12 must-see exhibitions coming to the UK in 2025

As we say goodbye to 2024 – a year marked by a flurry of activity in visual art against a tide of alarming headlines and pop culture moments (are we ready to stop talking about Brat yet?) – we look ahead to the cultural highlights of 2025, a year that will hopefully deliver more thought-provoking curatorship in the contemporary art landscape. Echoing the sentiment of this year’s Turner Prize winner Jasleen Kaur’s acceptance speech, art is a necessary and sacred space that draws our attention to the intangible and hidden aspects of society, provoking conversation, solidarity and originality of thought – not to mention an escape from the everyday.

Many of the exhibitions and artists in the list below prove that art is both a catalyst of innovation and imagination, reminding us of key moments and shifts in history while also sparking joy and wonder in the present. Here are a few UK art exhibitions to keep an eye out for during the year ahead…

Danger Came Smiling will be the first London retrospective celebrating the acclaimed British artist, musician and designer, offering a comprehensive overview on Linder Sterling’s 50 year-long career, which has championed feminist critique through the mediums of performance, photomontage and photography. Following the artist’s acclaimed Kettle’s Yard survey in 2020, this show goes one step further, presenting the full trajectory of the Liverpool-born artist’s output, from her early work involved in the punk scene of 1970s Manchester (where she formerly fronted the band Ludus), to never-before-seen works. The Hayward Gallery retrospective foregrounds Linder’s relentless experimentation and radical contributions to visual art over the past half a century. The institution will present her work alongside the show Mickalene Thomas: All About Love, inviting a dialogue between two artistic powerhouses, both of whom fearlessly confront stereotypical representations of the female body and who transcend artistic boundaries.

Linder: Danger Came Smiling will be running at London’s Southbank Centre from February 11 to May 5, 2025.

This major solo show of the late, great LA painter Noah Davis firmly positions the artist as one of leaders of his generation. Known for his dreamlike, tender and uncanny works that centre the Black figure in ordinary, everyday scenes with a touch of surreal mystery, the artist was incentivised by a desire to ‘represent the people around me’. His imaginative vision was one that drew upon myriad art historical references, showcasing his breadth of knowledge and inspiration from across the painterly genre, from the figurative work of Marlene Dumas, to the abstractions of Mark Rothko. Davis studied painting at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York before moving to Los Angeles, where, in 2012, he founded The Underground Museum in the city’s Arlington Heights neighborhood (it sadly closed its doors in 2022). This exhibition will be a rare opportunity to see the evolution of his distinctive figurative paintings that reached an apex in artistic flair before his premature death.

Noah Davis is running at Barbican Art Gallery from February 6 until May 11, 2025

Emerging from London’s nightclub scene of the 1980s, the life of the Australian-born performer, TV personality, designer, musician and artist Leigh Bowery will be the central focus at Tate Modern early next year. Organised in collaboration with Nicola Rainbird, the director and owner of the artist’s estate, this will be a major staging of Bowery’s unconventional life and career, following the exhibition Outlaws which opened at the Fashion and Textile Museum this year. Known for his flamboyant fashions and debauched performances (he once threw his fresh enema at audiences), Bowery was a trailblazer in the burgeoning queer scene of 1980s London, opening his legendary nightclub Taboo in Leicester Square. This exhibition will assemble many of the artist’s fashion ‘looks’, as well as his collaborations with notable figures such as Michael Clark, Nick Knight, and Lucian Freud, situating him firmly as a subversive yet iconic cultural figure.

Leigh Bowery is running at Tate Modern from February 27 until August 31, 2025.

Mickalene Thomas’s first solo exhibition in the UK brings into sharp focus her large-scale paintings that reflect on ideas from Black feminist theory, drawing heavily from the writings of the renowned feminist writer bell hooks (from whom she takes her exhibition title). Known for her distinctive portraits and collaborations with Solange Knowles as well as fashion houses like Dior, the artist has become a household name internationally over the past decade. Assembling monumental portraits of Black, female figures in repose, rest and leisure – a theme that the artist regards as radical and plays upon the work of European artists firmly established in the Western canon – the show offers a celebratory vision of the lives of Black women while referencing the omissions of art history. As seen in the Hayward Gallery presentation, Thomas’ figures convey agency and strength of character; unapologetically meeting the gaze of the viewer and proudly taking up space in the world. Co-organised with The Broad in Los Angeles, and in partnership with the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia and Les Abattoirs in Toulouse, All About Love is set to travel internationally.

