You know what the Tate does; it pumps out high quality blockbuster exhibition after high quality blockbuster exhibition, year after year. And 2025 is promising to be no different, with a whole bunch of just-announced shows that run the gamut for classic landscape painting all the way to contemporary installation art.
The year kicks off with a show of work by experimental, extravagant performance artist and designer Leigh Bowery at Tate Modern (Feb 27) before a very exciting look at brilliantly weird English video artist Ed Atkins at Tate Britain (Apr 2).
In the summer, Tate Britain is giving long overdue attention to two important modern artists: Edward Burra and Ithell Colquhoun (both Jun 13). Burra’s work is full of grim grit and urbanity, and Colquhoun melded sexuality and mythology into surreal visions of the occult. At the same time, Tate Modern will be hosting a show of immersive fabric works by Korean artist Do Ho Suh (May 1) and the first major European exhibition of work by Emily Kam Kngwarray (Jul 10), celebrated as one of Australia’s greatest artists.
In the autumn, they’ve got a huge group exhibition called ‘Nigerian Modernism’ (Oct 8), an in-depth exploration of art photography called ‘Global Pictorialism’ (Dec 4) and what can only be described as an entirely unnecessary Picasso show, ‘Picasso: Three Dancers’ (Sep 25). Surely we have had enough Picasso exhibitions, suuuurely.
Autumn at Tate Britain meanwhile sees the ultimate art showdown as the gallery pits JMW Turner in a battle to the death against John Constable (Nov 27). Whoever loses will have all their paintings publicly destroyed. Maybe. There’s also the biggest ever retrospective of the work of photography megastar Lee Miller (Oct 2).
Hope you’ve got your Tate membership all paid up, because that’s a lot of art to get through.
More details here.
Can’t wait? Here are the top ten exhibitions you can see in London right now.
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