London’s art scene is bursting with possibilities this May. From Anna Park’s ‘Hot Honey’ which confronts a lack of nuance in playful works which rethink vintage pin-up motifs, to Delcy Morelos’ new earthy artwork presented at the Barbican’s Sculpture Court. Photo London is also back again this year, but at a new location in Kensington, while Zineb Sedira gets ready for the Tate Britain Commission with new work in the Duveen galleries. Es Devlin’s work at V&A East Storehouse is inspired by a historic Russian artist, and the New York and Singapore- based Sundaram Tagore Gallery has finally laid roots in the city, opening a new site on Pall Mall. From group shows to career retrospectives, plan your next visit with our frequently updated guide to the month’s best offerings.
Heading across the pond? Here are the best New York art exhibitions to see this month.
London art exhibitions: what to see in May 2026
Nengi Omuku: We Were Like Those Who Dreamed
Pippy Houldsworth Gallery from 1 – 30 May 2026
After relocating to London from Lagos, Nengi Omuku presents ‘We Were Like Those Who Dreamed’ at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery. The exhibition looks at the pre-colonial history of the Yoruba people, and is presented on large scale strips of Sanyan which is a hand spun cloth. Her work is rooted in horticulture after her initial training as a florist under her mother. Omuku’s work is fresh, mystical and has a deep rooted connection to the natural world.
Francis Picabia. Expanding Horizons
Hauser & Wirth London from 21 May 2026
Francis Picabia is remembered for his career rooted in experimentation, firmly standing in varying art movements such as Impressionism, Fauvism, Dadaism and Cubism. The exhibition explores his progression through these movements between the early 1900s to the 1950s. From this, viewers can see how his work has shaped contemporary art today.
Roni Horn. Seizure of Hope
Hauser & Wirth London from 21 May
Also on show at Hauser & Wirth is Roni Horn’s first exhibition in London in a decade. Here, visitors will see a series of works on paper, looking at repetition, and how the written word can be used as a medium. Alongside this are glass sculptures, and cast objects.
Delcy Morelos: Origo
Barbican, Sculpture Court 15 May until 31 July 2026
It's been a decade since there has been artwork in the Barbican’s Sculpture Court. Now, Colombian artist Delcy Morelos has broken the cycle with a new commission to create a multisensory environment. The artwork, composed of soil, aims to highlight the material's importance in sustaining the world's delicate ecosystem. The immersive installation, inspired by Andean and Amazonian architecture, offers shifting light and different smells across 24 metres, providing a soft, tactile contrast to the Barbican’s brutalist facade.
Sundaram Tagore Gallery opening
Pall Mall 16 May 2026
With current locations in New York and Singapore, Sundaram Tagore Gallery has now opened its doors in London. The new gallery will span over two floors, with a private viewing room and an area for events. The gallery’s particular focus is on diasporic artists from the West, Asia, and the Middle East.
The Everythingists by Es Devlin
V&A East Storehouse from 27 April until 18 October 2026
The work by the Russian artist Natalia Goncharova is the inspiration for Es Devlin’s exhibition at V&A East Storehouse. ‘Everythingism’, (Vsechestvo in Russian) was used to describe Goncharova’s work which spanned across painting, theatre design, fashion and performance art. Devlin, who is equally not enclosed to one medium, relates to this terminology. ‘The Everythingists’ showcases Devlin's sculptural drawings inspired by Goncharova’s painted backdrop made for 1926 Ballet Russes production of The Firebird.
T. Venkanna
Studio Voltaire 17 May until 23 August 2026
Indian artist T. Venkanna showcases a new series of paintings which question sexual imagination and how this is intertwined with societal norms, freedom and repression. His paintings are also inspired by his recent travels around Europe, nodding to the Early Renaissance devotional panel paintings. This exhibition is the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition.
Genuine Fake Premium Economy: Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison & Jasmine Gregory
Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London 1 May – 5 July 2026
In this joint exhibition American artists Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison and Jasmine Gregory, look at the structure of class, labour and value. Being presented at a time of increasing wealth inequality, the artists reflect on their personal transition into adulthood during the 2008 financial crisis. Tearing apart the foundations of the American Dream, the artists raise a magnifying glass on the generation shaped by a fractured global economy.
Zineb Sedira: Tate Britain Commission
Tate Britain from 13 May 2026
Paris-born Zineb Sedira has been asked to take on Tate Britain Commission, creating work for the Duveen galleries. The neo-classical space will display her work, which we can only imagine will sit between her usual mediums of photography, film, installation and performance, with explorations within geopolitical change. Sedira said: ‘Taking on the Tate Britain Commission feels both monumental and intimate. It’s about bringing the weight of history into dialogue with the living pulse of the Pan-African experience. It gives me the opportunity to imagine new stories, new energies, and new meanings.’
Photo London
National Hall, Olympia, 14-17 May 2026
Agony + Ecstasy an Ibiza-based photo gallery
Photo London will return in May, but this year at a new location in Kensington. The fair, which is usually located in Somerset House is known for bringing together acclaimed photographers, galleries and curators with a new generation of talent.
