Planning a day out in London? Or a spring trip to one of Europe’s prettiest cities such as Paris or Rome? Add these leading exhibitions to your agenda.
Including rare artworks by Simone de Beauvoir’s lesser-known yet equally impressive sister, Hélène de Beauvoir in London, to two forces of fashion reuniting in Paris, and a major Tracey Emin exhibit in one of Florence’s most beautiful palazzos, here are the exhibitions you’ll want to know about (and visit, of course) this March 2025.
Hélène de Beauvoir: The Woman Destroyed, Amar Gallery, London
If you hear Simone de Beauvoir’s name, countless best-selling novels, philosophical theories, and a creative lifestyle that helped to characterise the feminist waves that reverberated through the 20th century, will spring to mind. Her sister’s name, Hélène de Beauvoir, should evoke just as much fervour, and that’s just what Amar Gallery is setting out to prove with the latest exhibition titled Hélène de Beauvoir: The Woman Destroyed. Admired by Picasso, Hélène painted a range of works that helped define French Modernist art, as well as highlight the driving creative force of female artists during this period. Curated by Amar Gallery founder, Amar Singh, the exhibition took over three years to put together and features 22 of the artist’s works as well as special artefacts including a first edition of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Woman Destroyed, with a cover designed by Hélène. The exhibition is the first solo exhibition of the artist ever in London, and has recently been extended to run until 30th March, so visit while it’s still on.
Chromotherapia: Feel-Good Colour Photography, Villa Medici, Rome
It wasn’t until the 1960s that colour photography became a common visual narrative. In contrast to black and white photography which upheld a serious tone – either through fine art or serious subject matter – colour photography became a way to simply have fun and experiment with tones and contrasts that is lost in sepia-toned imagery. Villa Medici is spotlighting the “zestful gaze” and unpretentious qualities of colour photography via 19 artists work, from Martin Parr and Guy Bourdin to Yevonde Middleton. The kitsch, the surrealist, the pop art, the satirical – it’s all here. Looks like we’ve found that much-needed serotonin boost to kick us into spring.
Azzedine Alaïa, Thierry Mugler: 1980-1990 Two Decades of Artistic Affinities, Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, Paris
La Fondation Azzedine Alaïa in Paris is hosting a sartorial conversation between two of the greatest designers to have graced the fashion industry: Azzedine Alaïa and Thierry Mugler. 1980-1990 Two Decades of Artistic Affinities delves into the enigmatic relationship between the two designers, both via and beyond fashion. The two first collaborated together for Mugler’s autumn/ winter 1979-80 collection when Alaïa designed a series of tuxedos for the show. Mugler quickly became a guiding force for Alaïa, helping him establish a name within the torpedic industry. “Alaïa and Mugler freely let their influences influence each other’s creations. In the 1980s, both divinised the woman, proclaiming the return of glamour in glory and Hollywood as their inspiration, a world away from the folkloric fashions of the 1970s”, the gallery explains, and it’s this that forms the heart of the exhibition – blossoming hip silhouettes, cinched waists and all, as curated by one of the industry’s best curators, Olivier Saillard.
A New Opening: Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando Martins, Lisbon
Lisbon is no stranger to creative spots and new art concepts, and the new Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando Martins (MACAM) is just that. Once the Palácio Condes de Ribeira Grande, the historic site will house both the contemporary art gallery as well as a five-star art hotel set across 64 uniquely designed rooms, marking the first of this style of property in Europe. Over 600 artworks spotlighting both Portuguese and international artists dating from the 19th century to contemporary work will decorate the museum wings, including tiles by Portuguese ceramist Maria Ana Vasco Costa and art by Marina Abramović – and more.
Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur, The Wallace Collection, London
The largest contemporary exhibition to ever hit The Wallace Collection is opening this month, with Grayson Perry’s outlandish commentary of British fashion and culture at the heart of it. Titled Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur, 40 new works from ceramics, tapestries and more, come together to poke at both art and fashion’s incessant search for perfectionism via unusual “outsider art”. Work by Swiss psychiatric artist Aloïse Corbaz and British multimediary artist (ink, tapestry, paint) Madge Gill will also be shown. As a sharp nod to the future, the newer pieces also start to question who an artist is, in our increasingly tech-focussed world.
Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350, The National Gallery, London
While dubbed the Dark Ages elsewhere, the Medieval period in Siena brought a golden age to art (both metaphorically as well as through all the magnificent gold paint and leaf work) as Italian painters forged a new path for art – one that is still some of the most critiqued and visited work today. Rich and decorative, Sienese artists captured religious tableaux as well as immortalised many intimate moments that characterised ways of life and beliefs of this bygone era. Duccio, Simone Martini, as well as brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti – all the big names from this period are on display at The National Gallery, with works reunited after spending centuries split into pieces and displayed in varying cities across Europe.
Arpita Singh: Remembering, Serpentine Gallery, London
Arpita Singh is a leading contemporary artist, whose work emerges from India‘s post-independence era of the mid-twentieth century. Born in West Bengal before relocating to New Delhi, Singh’s signature figurative style offers lots of colour and often presents themes of expedition and journeys, both visually as well as emotionally. Singh creatively merges Indian Court painting – a prominent style in Indian art from the 16th to 19th century depicting the grandeur of royal tradition – with surrealist and modernist tropes emerging beyond European artwork across the 1900s. Many of the subjects of the artist’s work are women, presenting tales of femininity in its many forms amongst a turbulent social backdrop, with each piece offering more than can be summarised in a single idea. “I, the woman, stand there as anybody, as everybody” Arpita Singh explains. Remembering is Arpita Singh’s first solo exhibition in London, and will spotlight pieces that demonstrate her experimentation with different painting techniques from acrylic reverse painting to oils on canvas, spanning Signh’s six decade career, beginning in the 1960s, as selected by the artist.
Still Showing in London …
Linder: Danger Came Smiling, Hayward Gallery
Despite a fifty-year long career and a creative contribution to feminist art, Hayward Gallery’s Danger Came Smiling marks the first London retrospective of the artist Linder. Widely recognised for her photomontage work spanning a variety of materials and subject matters such as textiles, film, perfume, music, fashion and more, Linder’s work offers a rich tapestry of underground art movements and changing feminist ideas across time and culture. “The found images in my work are often quite fragile both materially and conceptually, it doesn’t take much then to hijack them and to take them somewhere far more surreal,” Linder explains. Danger Came Smiling starts in the creative turbulence of the 1970s punk scene in Manchester, a time that Linder was directly immersed in as part of the punk band Ludus. Her work began with her designing the collaged album covers for both Ludus and other contemporary musicians; covers that are still widely recognised as leading images of the British punk scene. The exhibition continues to cover Linder’s challenging of gender stereotypes and aesthetic convention, carefully done through both humour and poetry across her career. Talking about her debut London exhibition, Linder enthuses that the Hayward Gallery’s “Brutalist architecture is the perfect foil for the delicacy of the print ephemera I’ve worked with for over half a century”.
Mickalene Thomas: All About Love, Hayward Gallery
The collage and photomontage theme continues at Hayward Gallery. Following a successful run at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles – co-organised by Hayward Gallery and marking Mickalene Thomas’ first international tour – Mickalene Thomas’ powerful portraits return to the UK capital. With a title taken from canonical feminist author bell hooks, All About Love by artist Mickalene Thomas is a visual examination of motherhood, pop culture, mass media, the politics of power, sexuality, and the complexities of femininity that bell’s essay collection also questions. Thomas comments that “my gaze is the gaze of a Black woman unapologetically loving other Black women.” Love appears in all its forms here; romantic, familial, self-love, even the type of ‘love’ that you can feel for people you have never met. The exhibition collates many different artistic forms including photographs, collages, figurative paintings – often mimicking the poses and compositions of 19th-century French paintings, but reconfigured to re-evaluate the painter-subject power dynamic.