Mickalene Thomas: All About Love will be running at London’s Southbank Centre from February 11 to May 5, 2025.  

Assembling rarely-seen black and white photographs that articulate the history of protest in Britain, Resistance, curated by the artist and Oscar-winning film director Steve McQueen, offers an alternative vision of political campaigning in this country. Following the release of his acclaimed feature film Blitz, starring Saoirse Ronan, this exhibition similarly showcases his fascination with history, illuminating the stories of the suffragettes, to the anti-fascist protests of the 1930s, and the Civil Rights marches of the 1970s alongside many other decisive political rallies by the British people over the past century. Beyond demonstrating the significance of political activism, McQueen pays homage to the radical contributions of photography, a medium that in his own words “has really acted as a kind of catalyst for change”. Continuing the filmmaker’s motivation to preserve narratives at risk of being forgotten, this show speaks loudly to the present moment as much as to critical turning points in history.

Resistance is running at the Turner Contemporary, Margate, from February 22 until June 1, 2025.

Curated by the celebrated British-Ghanaian artist, To Improve a Mountain is a group show assembling work from a diverse list of artists who have been pivotal in shaping Yiadom-Boakye’s artistic outlook. Spanning generations and geographies, the show brings to the forefront a number of lesser-known names, as well as more established figures in art history (to be revealed). In homage to a fragment of poetry within the Miles Davis song Inamorata and Narration by Conrad Roberts from 1969 that asks “Who is this music that which description may never justify? / Can the ocean be described?”, Yiadom-Boakye’s curatorial approach has been shaped by what she is instinctively drawn to, from an emotional and intellectual standpoint. As she explains: “The decisions are governed by something I can’t really put into words…I’ve selected things that I love by dint of their poetry, their beauty, their resistance, their internal logic and above all, their power”. This show will tour from May 2025, visiting Leeds Art Gallery followed by MK Gallery in Milton Keynes and a number of yet-to-be announced venues across the UK.

To Improvise A Mountain will be running at Leeds Art Gallery from May 14 until October 5, 2025. It will then move to MK Gallery, Milton Keynes from October 25 until February 2026 (exact dates TBC). Further venues and dates TBC.

This exciting opening at one of the V&A’s new East London spaces, V&A East Storehouse, opens next September and, among its vast and varied collection, will be the permenant home of the David Bowie Centre – an archive of photographs, fashion, musical instruments, make-up charts, stage models, lyrics and music, sketches, designs and other artifacts. This archive brings together rarely-seen artefacts that shaped Bowie’s iconic contributions to music, fashion and pop culture more generally.

The opening of the V&A’s new east London venue arrives after the acquisition of the David Bowie Estate. Holding over a staggering number of 90,000 items, this will be the first time the colossal archive will be revealed so extensively to the public. Curated into three separate zones, notable exhibition highlights include Freddie Burretti designed costumes from Bowie’s breakthrough Ziggy Stardust tour (1972), as well as lyrics for songs including “Fame (1975), “Heroes” (1977) and “Ashes to Ashes” (1980).

The display traces the chameleon of rock’s musical evolution and ceaseless reinvention through the decades, while also pinpointing his undeniable influence on contemporary artists, from Lana del Rey to Lil Nas X and Issey Miyake. Brought to life by a series of rotating guest curators, experts, local from the V&A East Youth Collective, and even some of Bowie’s close friends and collaborators, this is an absolute must-see for Bowie lovers. 

V&A East Storehouse will open on May 31, 2025.

Iconic: Portraiture from Francis Bacon to Andy Warhol assembles the work of notable figures in art history through archival photography, painting and other media. Featuring Francis Bacon, Peter Blake, Pauline Boty, Richard Hamilton, and Andy Warhol among others, the exhibition sources rarely-seen works from private collections as well as loans from major institutions. Centered on the discipline of portraiture, the Holburne Museum show contemplates the seductive power of celebrity, considering how it is constructed by widely-disseminated imagery that is subsequently seared into the public psyche. From Peter Blake’s early 1960s album cover for the Beatles, to Andy Warhol’s silkscreen self-portraits, this show assembles visuals publicised in the era of mass media, all of which characterised Postmodernism and our understanding of the significant figures who shaped it in the latter half of the 20th century.

