Every year, to kick off the fall season, London’s museums, galleries and art foundations put their best foot forward, programming high-profile exhibitions that will appeal not only to their regular visitors, but also to the more than 60,000 people who typically attend Frieze London and Frieze Masters. Here is a selection of shows on during Frieze Week.
Vincent van Gogh
If you list the big names in the art-history canon, Vincent van Gogh is probably one of the best known: a celebrity if there ever was one. That’s thanks to his extraordinary body of work, but it also owes to his enduring image as a suicidal genius who, during a fateful stay in Provence in France, cut off his left ear.
To mark its 200th anniversary, the National Gallery has staged its first-ever van Gogh exhibition, “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers,” and focused on those two years that the Dutch prodigy spent in Provence (1888 to 1890). Yet the aim is to look past the clichés and demonstrate that there was a method to van Gogh’s perceived madness. His paintings, the curators show, were far from random hallucinations. They were part of a studied ensemble of works, each with a specific purpose and place — including in the famous yellow house in Arles.
Many of van Gogh’s greatest hits are on glorious display. But look out, also, for the many exquisite drawings and views of parks and trees that you’ll probably never see again.
Claude Monet
Up the road from the National Gallery, at the Courtauld Gallery, are 21 paintings of London by another master of the 19th century: Claude Monet. They’re part of a series that originated in September 1899, when Monet parked his easel on his hotel balcony at the Savoy overlooking the River Thames and painted what he described as “some fog effects.”
So gripped was he by these “fog effects” — including the columns of smoke coughed up by the industrial plants across the river — that he arranged three lengthy stays in London from 1899 to 1901 and painted the Thames, the Houses of Parliament and two nearby bridges. Twenty-one of those paintings have now been reunited in “Monet and London. Views of the Thames.”
Monet’s London views include wondrously hazy visions of the Houses of Parliament at sunset, and romantic depictions of the two bridges. One is an ethereal vision of Charing Cross Bridge that was a gift to Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime prime minister, from his literary agent.
Not everything you’ll see is a masterpiece. But Monet’s London views are a significant part of his oeuvre, and for good reason. He intended to show some in London but never got the chance. His former rooms are now part of a suite you can book at the Savoy (though it looks nothing like it did in Monet’s day).
Photography
If you like photography, London has two must-see shows for you. One is the largest photography survey ever put on by the Victoria and Albert Museum: a selection of images from Elton John and David Furnish’s 7,000-strong collection. Featuring more than 300 prints by 140 photographers from 1950 to the present, “Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection” is a crash course in modern and contemporary photography, with prints of the very highest quality and provenance (not the substandard prints often seen at photo fairs). They vary from exquisite black-and-white views by Irving Penn and Richard Avedon to self-portraits by Cindy Sherman and intimate portraits by Nan Goldin.
Also in the survey are images by the South African artist Zanele Muholi, who has a solo exhibition across the river at Tate Modern. The large self-portraits — hung in a single gallery — rank as some of the best contemporary photography in the world today.
Foundations
Outside the museum circuit, London has a rich network of nonprofit foundations that offer very different perspectives on the world. The most international is the Delfina Foundation, founded by the Spanish philanthropist Delfina Entrecanales as a center for artist residencies and steered by the American curator Aaron Cezar.
Many recognized names in global contemporary art were former Delfina residents. Moe Satt — one of Myanmar’s most famous contemporary artists — is one of them, and he’s presenting his first European exhibition, “Moe Satt: Rest the Thumbs on the Cheekbones,” at the foundation’s headquarters near Buckingham Palace.
Satt has, since the early 2000s, produced conceptual and performative art against formidable odds — including censorship, oppression and three months of incarceration in 2021, right after the military coup in Myanmar.
Now living and working in Europe, he is showing earlier sculptures, installations and videos at Delfina, alongside recent works and a new commission (monochrome images of his hands printed onto window blinds in the Delfina foyer).
New Gallery
Since 2023, London’s galaxy of art galleries has had a new member: Ab-Anbar, founded in Tehran in 2014 and named after the Persian words for “water reservoir.” The gallery now has a space in Fitzrovia and is focusing on artists and practices relating to transcultural and marginalized realities. It recently staged a show of the Turkish artist Nil Yalter (who won this year’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale).
Currently, Ab-Anbar is presenting “Douglas Abdell: Intervalism and Other Mathematics,” an exhibition of works by Abdell, an American sculptor who lives and works in Málaga in southern Spain. Of Italian and Lebanese origin, Abdell explores the age-old languages and cultures of the Mediterranean in his works — including Phoenician (the ancient language of what is now Lebanon) and Etruscan (the ancient language of what is now Italy).
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