A first-of-its-kind study launched by Art Fund’s National Art Pass has provided the most compelling scientific evidence to date that viewing art has immediate, measurable benefits for our health and wellbeing.

Undertaken by King’s College London and co-funded by Art Fund, the UK’s national charity for museums and galleries, and the Psychiatry Research Trust, the study measured the physiological responses of participants while viewing masterpieces by world-renowned artists including Manet, Van Gogh and Gauguin at The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery.

The research found that art activates the immune, endocrine (hormone), and autonomic nervous systems all at once – something never previously recorded.��Art Fund hopes the findings will encourage more people to visit their local museums and galleries to experience these proven health benefits firsthand.

Dr Tony Woods, researcher at Kings College London, said: “The research clearly shows the stress-reducing properties of viewing original art and its ability to simultaneously excite, engage and arouse us.

“From a scientific perspective, the most exciting outtake is that art had a positive impact on three different body systems – the immune, endocrine and autonomic systems – at the same time. This is a unique finding and something we were genuinely surprised to see.”

The study involved 50 volunteers aged 18-40, who either viewed original artworks at The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery or reproductions of the same paintings in a matched, non-gallery environment. It took place between July and September 2025.��Participants were monitored for heart rate variability and skin temperature using research-grade digital watches to track levels of interest and arousal. Their cytokines and cortisol levels were also measured through saliva samples, providing a clear indication of stress levels.

Cortisol levels – the key stress hormone – fell by an average of 22% in the gallery group, compared to just 8% for the reproduction group. Those viewing original art also had more dynamic heart activity – indicating that art engages the body through both emotional arousal and stress regulation.

Pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-6 and TNF-α) – which are linked to stress and a number of chronic diseases – dropped by 30% and 28% respectively for those viewing original art, with no change observed in the reproduction group. This suggests art has a potential calming effect on the body’s inflammatory responses.

Expanding on why this helps to demonstrate art is good for us, Dr Woods said: “Stress hormones and inflammatory markers like cortisol, IL-6 and TNF-alpha are linked to a wide range of health problems, from heart disease and diabetes to anxiety and depression. The fact that viewing original art lowered these markers suggests that cultural experiences may play a real role in protecting both mind and body.”

As well as appearing less stressed, participants also showed physiological signs of excitement whilst viewing art, including dips in skin temperature (-0.74C) and more variation in heartbeat patterns, as well as higher overall heart rates – indicating bursts of emotional arousal.

These findings suggest that art can arouse, deeply relax and reduce stress levels at the same time when viewed in a gallery – which experts say is effectively a “cultural workout for the body”.

Dr Woods added: “In short, our unique and original study provides compelling evidence that viewing art in a gallery is ‘good for you’ and helps to further our understanding of its fundamental benefits. In essence, Art doesn’t just move us emotionally – it calms the body too.”

The research also revealed that neither personality traits nor emotional intelligence influenced responses, suggesting the broad health benefits of art on the body are universal.

While��previous studies��have linked regular gallery visits to long-term wellbeing, this is the first to capture real-time physiological benefits whilst viewing art, demonstrating its immediate benefits.

Art Fund’s director, Jenny Waldman, said: “This study proves for the first time what we’ve long felt at Art Fund – that art really is good for you. What’s particularly exciting is that the findings show these benefits are universal – they can be experienced by anyone. We want to encourage everyone to make time to visit their local museum or gallery and experience these powerful effects for themselves. With a National Art Pass, you can enjoy free or discounted entry to hundreds of inspiring places across the UK – and discover just how good art can make you feel.”

The study represents a successful co-funding collaboration between Art Fund and the mental health charity, the Psychiatry Research Trust.

The Chair of the Psychiatry Research Trust, Professor Carmine Pariante, said: “We are delighted to have worked so collaboratively with the Art Fund. The Trust funds research and education in mental health and this type of interdisciplinary research, relevant to both science and wellbeing, is exactly the type of studies that are needed to understand how arts influences both mind and body.”

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Join us in-person to explore the subject of Food in Art.

We will visit the Ģ����Ƶ Gallery’s new ‘Wayne Thiebaud. American still life’ exhibition to consider how and why artists have focused on food, past and present.

Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021) is one of the most original American artists of the 20th��century, known for his colourful works depicting commonplace objects – cakes, ice cream cones, pastries, and hot dogs – taken straight from the American deli counter. Thiebaud famously said: “Each era produces its own still life”. ��You will have the chance to explore his vibrant and lushly painted still lifes close up and discover connections with works in the Ģ����Ƶ Gallery by and Édouard Manet.

We will also view Wayne Thiebaud. Delights before participating in a practical session to understand how Thiebaud translated his pies, cakes and other treats across different media, including ink, pastel, pencil, watercolour, woodcut, etching and aquatint.

This workshop will be led by Art Historian and gallery educator Fran Herrick, National Schools Officer, Tessa Carr and printmaker Helen Higgins, Head of Learning.