Iconic: Portraiture from Francis Bacon to Andy Warhol will be running at The Holburne Museum, Bath, from January 24 until May 5, 2025

A major presence in the queer, cultural scene in downtown New York in the 1970s and early 80s, Peter Hujar has come to be recognised as one of the most significant American photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Eyes Open in the Dark is the first posthumous exhibition to have access to the complete trajectory of Hujar’s work. The show focuses on his mature work – a time of debilitating depression in 1976 which shifted his artistic outlook and brought about darker tones in his practice.

Made in close collaboration with the Hujar Estate, the show is curated by the artist’s close friend, the fellow artist and master printer Gary Schneider, as well as the writer and Hujar biographer John Douglas Millar, with assistance from Raven Row’s director, Alex Sainsbury. Eyes Open in the Dark seeks to articulate the subtle poetry of his images, while resisting some of the frames and contexts previously applied to his practice, inviting us to contemplate the photographer’s life and art in novel ways.

Peter Hujar, Eyes Open in the Dark is running at Raven Row, London, from January 29 to April 6, 2025.

Celebrating a century of Surrealism, Forbidden Territories brings into sharp focus the trajectory of the artistic and literary movement that first flourished in bohemian, 1920s Paris. Beginning in 1924 with the publication of André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, the principles of the ever-changing and fluid movement have always been concerned with the subconscious, dreams and the unlimited potential of the imagination. Keeping in the fantastical spirit of Surrealism, the Raven Row show juxtaposes a diverse range of work that draws upon the Surrealist interest in the bodily and botanical, as well as the underlying political and gendered motivations of its creative participants. Featuring work by historic artists such as Ithell Colquhoun, Salvador Dalí and Lee Miller among other British and international artists, this show reveals its contemporary iterations, as seen in the work of María Berrío and Ro Robertson. Currently on view at The Hepworth Wakefield, the exhibition will later tour to The Box in Plymouth in May of next year. 

Forbidden Territories: 100 Years Of Surreal Landscapes is running at The Hepworth, Wakefield, until April 21, 2025, and moving to The Box, Plymouth, May 24 until September 7, 2025.

At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World will be dedicated to one of the most significant American painters of the 20th century. Curated by Hilton Als and previously exhibited at David Zwirner Los Angeles, this show highlights Neel’s pivotal role in shaping figurative painting. Known for her daring use of colour and intimate renderings of her subjects in the pursuit of honesty and veracity, Neel’s unique vision was laden with her lifelong political concerns and unbridled authenticity.

Spanning work made across several decades, this show brings together paintings that tenderly captured her friends and acquaintances from intellectual and artistic circles, particularly those who shared her political ideology, as well as prominent individuals from queer communities. From Allen Ginsberg, to Andy Warhol and Ed Koch, the show brings together the characters who appeared in Neel’s life, expressing how her personal connections and political journey ran alongside and informed her artistic evolution.

At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World will run at Victoria Miro Gallery, London, from  January 30 until March 8, 2025.

Next October, a major retrospective dedicated to the American photographer Lee Miller will open to the public. Beginning her career as a model in New York, she later rubbed shoulders with the Parisian avant-garde artists of the 1920s and 30s, before documenting the horrors of World War II as an official war journalist. A startling image (for which she is perhaps best known), reveals herself nude in Hitler’s bathtub taken on the day the dictator killed himself in 1945. As an article in the New Yorker expresses, “the picture would become famous as a kind of apt visual metaphor for the end of the war.” In the wake of numerous publications, exhibitions and the recent feature film Lee (2023), starring Kate Winslet, the last decade has witnessed an increased interest in Miller, who is belatedly being given the recognition she deserves. Capturing her fearless spirit, this exhibition will trace her roots in fashion, French surrealism, and later photojournalism, chronicling the extraordinary trajectory of her life, as well as the lesser-known sides of her practice.

Lee Miller will be showing at Tate Britain from October 2, 2025, until February 15, 2026.