Flowers - Flora In Contemporary Art & Culture, Saatchi Gallery
Gestures of romance, markers of the seasons and muses for art – dating from antiquity to the contemporary – flowers have always played an important, but varying, role in culture. Saatchi Gallery is tributing an entire exhibition to the role of flora in contemporary creative work, spanning fashion, photography, body painting, archival objects, sketches, paintings, and more. The gallery has acquired over 500 works to pull the exhibition together: six hyperrealist floral brooches by Buccellati, including the bejewelled 1929 Orchid; images by Nick Knight; tattoo work by Daniel The Gardener; and designs by Finnish lifestyle brand Marimekko, plus British designers Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood. A highlight of the exhibition is the installation of 100,000 dried flowers by artist Rebecca Louise Law that takes over an entire room for a very photographic moment, proving the mystical allure flowers continue to have today.
The Face Magazine: Culture Shift, National Portrait Gallery
The self-defined “world’s best dressed magazine” is proving its status as a ground-breaking publication, one that set the threshold for creativity in pop culture and spotlighted emerging talent across the eighties, nineties, naughties, (still continuing today) in Britain with Culture Shift at the National Portrait Gallery. This exhibition has been at the forefront of fashion enthusiasts’ ‘to-visit’ exhibitions, and it’s finally opening this month. Since the first issue hit the shelves in May 1980, The Face magazine has photographed – and dressed – a cultural undercurrent of artists from Madonna to Kate Moss, and, for many, helped establish their success and status in the pop industry. Over 200 prints by more than 80 photographers including David LaChapelle, Juergen Teller and Corinne Day will illustrate The Face’s sartorial legacy and lasting creative impact on British (and global) culture.
From The Roster, Hamiltons Gallery
Small but mighty, this independent gallery in London has represented and exhibited some of the biggest names in photography and art across the world. Starting the new year off with a recap, From the Roster will feature a few of the artists who have previously graced the gallery walls, including Steven Meisel, Irving Penn, Herb Ritts and Guido Mocafico, among many others. The works in the exhibition are tied together with an overarching theme of the extra-ordinary, whether through exaggerated forms, superlative depictions of beauty, or unique landscapes and imagery. Despite the theme, the photographs and artworks throughout the exhibition have been produced across different times and settings, to display the ever-evolving tastes in art.
Abi Morocco Photos: Spirit Of Lagos, Autograph Gallery
When husband-and-wife duo John Abe and Funmilayo Abe founded the art gallery Abi Morocco in Lagos to capture the energetic spirit of the Nigerian capital across the 1970s, they perhaps didn’t expect it to also serve as an international legacy and archive for these Nigerian artists. Now, almost ten years after the gallery closed its doors in 2006, the gallery’s vibrant photography collection is on display in London’s Shoreditch, covering moments of celebration, snapshots from everyday life, and lots in between. The exhibition at Autograph ABP not only showcases Lagos’ strong roster of photographic talent but also the efforts of Abi Morocco to preserve and commemorate their work.
Peter Hujar: Eyes Open In The Dark, Raven Row
Peter Hujar’s dramatic and outlandish black and white photography paints an underside to New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, from performance artists to derelict streets. Eyes Open in the Dark examines Hujar’s later work as the AIDS crisis dominated the communities he frequented, an epidemic Hujar himself could not escape. Unconventionally so, Hujar’s photographs can be appreciated for their emotional tenderness and rawness.
Brasil! Brasil! The Birth Of Modernism, Royal Academy
Characterised by a turn away from convention in the search for the new, modernism has always felt a nebulous term in the art world. Across Europe, modernism spread like wildfire at the turn of the 20th century thanks to ground-breaking work by the likes of French artist Louise Bourgeois, British writer Virginia Woolf, and Spanish sculptor Julio Gonzalez (among many, many others). Yet, at the same time, modernism was picking up the pace across Brazil. Now a century on from its beginnings, The Royal Academy in London is exhibiting 130 works by ten core Brazilian artists which each creatively question Indigenous identity and Afro-Brazilian experience from the 1910s to the 1970s. This influential lineup includes Tarsila do Amaral, who is now considered a leading female figure of the nation’s modernist movement, and will span performance artists, painters, and more.