Key Information
Event:��Food in Art: Wayne Thiebaud
Date: Saturday 15^th�����DZ��𳾲����
Time: 10:00am – 3:00pm
Location: In-person, at The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery

These workshops are free and open to students attending UK state schools and colleges. Suitable for ages 16-18, with preference given to Y12 students (or equivalent). Booking is essential due to popular demand. Any questions, please email��learning@courtauld.ac.uk

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The first UK museum exhibition on American artist Wayne Thiebaud is now open at The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery (10 Oct 2025 – 18 Jan 2026)

One of the most original American artists of the 20th century, Wayne Thiebaud developed a unique style of painting to express his vision of post-war American culture through its everyday objects.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life focuses on Thiebaud’s break-out works of the 1960s that made his reputation, bringing together some of the greatest paintings the artists produced during this remarkable period – lush and captivating depictions of quintessential modern American subjects from cherry pies, hot dogs and candy counters to gumball dispensers and pinball machines. With these works, Thiebaud recast the genre of still life for the modern era.

“Each era produces its own still life” – Wayne Thiebaud, 1962

Thiebaud considered the everyday objects of American life to be a vital subject for contemporary art, and he saw his work as continuing the radical legacy of earlier still-life paintings by Chardin, Manet, Cézanne and others. Thiebaud believed in the importance of commonplace objects that might otherwise be overlooked or considered kitsch. His work turns hot dogs, lemon meringue pies and glossy cream cakes into the stuff of profound modern painting.������

Thiebaud lived and worked most of his life in Sacramento, California, and was a longstanding teacher at nearby University of California, Davis. In the 1940s and 1950s, before becoming a painter, he worked as an illustrator, cartoonist and art director, including a summer spent in the animation department of Walt Disney Studios and a role as a graphic designer for the US army as part of his military service during the Second World War.

In 1956, Thiebaud travelled to New York to meet the avant-garde artists working there. William de Koonig was especially inspirational and encouraged him to find his own voice and subjects as a modern painter. Back in Sacramento, he began painting commonplace objects of American life, largely from memory, and soon crystallised his unique approach, isolating his richly painted subjects against spare backgrounds. In 1962, he would, after much rejection, stage his first solo show at the Allan Stone Gallery – an overnight success, propelling him into the limelight. Important collectors and institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, purchased works and the exhibition sold out. From there, Thiebaud would go on to become one of the major figures of 20th-century American art.

The exhibition features rarely lent works from major museums and private collections in the United States. Highlights include Thiebaud’s epic painting��Cakes, lent for the first time outside the US by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Four Pinball Machines,��one of his most significant works in a private collection. Other major loans include works from the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, among others. The exhibition also benefits from generous loans from the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation in Sacramento.

An accompanying display in the Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery,��Wayne Thiebaud. Delights, focuses on the artist’s celebrated 1965 portfolio of 17 exquisite etchings to offer further insight into his still-life motifs and work as a graphic artist.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Karen Serres, Senior Curator of Paintings, and Dr Barnaby Wright, Deputy Head of The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery and Daniel Katz Curator of 20th-Century Art. It is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue showcasing new research on Thiebaud’s still lifes, with contributions from leading scholars.

Tickets to Abstract Erotic include entry to��Wayne Thiebaud. Delights and the permanent collection.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life
10 Oct 2025 – 18 Jan 2026
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries, Floor 3

Title Supporter: Griffin Catalyst
Supported by Kenneth C. Griffin and the Wayne Thiebaud Exhibition Circle

Wayne Thiebaud. Delights
10 Oct 2025 – 18 Jan 2026
Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery, Floor 1

The programme of displays in the Drawings Gallery is generously supported by the International Music and Art Foundation, with additional support from James Bartos.

The post Now open – The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life appeared first on The Ģ����Ƶ.

The post First UK museum exhibition of Wayne Thiebaud opens at The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery appeared first on The Ģ����Ƶ.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life at The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery will be the first-ever museum show of Wayne Thiebaud’s work in the UK. It will present Thiebaud’s remarkable, vibrant and lushly painted still-lifes of quintessentially post-war American subjects, from diner food and deli counters to gumball dispensers and pinball machines. These are the paintings with which Thiebaud made his name in the United States in the early 1960s. ��Here’s five things to know about the celebrated modern artist and his works.

He found fame with a slice of pie

At the beginning of the 1960s, Thiebaud developed a unique style of painting, devoting himself to depicting common objects of American life, from pieces of cherry pie to gumball machines and deli counters. He also liked how a slice of pie on a plate – essentially, a triangle on top of a circle, as he said – represented the building blocks of a composition. He exhibited these still lifes to great acclaim in 1962. His paintings of pies and cakes were especially admired and bought by major collectors and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This marked the beginning of his reputation as a major figure of modern painting.

A painter, not a Pop artist

Thiebaud was deeply engaged with everyday objects of popular culture, like pinball machines and candy counters, and was often exhibited alongside Pop artists of the period, such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. However, Thiebaud disliked being thought of as a Pop artist and considered himself a painter in the tradition of Jean-Siméon Chardin and Paul Cézanne. Thiebaud’s lushly painted works that vividly bring their subjects to life are very different from the cool detachment, slick surfaces and appropriation of commercial graphics that are features of Pop art.

