan: Full Frame, Atlas Gallery, London
In 2023, Atlas Gallery re-commenced representation of Terence Donovan’s archives, and is now spotlighting the photographer’s work, including rare prints, spanning the entirety of his forty-year career. Between 1959 to 1995, Donovan helped define a new era for advertising and portraiture within fashion photography; his shots often cross styles with hyper-realist photojournalism and include backdrops of London’s working-class East End and industrial sites left derelict after the war. In this exhibition, these include signed vintage prints, contact prints, and silver gelatine estate prints, and are available to collectors.
Barbie®: The Exhibition, The Design Museum, London
An expansive snapshot of pop culture, a little tongue-in-cheek, and of course, very pink, step into Barbie’s Dreamhouse this summer. London’s Design Museum, just off Kensington High Street, is renowned for its quirky exhibitions and Barbie®: The Exhibition is the latest to join its roster. Following the sell-out success of Barbie®: The Movie that hit cinemas last year, receiving 18 Oscar nominations, the exhibition struts through the brand’s 65 year-old history with over 250 dolls and their countless careers, dresses, and Dreamhouses. But the pink parade isn’t over yet. Barbie dolls a plenty are on display and include a rare first edition from 1959, a talking and moving Barbie prototype, the most popular Barbie of the 70s (the ‘surfer girl’ Sunset Malibu Barbie), the first ‘curvy’ and disabled Barbie, as well as the 1985 Day to Night Barbie which captured the shifting domestic-to-public role of women following the workplace revolution. These dolls showcase the evolution of what has transformed from a toy to a Barbie Universe – and run in parallel to the shifting world. The result is a vibrant image of the small doll’s expansive impact on childhoods and pop culture around the western hemisphere, and moves with the trends of each époque.
Zanele Muholi, Tate Modern, London
Photographer Zanele Muholi first took the photographic world by storm in 2004, with their first solo show titled Only Half the Picture at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Through raw imagery that deliberately masked the faces and identities of the subjects, the show created a space for – and portrait of – the LGBTQIA+ community suffering under the country’s strict constructs despite the legislation of gay rights in 1966. Their honest and vivid photojournalism quickly became a form of both social activism and solitude. Ten years later, over 260 photographs by Zanele Muholi line the walls of the Tate Modern; a powerful storytelling of their visual activism. Structured in photographic series, highlights include Faces and Phases where subjects stare directly into the lens, almost challenging the viewer to hold their gaze, and Brave Beauties celebrating non-binary and trans women.
YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND, Tate Modern, London
The largest UK exhibition of the pioneering musician, artist, innovator and world-peace activist, Yoko Ono, has arrived at London’s prestigious Tate Modern. Spanning over six decades of the now 90-year-old’s multi-dimensional career, over 200 of the artist’s works from installations, films, music, and photography fill the Thames-side gallery. These pieces journey from the mid-1950s to the present day, consequently covering Yoko Ono’s growth as a public figure as well as an artist – including the influence, both positive and pejorative, her famous husband John Lennon had on her treatment by the press. Curated in close conversation with Yoko Ono’s own studio, no medium of the pioneer’s multi-faceted work is left unhung. Flitting between Tokyo, New York, and London, each a city where Yoko Ono impressed on (and was impressed by) the budding art scenes, her work is presented as a lyrical and political medley of culture, time, and form. We see her conceptual art of the swinging sixties, including her banned film No. 4 (Bottoms) from 1966-1967; the Fluxus group; her public protests against the Vietnam War; feminist activism through music; and ‘instruction pieces’. There are written instructions commanding readers and viewers to imagine or perform experiences for themselves in order to complete certain artworks; this includes Add Colour (Refugee Boat) where visitors are invited to paint the white gallery walls and a white rowing boat to spark conversations. The exhibition is collaborative rather than passive, as witty as it is philosophical, and bound to leave a lasting impression.
Hockney And Piero: A Longer Look At The National Gallery, London
For the past sixty years, Hockney has had a significant presence in gallery spaces around the world, from London’s National Portrait Gallery and Tate Modern to Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Now, at London’s The National Gallery, Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look, examines the prolific pop-art artist from a different angle: the viewer. As a self-described “looker” himself, Hockney frequented galleries and exhibitions to find inspiration for his own work, and find solace and joy in other artist’s creativity – including the Early Renaissance Italian painter Piero della Francesca. Piero’s work, known for its geometric approach to painting including his The Baptism of Christ, forms a motif in this exhibition. Some of The National Gallery’s famous works (Piero included) appear in the backdrop of Hockney’s paintings hung in this exhibition – on walls or discretely reflected in mirrors – as an inceptive distortion between art and reality. The exhibition brings personal paintings of Hockney’s to light, including one called My Parents – a portrait of the painter’s mother and father.
Yoshida: Three Generations Of Japanese Printmaking, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
Dulwich Picture Gallery, known for its collection of paintings by 17th and 18th century European Old Masters, is opening its gallery walls to 75 prints by three generations of Japanese artists. This is the first time a gallery in Europe has hosted an exhibition of this kind. Moving down the artistic lineage of the Yoshida family, the exhibition explores how Yoshida Hiroshi (1876 to 1950), Yoshida Fujio (1887 to 1987), Yoshida Tōshi (1911 to 1995) and Yoshida Hodaka (1926 to 1995) worked with woodblock prints, watercolours, abstraction, and even organic materials to create some of the most staggering prints in art history. The exhibition is accompanied by a Yoshida-inspired cafe menu.
In The Eye Of The Storm, Royal Academy Of Arts, London
‘Modernist art’ is an incredibly vast category, one that encapsulates a variety of styles, artists, and contentions as both turmoil and prosperity hit communities around the world at the turn of the century. For Ukrainian artists, the Soviet Union, the First World War, and the collapsing empire all became points of reference and inspiration. In the Eye of the Storm collates 65 artworks on loan from the National Art Museum of Ukraine and the Museum of Theatre, Music, and Cinema in Kyiv, painting a picture of this time which, despite political upheaval was one of creativity and led to a flourishing art, literature and theatre scene.
Lead image: Yoko Ono and John Lennon during Bed-In for Peace, Amsterdam, 1969. Courtesy YokoOno. Photograph by Ruud Hoff. Image: Getty Images / Central Press / Stringer
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