Naomi: In Fashion, V&A Museum, London, UK
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.
The 80s: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain
Britian’s years under Thatcher rule in the 1980s were known to be turbulent. And this exhibition forms a body of photographs that documents the social and cultural impact of the shifting political legislation. From the miners’ strikes to gentrification and the AIDS pandemic, protest defined the voice of the British public facing this strife. The 80s: Photographing Britain highlights how photography gave voice to social change led by the people, and consequently became a tool for loudening marginalised voices.
Still Showing internationally …
Sam Youkilis: Under The Sun, CO/ Berlin
Content creator, photojournalist, photographer, filmmaker, and visual artist: Sam Youkilis has changed the way we film, digest, and interact with the mundanity and spontaneity of real life via Instagram. Poetic and striking, Youkilis has helped to rewrite the visual language we converse through online, by posting short, unedited video clips of fleeting moments around the world and garnering over 700,000 followers. These flaneur-style vignettes effortlessly capture the beauty in the everyday, from street sellers wheeling fresh fruit through Hanoi to affectionate lovers in the backstreets of Naples. As a rare opportunity, snapshots of Sam Youkilis’ work are on display to admire off-screen in Berlin this year.
George Hoyningen-Huene, Glamour e Avanguardia, Palazzo Reale, Milan
A fashion photographer and prominent member of the Surrealist circle, rubbing shoulders and exchanging conversation with the likes of Salvador Dali, Lee Miller, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Cocteau, George Hoyningen-Huene’s visually striking black-and-white photography documented a pivotal era for the arts and fashion world. At Palazzo Reale in Milan this year, over 100 platinum prints are on display, taken for the likes of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, with subjects ranging from dancer Olga Spessivtzeva and Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes.
Anselm Kiefer: Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind, Stedelijk & Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
For the first time ever, the Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum – both in Amsterdam – are coming together to curate and display an extensive exhibition on the life and work of German painter Anselm Kiefer, presented as a two-part exhibition spread across both venues. Inspired by German Romanticism as well as poetry and the works of Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, Kiefer’s work often foregrounds abstraction – but rationally structured – with layers of the mythic, normally painted across large-scale canvases. This is an unprecedented kind of exhibition that you’re sure to want to bookmark if you find yourself in the Dutch capital this year.
Tracey Emin: Sex and Solitude, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence
We all know her name, and for good reason. British artist Dame Tracey Emin has helped define contemporary British art across her impressive career, with autobiographical and confessional works. The beautiful Palazzo in the heart of Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, is hosting a major exhibition dedicated to the award-winning contemporary British artist. Freshly opened this month, the exhibition sees Emin’s autobiographical and confessionary work – including painting, sketches, sculptor, video, installations, photography and more – hung across the beautiful space, from the courtyard to gallery spaces. This is a therapeutic – and visually striking – chance to immerse yourself in the vulnerable and physical work of Tracey Emin, amongst a beautiful setting.
Yasumasa Morimura and Cindy Sherman: Masquerades, M+, Hong Kong
Modern art gallery M+ in Hong Kong is leading a world’s first with this two person exhibition featuring Japanese photographer Yasumasa Morimura and American photographer Cindy Sherman. This is the first time that these two conceptual photographers have been examined next to one another in an exhibition of this scale. Despite working across different countries and responding to different cultural references, both photographers have produced work that fuses fine art, film, and photography to create spell-binding conceptual photographs musing identity, culture, and more.
Lead image: Azzedine Alaïa – Thierry Mugler 2025 – by Saï. Photo by Stéphane Aït Ouarab
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