See Wayne Thiebaud at The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery

Exhibition, Exhibitions, The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery, What’s on Highlights

Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life

10 Oct 2025 – 18 Jan 2026

The first ever UK museum show devoted to the work of Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021), now considered to be one of the greatest and most original American artists of the 20th century.

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Exhibition, Exhibitions, The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery, What’s on Highlights

Wayne Thiebaud. Delights

10 Oct 2025 – 18 Jan 2026

This display of 17 prints complements The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life, the first ever UK museum show devoted to the work of Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021).

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The post 5 things to know about Wayne Thiebaud appeared first on The Ģ����Ƶ.

Dr Lois Oliver

10 pre-recorded lectures and 5 live Zoom seminars over 5 weeks at 18:30, and where necessary, also at 20:00 [London time], from Wednesday 5 November to Wednesday 3 December 2025

£395

Course description

This course offers the opportunity to explore the achievements of a range of extraordinary individuals. They include the rival portraitists Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun and Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, whose glittering careers at the royal court were interrupted by the 1789 Revolution but who subsequently reinvented themselves; animal painter Rosa Bonheur, famed across Europe and America, who became the first woman to be awarded the Légion d’honneur; Impressionist innovators Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt; and an artist who defied all convention, the model-turned-artist Suzanne Valadon.

While the geographical focus is France, the cast of artists is international. We shall explore the achievements of Americans in Paris, attracted by tuition at the Académie Julian and Académie Colarossi, and the numerous Nordic visitors who not only studied in the capital but also visited artist colonies on the coast, establishing links with similar communities in Scandinavia.

The course combines in-depth lectures on individual artists and groups of artists with thematic sessions on topics such as artistic training; exhibition opportunities; the (often gendered) language of art criticism; artists as models; and self-representation.

The post Women Artists in France, 1770-1914 appeared first on The Ģ����Ƶ.

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The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery announced today its programme of exhibitions and displays for 2026.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea��will be the first ever exhibition dedicated to the seascapes of the major French Post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat (1859-1891). Due to his early death at the age of 31, Seurat left a small body of works and exhibitions devoted to him are rare. Opening 13 February 2026, this major exhibition will be the first devoted to Seurat in the UK in almost 30 years, reuniting 27 exceptional paintings, oil sketches and drawings that chart the evolution of Seurat’s radical style through the recurring motif of the sea.

Hepworth in Colour��(12 June – 6 September 2026) will unite for the first time around 20 of Barbara Hepworth’s most significant sculptures with colour alongside 30 important drawings. The exhibition will be the first of its kind, exploring Hepworth’s lifelong fascination with colour and providing a unique opportunity for visitors to discover the role of colour in the work of one of the most influential sculptors of the 20^th��century.

In the autumn, The Ģ����Ƶ will present the first solo-exhibition in Europe of the acclaimed New York-based painter Salman Toor (b. 1983, Lahore). Toor’s iconic, thought-provoking and yet humorous paintings capture intimate moments of love and friendship as well experiences of solitude and alienation. Opening 2 October 2026,��Salman Toor: Someone Like You��will bring together notable canvases from major international collections along with a display of Toor’s striking drawings.

Displays in the Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery in 2026 will include landscape watercolours by women artists working in Britain and abroad between 1760 and 1860, and a display of prints created in London by artists including Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Paula Rego.

Also on display at The Ģ����Ƶ until 28 June 2026 is��The Barber in London: Highlights from a Remarkable Collection,��a display of exceptional paintings from The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, featuring masterpieces by artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Frans Hals, JMW Turner, and Edgar Degas.

Two new site-specific commissions by acclaimed artist��Rachel Jones��(b. 1991) will also be on display in The John Browne Entrance Hall and Ticketing Hall of The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery and will be free to visit.

Exhibitions

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries
13 February – 17 May 2026
The Ģ����Ƶ will present the first ever exhibition dedicated to the seascapes of the major French Post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat (1859–1891). This ambitious exhibition will be the first devoted to Seurat in the UK in almost 30 years. It will chart the evolution of his radical and distinctive style through the recurring motif of the sea. It follows major Impressionist exhibitions at The Ģ����Ƶ, such as��Cézanne’s Card Players,��The Morgan Stanley Exhibition: Van Gogh. Self-Portraits��and, most recently, the acclaimed��The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London.��Views of the Thames, which was seen by a record 120,000 visitors.

The Ģ����Ƶ holds the largest collection of works by Seurat in the UK. The artist is best known as the creator of the Neo-Impressionist technique, in which shapes and light are rendered by juxtaposing small dots of pure colour. Due to his early death at the age of 31, Seurat left a small body of work and exhibitions devoted to him are rare.