Anna Park: Hot Honey
Lehmann Maupin from 30 April - 30 May
The South Korea-born artist Anna Park offers a voyeuristic mix of the abstract and the figurative. She confronts a lack of nuance in playful works which rethink vintage pin-up motifs. Park explains, ‘These pin-up girls are not reflective of the everyday woman, but I want to place them in these cheeky moments where they are pointing the fun at themselves'
Voice of the Street – Keith Haring’s Subway Drawings
MOCO Museum London until 18 June 2026
Moco Museum is transforming into a New York 1980s subway, with a focus on Keith Haring’s chalk drawings. 30 of his works, which he drew between 1980 and 1985, are recreated in a subway environment. These works were immediate, yet often erased within hours – his fast paced drawing was meant to be enjoyed by everyone, as the artist once said; ‘Art is for everybody.’
Donald Locke: Resistant Forms
Camden Art Centre until 30 August 2026
Camden Art Centre deep dives into the work of the late Guyanese-British artist Donald Locke. This exhibition is designed to showcase his significant contributions as a post-war artist of the Windrush Generation and 20th century British sculpture, which has been significantly overlooked. Expect to see his early biomorphic ceramics, large scale paintings, and mixed media.
Rachel Whiteread: Substitute
Gagosian until 16 May 2026
Rachel Whiteread, Untitled (Stable Door), 2024–26, papier-mâché and silver leaf, in aluminum frame© Rachel Whiteread. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Following her exhibition ‘On Paper’ at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, Rachel Whiteread presents new works at Gagosian. The exhibition features wall-mounted sculptural reliefs, made with papier-mâché pigmented silver and copper leaf. The exhibition title comes from the artist using one medium to echo the other.
Nick Goss Eel Pie Island Hotel
Josh Lilley until 27 May 2026
Discover paintings inspired by Eel Pie Island Hotel on the Thames at Twickenham. Once part squat, part commune, and part dancehall, the hotel was destroyed by fire in the 1970s. Drawing on oral histories and archival material, Goss treats history as unstable. In his paintings, the building appears only in fragments, glimpsed through foliage, crowds or emptied interiors. It transcends specific time periods, and adds an elusive mystery to this destination.
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art
V&A from 28 March 2026
Designer Elsa Schiaparelli wearing black silk dress with crocheted collar of her own design and a turban, photograph by Fredrich Baker, Vogue, 1940
The V&A welcomes the UK’s first exhibition on fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, spanning her work from the 1920s, to the fashion house’s evolution today, under the creative director Daniel Roseberry. His contemporary designs have created conversation in recent years; including a dress with faux-taxidermy lion heads, to a delicate lung dress boasting a string of golden veins.
The Music is Black: A British Story
V&A East Museum from 18 April 2026
Also at the V&A is ‘The Music is Black: A British Story’, an exhibition charting 125 years of Black music-making in the UK. It is a deep dive into how this music shaped British culture.
Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations
Whitechapel Gallery until 14 June 2026
The exhibition showcases over 100 works across four decades from the Freelands Award and Turner Prize winning artist, Veronica Ryan. It highlights her expansive practice spanning sculpture, textiles, and works on paper. ‘Multiple Conversations’ also presents recently rediscovered works from the 1980s, which shows the artist's deep interest in psychology, and memory.
Racheal Crowther
Chisenhale Gallery until 14 June 2026
London-based artist Racheal Crowther’s exhibition with Chisenhale Gallery explores governance, surveillance, and institutional power, and how this is entangled with systems of care. Crowther investigates scent, which has been used as a tool of influence and social control, and traces the many roles of sensory manipulation across time.
'The Weight of Being'
Two Temple Place, London until 19 April 2026
From mental health to masculinity and belonging, ‘The Weight of Being’ at Two Temple Place traces the emotional textures of everyday life, balancing heaviness and joy. Set against a grandiose backdrop of Neo-Tudor architecture, the show presents a medley of sculpture, photography, film and painting. Shedding light on vulnerability, the struggles of mental health, and acts of resilience.
Writer: Teshome Douglas-Campbell
The Coming of Age
Wellcome Collection from 25 March 2026
At the Wellcome Collection, ‘Coming of Age’ explores the perceptions of aging from adolescence to adulthood. Specifically it looks at how societies can adapt for us all to age better. The exhibition is rooted in the statistic that people are living longer. In the UK one in ten children are expected to live beyond the age of 100. The question the exhibition asks is ‘Who gets to live longer and “age well”?’ Bringing together different perspectives from art, science and popular culture, ‘Coming of Age’ explores the assumptions made about life stages and asks what greater longevity means for all of us.
David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting
Serpentine North until 23 August 2026
In his latest exhibition, and his first at Serpentine, David Hockney presents an exhibition inviting people to slow down and enjoy the beauty within the mundane. New works were created specifically for the showcase, rooted in his belief that beauty is worth celebrating.