The exhibition will bring together 27 paintings, oil sketches and drawings from major private and public collections, made by Seurat during the five summers he spent on the northern coast of France, between 1885 and 1890. Working in port towns along the English Channel, including Honfleur, Port-en-Bessin and Gravelines, Seurat captured their seascapes and port activity in his distinctive Neo-Impressionist technique. He sought, in his words, ‘to wash his eyes of the days spent in the studio [in Paris] and to translate in the most faithful manner the bright clarity, in all its nuances’.

The exhibition’s title supporter is Griffin Catalyst, the civic engagement initiative of Citadel Founder and CEO Kenneth C. Griffin.

Hepworth in Colour
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries
12 June – 6 September 2026
Barbara Hepworth (1903 –1975) is best known for her abstract sculptural forms inspired by nature and the rugged seaside landscapes of Cornwall, where she lived and worked. This ambitious exhibition will be the first to explore a less familiar aspect of her work: the artist’s lifelong fascination with colour, which she used in highly original and unexpected ways. The exhibition will unite for the first time her early innovative sculptures with colour of the 1940s, displayed alongside the most important drawings from that decade, and will include major examples of her work with colour from the 1950s and 1960s.

Discussing her pioneering use of colour in sculpture with her son-in-law, the art historian Alan Bowness, Hepworth stated ‘in a way my colour has been accepted, but never understood’.

This focused, research-driven exhibition will be comprised of around 20 sculptures and 30 exceptional drawings, showing sculpture in dialogue with her painted and graphic works.

At the heart of the exhibition is an extraordinary group of wood and stone carvings created in the 1940s, with vivid blues and yellows painted into hollows and onto curves. Many of these have never previously been shown together and include key works from public and private collections, including as far afield as Australia and Hong Kong.

Hepworth’s interest in colour continued across her career into the 1950s and 1960s, with her painterly bronze surfaces and surprising use of coloured marbles that expand the role of colour in sculpture and reflecting a more expressive painting and drawing practice.

Hepworth in Colour��provides an exciting and unique opportunity to discover the vital and expressive role of colour in Hepworth’s sculpture, offering a fresh way of understanding one of the most remarkable artists of the 20th century.

The exhibition’s lead supporter is the Huo Family Foundation.

Salman Toor: Someone Like You
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries
2 October 2026 – 10 January 2027
The first solo exhibition in Europe of the acclaimed New York-based painter Salman Toor.

The exhibition focuses on Salman Toor’s exploration of human interactions and the desire and struggle to experience a sense of belonging, both culturally and emotionally. The exhibition will bring together around 20 of the artist’s most iconic, thought-provoking and yet humorous paintings that represent people in shared moments of friendship and love, as well as experiencing solitude and alienation.

The characters that populate Toor’s painting are fictional but rooted in personal experiences and memories. Toor says that his paintings ‘depict queer and immigrant lives that straddle different cultures and inhabit the tension between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement. What it means to find a community, but also the daily costs associated with visibility.’

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983, Toor trained in the United States. He currently lives and works in New York. He has had major exhibitions internationally, including his acclaimed first institutional solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York��(2020-21). More recently, he participated in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2024). The Ģ����Ƶ’s exhibition will be Toor’s first solo museum show in Europe.

Toor’s work is rooted in a deep engagement with the tradition of painting and The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery is one of the museums he most admires. One of the principal works in the exhibition,��The Bar on East 13th��(2019), revisits The Ģ����Ƶ’s celebrated painting by Édouard Manet,��A Bar at the Folies-Bergère��(1882).

The exhibition will be accompanied by a display of Toor’s drawings in the Gilbert & Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery. Showcasing Toor’s mastery of drawing and the way it informs his practice as a painter, the display will include��Fag Puddle in Vitrine��(2021), acquired by The Ģ����Ƶ in 2024.

Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery

A View of One’s Own: Landscapes by British Women Artists, 1760-1860
Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery
28 January 2026 – 20 May 2026
A View of One’s Own��showcases landscape drawings and watercolours by British women artists working between 1760 and 1860 whose work represents a growing area of The Ģ����Ƶ’s collection.

These artists range from highly accomplished amateurs to those ambitious for more formal recognition. They have remained mostly unknown, and their works largely unpublished.

When the Royal Academy was founded in 1768, its members included two women, yet there would not be another female academician until Dame Laura Knight was elected in 1936. Despite this institutional exclusion, women artists in Britain continued to train, practice and exhibit during this period, particularly in the field of landscape watercolours.

This exhibition and its accompanying catalogue shed new light on these artists, working within a heavily male dominated era in the arts. Some of the artists achieved recognition during their lifetimes while others’ work remained private, until later discovered.

10 artists are featured in the exhibition. They include Harriet Lister and Lady Mary Lowther, who were among the first to depict the Lake District; Amelia Long, Lady Farnborough, one of the first British artists to travel to France following the Napoleonic Wars, and Elizabeth Batty – whose works appearing in the show were only rediscovered a few years ago.

Studio Prints: An artists’ workshop��
Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery
6 June – 13 September 2026
This display of prints by artists including Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Paula Rego celebrates the little-known story of the lively printmaking workshop established in London in 1968 by Dorothea Wight (1944-2013), who was later joined in 1974 by her future husband Marc Balakjian (1940-2017).

What had begun as a private workshop, created by Wight so that she could print her own works after leaving the Slade School of Art, soon transformed into a dynamic meeting place for artists, establishing Studio Prints as a legendary London printmaking workshop.

Coinciding with a resurgence of interest in printmaking in the 1960s and 1970s, Wight and Balakjian collaborated with artists such as Auerbach, Freud, Leon Kossoff, Rego, and Celia Paul, some of whom became close friends.

This display marks the recent acquisition of a group of proof impressions by these celebrated London-based artists, allocated to The Ģ����Ƶ by HM Government under the Cultural Gifts Scheme.

The programme of displays in the Drawings Gallery is generously supported by the International Music and Art Foundation, with additional support from James Bartos.

Salman Toor: Drawings
Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery, Floor 1
2 Oct 2026 – 10 Jan 2027

‘Painting was something I learned when I moved from Pakistan to the United States, but drawing I always considered as second nature.’
Salman Toor (2022)

For Salman Toor (b.1983), drawing is an integral part of artistic life. To coincide with the exhibition��Salman Toor: Someone Like You, this focused display of a substantial group of works on paper, made with ink, charcoal, and gouache, showcases the artist’s mastery of drawing and the way in which it informs his practice as a painter.

Having started drawing as a child, figure-drawing classes were a crucial part of Toor’s undergraduate training. Informed by his close study of art history, particularly of baroque works, Toor’s arresting drawings are characterised by his striking treatment of light as well as his rendering of real and implied movement to create pictures charged with a sense of dynamism and inner life.

Toor often works on variations of recurring motifs. Among the works included in this presentation are examples of his distinctive drawings of individuals and groups of figures at border control checks, as well as still-lifes such as��Fag Puddle in Vitrine��(2021), which capture the fascination and greed connected to histories of accumulation and plundering. At times, the artist has reworked historical paintings that especially affected him into new narratives and compositions, such as in his drawing��Three Mascots��(2023), after Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s grisaille��The Three Soldiers��(1568).

Although they are derived from his imagination, Toor’s drawings are often based on memories, especially the faces of friends and acquaintances; a recent example includes the portrait��Turtleneck��(2024). Toor has said that drawing someone is a way of connecting, ‘like praying for someone, or thinking about them, creating a fantasy of them’.

The programme of displays in the Drawings Gallery are generously supported by the International Music and Art Foundation, with additional support from James Bartos.

Project Space

The Painted Tower: Conservation in Context at Longthorpe
Project Space
26 February – 27 May 2026
This display offers an insight into The Ģ����Ƶ’s current collaboration with English Heritage to conserve the remarkable 14^th-century wall paintings in Longthorpe Tower, Peterborough.

Drawing on material from our��National Wall Paintings Survey��archive, the display will showcase the pioneering role of The Ģ����Ƶ’s Conservation Department in safeguarding Britain’s wall paintings and the peculiar challenges of caring for paintings attached to historic buildings.

Exploring the creation of Longthorpe’s exceptionally complete scheme of medieval decoration, the display will illuminate the ways in which wall paintings were influenced by other contemporary art forms and used to communicate with their audiences. Recounting the story of the scheme’s creation and rediscovery, we will examine the evolution of approaches to conserving wall paintings and demonstrate how an understanding of the paintings’ physical history helps inform their preservation into the future.

Hepworth and Nicholson: The Hampstead Studio Photographs
Project Space
6 Jun – 4 Oct 2026
Coinciding with The Ģ����Ƶ’s major exhibition��Hepworth in Colour,��this display brings together a remarkable group of photographs of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson’s London studio, taken in 1933 by Paul Laib (1869–1958).

The photographs, which are held in The Ģ����Ƶ’s Conway Library, are among the most evocative and iconic studio images taken in Britain during the 20th century. Along with portraits of the two artists, the photographs show their shared studio at No. 7, Mall Studios in Hampstead – a space populated with sculptures, paintings and prints, arranged side-by-side with carving tools, plants and other studio objects.

This display will offer a captivating insight into Hepworth and Nicholson’s London studio environment, which they occupied during the 1930s before moving to St Ives in Cornwall. The photographs also stand as compelling works of art in their own right.

Winifred Gill: A Bloomsbury Pioneer
Project Space
14 October 2026 – 10 February 2027
This display will spotlight the artist Winifred Gill (1891-1981), through works held in The Ģ����Ƶ’s collection. Although a gifted artist and a central figure at Roger Fry’s avant-garde Omega Workshops, Gill’s contributions have since remained largely overlooked. She studied at the Slade before joining the Workshops as a designer, maker and, for a time, business manager.