Catherine Opie: To Be Seen
National Portrait Gallery until 31 May 2026
American artist Catherine Opie presents her photographic portraits in her first major museum exhibition in the UK. Opie’s work explores queer communities, children, surfers, high school footballers, political crowds, and self-portraiture. Making these groups visible, her work ranges from 30 years, including her 1991 collection Being and Having, which are her portraits of LGBTQ+ friends inspired by court painter Hans Holbein. Collectively she highlights subjects who are seen and unseen in art.
Cecily Brown: Picture Making
Serpentine South Gallery until 6 September 2026
Inspired by Kensington Gardens, painter Cecily Brown presents her green compositions which dance with bold brushwork, and colour, resulting in dynamic movement within her pieces. Nature and park life are at the forefront of Brown’s work. Here you will see her exploring this theme through scale and colour, along with a sprinkling of romance from couples, woodland scenes and nature walks. It is a hopeful exhibition, which highlights the beauty within the English landscape, the nostalgia of children’s book illustrations, and has a hint of warning through cautionary tales, all of which are gestures to Brown’s own memories.
Shifting Boundaries
Hauser & Wirth until 30 April 2026
Ōsaka-born artist Takesada Matsutani will showcase his first exhibition in London in over a decade. The exhibition deep dives into his signature style: working with vinyl glue and graphite. It ranges from his previous sculptural pieces to new works that show his experimentation with the unusual medium.
Lynda Benglis and Giacometti: Back at ya
Barbican until 31 May 2026
Barbican presents ‘Back at ya’ by Lynda Benglis and Giacometti. Benglis is known for her vibrant forms she creates which balance playful energy with visceral abstract touches. Here, she will present almost 30 unseen works (which have until now hung on the walls of her studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico). Made from handmade paper stretched over chicken wire and embellished with “cast sparkle”, they will be shown alongside iconic pieces by Giacometti.
Tracey Emin: A Second Life
Tate Modern until 31 August
A much-anticipated landmark exhibition will open this month, tracing 40 years of Tracey Emin’s work, including painting, video, textiles, neons, writing, sculpture, and installation – and spanning unseen pieces as well as some of her most renowned works, such as the radical My Bed from 1998. The exhibition will explore her raw confessional work, which sparked widespread debate when she rose to prominence in the 1990s. Here, she explores themes of love, trauma, passion, pain and healing.
Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting
The National Portrait Gallery until 4 May 2026
Drawing into Painting marks the UK’s first museum exhibition dedicated to Lucian Freud’s works on paper, and his lifelong exploration of the human face and form. The National Portrait Gallery presents his works in pencil, ink, charcoal and etching.
Beatriz González
Barbican until 10 May 2026
Colombian artist Beatriz González (who recently passed away earlier this year) is known for her bold work which explores the power and impact of the images we encounter everyday.
The exhibition , which features over 150 of her works, varies from large scale paintings to repurposed furniture, wallpaper and installations. The images that inspire her questions power structures to looking at violence, and offering her personal reflection on grief and community.
Luigi Ghirri: Felicità
Thomas Dane Gallery until 9 May 2026
‘Luigi Ghirri: Felicità’ at Thomas Dane Gallery proposes happiness not as a condition to be attained, but as a way of inhabiting the world through images. Curated by Alessio Bolzoni and Luca Guadagnino, and unfolding across both of Thomas Dane’s Duke Street spaces, the exhibition makes a persuasive case for Ghirri as one of the most lucid thinkers of photography’s perceptual limits – and one of its most generous practitioners.
Writer: Finn Blythe
Wes Anderson: The Archives
Design Museum until 26 July 2026
The pastel-tinted world of Wes Anderson is celebrated in a retrospective coming to London’s Design Museum. This is the first exhibition dedicated to the director that looks at the evolution of his films. It will showcase over 600 models, props and costumes from Anderson’s films, from his first experiments in the 1990s right up to his most recent Oscar-winning The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Accompanying this, the exhibition will also feature his first drafts and work-in-progress material, including small-scale models such as the 3m wide model of The Grand Budapest Hotel.
The David Bowie Centre
V&A East Storehouse, permanent
Fashion, memorabilia and personal ephemera from David Bowie, now on view at the V&A East Storehouse in London, are as wondrous in their range as their creator. The pioneering musician's 90,000-item personal archive are equally accessible, and – like the artist at the heart of it – equally wondrous in their range. Bowie was an inveterate curator – you might say hoarder – of his own life, keeping every quicksilver fashion statement, every scrap of paper, every piece of memorabilia, amassing a deeply personal life-map that accompanies the Centre’s 70,000 photographs, negatives and colour transparencies. So, alongside the rejection letters are fan correspondence that he kept with equal assiduousness.
Writer Craig McLean
Read the full review of The David Bowie Centre
Nigerian Modernism
Tate Modern until 10 May 2026
‘Nigerian Modernism’ explores modern art in Nigeria in the mid-20th century and the artists who pioneered the movement. Visitors journey through a story of artistic works which spanned across Zaria, Ibadan, Lagos and Enugu, as well as London, Munich and Paris. The exhibition looks at multidimensional works which unites Nigerian, African and European techniques by artists working before and after the decade of national independence from British colonial rule in 1960.