On display will be a number of Gill’s inventive toy designs for the Omega Workshops, as well as a remarkable still life painting made around this time that is deeply characteristic of the Bloomsbury style in its bold response to colour and form. Later prints will show how Gill’s style developed in the 1920s while working as a teacher of arts and crafts in the pioneering Bristol and Manchester University Settlements. Sketchbooks and printing materials will offer a deeper understanding of her practice.

The post The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery announces 2026 exhibition programme appeared first on The Ģ����Ƶ.

The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery announced today its programme of exhibitions and displays for 2026.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea will be the first ever exhibition dedicated to the seascapes of the major French Post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat (1859-1891). Due to his early death at the age of 31, Seurat left a small body of works and exhibitions devoted to him are rare. Opening 13 February 2026, this major exhibition will be the first devoted to Seurat in the UK in almost 30 years, reuniting 27 exceptional paintings, oil sketches and drawings that chart the evolution of Seurat’s radical style through the recurring motif of the sea.

Hepworth in Colour (12 June – 6 September 2026) will unite for the first time around 20 of Barbara Hepworth’s most significant sculptures with colour alongside 30 important drawings. The exhibition will be the first of its kind, exploring Hepworth’s lifelong fascination with colour and providing a unique opportunity for visitors to discover the role of colour in the work of one of the most influential sculptors of the 20^th century.

In the autumn, The Ģ����Ƶ will present the first solo-exhibition in Europe of the acclaimed New York-based painter Salman Toor (b. 1983, Lahore). Toor’s iconic, thought-provoking and yet humorous paintings capture intimate moments of love and friendship as well experiences of solitude and alienation. Opening 2 October 2026, Salman Toor: Someone Like You will bring together notable canvases from major international collections along with a display of Toor’s striking drawings.

Displays in the Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery in 2026 will include landscape watercolours by women artists working in Britain and abroad between 1760 and 1860, and a display of prints created in London by artists including Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Paula Rego.

Also on display at The Ģ����Ƶ until 28 June 2026 is The Barber in London: Highlights from a Remarkable Collection, a display of exceptional paintings from The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, featuring masterpieces by artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Frans Hals, JMW Turner, and Edgar Degas.

Two new site-specific commissions by acclaimed artist Rachel Jones (b. 1991) will also be on display in The John Browne Entrance Hall and Ticketing Hall of The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery and will be free to visit.

Exhibitions

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries
13 February – 17 May 2026
The Ģ����Ƶ will present the first ever exhibition dedicated to the seascapes of the major French Post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat (1859–1891). This ambitious exhibition will be the first devoted to Seurat in the UK in almost 30 years. It will chart the evolution of his radical and distinctive style through the recurring motif of the sea. It follows major Impressionist exhibitions at The Ģ����Ƶ, such as Cézanne’s Card Players, The Morgan Stanley Exhibition: Van Gogh. Self-Portraits and, most recently, the acclaimed The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London. Views of the Thames, which was seen by a record 120,000 visitors.

The Ģ����Ƶ holds the largest collection of works by Seurat in the UK. The artist is best known as the creator of the Neo-Impressionist technique, in which shapes and light are rendered by juxtaposing small dots of pure colour. Due to his early death at the age of 31, Seurat left a small body of work and exhibitions devoted to him are rare.

The exhibition will bring together 27 paintings, oil sketches and drawings from major private and public collections, made by Seurat during the five summers he spent on the northern coast of France, between 1885 and 1890. Working in port towns along the English Channel, including Honfleur, Port-en-Bessin and Gravelines, Seurat captured their seascapes and port activity in his distinctive Neo-Impressionist technique. He sought, in his words, ‘to wash his eyes of the days spent in the studio [in Paris] and to translate in the most faithful manner the bright clarity, in all its nuances’.

The exhibition’s title supporter is Griffin Catalyst, the civic engagement initiative of Citadel Founder and CEO Kenneth C. Griffin.

Hepworth in Colour
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries
12 June – 6 September 2026
Barbara Hepworth (1903 –1975) is best known for her abstract sculptural forms inspired by nature and the rugged seaside landscapes of Cornwall, where she lived and worked. This ambitious exhibition will be the first to explore a less familiar aspect of her work: the artist’s lifelong fascination with colour, which she used in highly original and unexpected ways. The exhibition will unite for the first time her early innovative sculptures with colour of the 1940s, displayed alongside the most important drawings from that decade, and will include major examples of her work with colour from the 1950s and 1960s.

Discussing her pioneering use of colour in sculpture with her son-in-law, the art historian Alan Bowness, Hepworth stated ‘in a way my colour has been accepted, but never understood’.

This focused, research-driven exhibition will be comprised of around 20 sculptures and 30 exceptional drawings, showing sculpture in dialogue with her painted and graphic works.

At the heart of the exhibition is an extraordinary group of wood and stone carvings created in the 1940s, with vivid blues and yellows painted into hollows and onto curves. Many of these have never previously been shown together and include key works from public and private collections, including as far afield as Australia and Hong Kong.

Hepworth’s interest in colour continued across her career into the 1950s and 1960s, with her painterly bronze surfaces and surprising use of coloured marbles that expand the role of colour in sculpture and reflecting a more expressive painting and drawing practice.

Hepworth in Colour provides an exciting and unique opportunity to discover the vital and expressive role of colour in Hepworth’s sculpture, offering a fresh way of understanding one of the most remarkable artists of the 20th century.

The exhibition’s lead supporter is the Huo Family Foundation.

Salman Toor: Someone Like You
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries
2 October 2026 – 10 January 2027
The first solo exhibition in Europe of the acclaimed New York-based painter Salman Toor.

The exhibition focuses on Salman Toor’s exploration of human interactions and the desire and struggle to experience a sense of belonging, both culturally and emotionally. The exhibition will bring together around 20 of the artist’s most iconic, thought-provoking and yet humorous paintings that represent people in shared moments of friendship and love, as well as experiencing solitude and alienation.

The characters that populate Toor’s painting are fictional but rooted in personal experiences and memories. Toor says that his paintings ‘depict queer and immigrant lives that straddle different cultures and inhabit the tension between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement. What it means to find a community, but also the daily costs associated with visibility.’

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983, Toor trained in the United States. He currently lives and works in New York. He has had major exhibitions internationally, including his acclaimed first institutional solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York��(2020-21). More recently, he participated in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2024). The Ģ����Ƶ’s exhibition will be Toor’s first solo museum show in Europe.

Toor’s work is rooted in a deep engagement with the tradition of painting and The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery is one of the museums he most admires. One of the principal works in the exhibition, The Bar on East 13th (2019), revisits The Ģ����Ƶ’s celebrated painting by Édouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882).

The exhibition will be accompanied by a display of Toor’s drawings in the Gilbert & Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery. Showcasing Toor’s mastery of drawing and the way it informs his practice as a painter, the display will include Fag Puddle in Vitrine (2021), acquired by The Ģ����Ƶ in 2024.

Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery

A View of One’s Own: Landscapes by British Women Artists, 1760-1860
Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery
28 January 2026 – 20 May 2026
A View of One’s Own showcases landscape drawings and watercolours by British women artists working between 1760 and 1860 whose work represents a growing area of The Ģ����Ƶ’s collection.

These artists range from highly accomplished amateurs to those ambitious for more formal recognition. They have remained mostly unknown, and their works largely unpublished.

When the Royal Academy was founded in 1768, its members included two women, yet there would not be another female academician until Dame Laura Knight was elected in 1936. Despite this institutional exclusion, women artists in Britain continued to train, practice and exhibit during this period, particularly in the field of landscape watercolours.

This exhibition and its accompanying catalogue shed new light on these artists, working within a heavily male dominated era in the arts. Some of the artists achieved recognition during their lifetimes while others’ work remained private, until later discovered.

10 artists are featured in the exhibition. They include Harriet Lister and Lady Mary Lowther, who were among the first to depict the Lake District; Amelia Long, Lady Farnborough, one of the first British artists to travel to France following the Napoleonic Wars, and Elizabeth Batty – whose works appearing in the show were only rediscovered a few years ago.

Studio Prints: An artists’ workshop��
Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery
6 June – 13 September 2026
This display of prints by artists including Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Paula Rego celebrates the little-known story of the lively printmaking workshop established in London in 1968 by Dorothea Wight (1944-2013), who was later joined in 1974 by her future husband Marc Balakjian (1940-2017).

What had begun as a private workshop, created by Wight so that she could print her own works after leaving the Slade School of Art, soon transformed into a dynamic meeting place for artists, establishing Studio Prints as a legendary London printmaking workshop.

Coinciding with a resurgence of interest in printmaking in the 1960s and 1970s, Wight and Balakjian collaborated with artists such as Auerbach, Freud, Leon Kossoff, Rego, and Celia Paul, some of whom became close friends.

This display marks the recent acquisition of a group of proof impressions by these celebrated London-based artists, allocated to The Ģ����Ƶ by HM Government under the Cultural Gifts Scheme.

The programme of displays in the Drawings Gallery is generously supported by the International Music and Art Foundation, with additional support from James Bartos.

Salman Toor: Drawings
Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery, Floor 1
2 Oct 2026 – 10 Jan 2027

‘Painting was something I learned when I moved from Pakistan to the United States, but drawing I always considered as second nature.’
Salman Toor (2022)

For Salman Toor (b.1983), drawing is an integral part of artistic life. To coincide with the exhibition Salman Toor: Someone Like You, this focused display of a substantial group of works on paper, made with ink, charcoal, and gouache, showcases the artist’s mastery of drawing and the way in which it informs his practice as a painter.

Having started drawing as a child, figure-drawing classes were a crucial part of Toor’s undergraduate training. Informed by his close study of art history, particularly of baroque works, Toor’s arresting drawings are characterised by his striking treatment of light as well as his rendering of real and implied movement to create pictures charged with a sense of dynamism and inner life.

Toor often works on variations of recurring motifs. Among the works included in this presentation are examples of his distinctive drawings of individuals and groups of figures at border control checks, as well as still-lifes such as Fag Puddle in Vitrine (2021), which capture the fascination and greed connected to histories of accumulation and plundering. At times, the artist has reworked historical paintings that especially affected him into new narratives and compositions, such as in his drawing Three Mascots (2023), after Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s grisaille The Three Soldiers (1568).

Although they are derived from his imagination, Toor’s drawings are often based on memories, especially the faces of friends and acquaintances; a recent example includes the portrait Turtleneck (2024). Toor has said that drawing someone is a way of connecting, ‘like praying for someone, or thinking about them, creating a fantasy of them’.

The programme of displays in the Drawings Gallery are generously supported by the International Music and Art Foundation, with additional support from James Bartos.

Project Space

��The Painted Tower: Conservation in Context at Longthorpe
Project Space
26 February – 27 May 2026
This display offers an insight into The Ģ����Ƶ’s current collaboration with English Heritage to conserve the remarkable 14^th-century wall paintings in Longthorpe Tower, Peterborough.

Drawing on material from our National Wall Paintings Survey archive, the display will showcase the pioneering role of The Ģ����Ƶ’s Conservation Department in safeguarding Britain’s wall paintings and the peculiar challenges of caring for paintings attached to historic buildings.

Exploring the creation of Longthorpe’s exceptionally complete scheme of medieval decoration, the display will illuminate the ways in which wall paintings were influenced by other contemporary art forms and used to communicate with their audiences. Recounting the story of the scheme’s creation and rediscovery, we will examine the evolution of approaches to conserving wall paintings and demonstrate how an understanding of the paintings’ physical history helps inform their preservation into the future.

Hepworth and Nicholson: The Hampstead Studio Photographs
Project Space
6 Jun – 4 Oct 2026
Coinciding with The Ģ����Ƶ’s major exhibition Hepworth in Colour, this display brings together a remarkable group of photographs of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson’s London studio, taken in 1933 by Paul Laib (1869–1958).

The photographs, which are held in The Ģ����Ƶ’s Conway Library, are among the most evocative and iconic studio images taken in Britain during the 20th century. Along with portraits of the two artists, the photographs show their shared studio at No. 7, Mall Studios in Hampstead – a space populated with sculptures, paintings and prints, arranged side-by-side with carving tools, plants and other studio objects.

This display will offer a captivating insight into Hepworth and Nicholson’s London studio environment, which they occupied during the 1930s before moving to St Ives in Cornwall. The photographs also stand as compelling works of art in their own right.

Winifred Gill: A Bloomsbury Pioneer
Project Space
14 October 2026 – 10 February 2027
This display will spotlight the artist Winifred Gill (1891-1981), through works held in The Ģ����Ƶ’s collection. Although a gifted artist and a central figure at Roger Fry’s avant-garde Omega Workshops, Gill’s contributions have since remained largely overlooked. She studied at the Slade before joining the Workshops as a designer, maker and, for a time, business manager.

On display will be a number of Gill’s inventive toy designs for the Omega Workshops, as well as a remarkable still life painting made around this time that is deeply characteristic of the Bloomsbury style in its bold response to colour and form. Later prints will show how Gill’s style developed in the 1920s while working as a teacher of arts and crafts in the pioneering Bristol and Manchester University Settlements. Sketchbooks and printing materials will offer a deeper understanding of her practice.

The post The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery announces 2026 exhibition programme appeared first on The Ģ����Ƶ.

2 Oct 2026 – 10 Jan 2027
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries, Floor 3

The first solo exhibition in Europe of the celebrated New York-based painter Salman Toor.

The exhibition focuses on Salman Toor’s exploration of human interactions and the desire and struggle to experience a sense of belonging, both culturally and emotionally. The exhibition will bring together around 20 of the artist’s most iconic, thought-provoking and yet humorous paintings that represent people in shared moments of friendship and love, as well as experiencing solitude and alienation.

The characters that populate Toor’s painting are fictional but rooted in personal experiences and memories. Toor says that his paintings ‘depict queer and immigrant lives that straddle different cultures and inhabit the tension between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement. What it means to find a community, but also the daily costs associated with visibility.’

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983, Toor trained in the United States. He currently lives and works in New York. He has had major exhibitions internationally, including his acclaimed first institutional solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2020-21). More recently, he participated in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2024). The Ģ����Ƶ’s exhibition will be Toor’s first solo museum show in Europe.

Toor’s work is rooted in a deep engagement with the tradition of painting, and The Ģ����Ƶ Gallery is one of the museums he most admires. One of the principal works in the exhibition, The Bar on East 13th (2019), revisits The Ģ����Ƶ’s celebrated painting by Édouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882).

The exhibition will be accompanied by a display of Toor’s drawings in the Gilbert & Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery. Showcasing Toor’s mastery of drawing and the way it informs his practice as a painter, the display will include Fag Puddle in Vitrine (2021), acquired by The Ģ����Ƶ in 2024

Tickets go on sale in 2026. to hear our latest announcements and more.

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