Art Exhibitions in London: June-July 2017

If you're visiting London and want to visit an art exhibition in London in June-July 2016, you'll find the list of art exhibitions below a useful start for choosing what to see and where to go.

It starts with exhibitions about individual artists and moves on to the Group Shows.  Dates are indicated and the title of each exhibition includes a link to the gallery's webpage about the exhibition

If you know of any more that deserve to be added in please leave a comment or contact me.

Exhibitions about an Artist

British Museum

• Hokusai: beyond the Great Wave - (25 May – 13 August 2017 - Room 35) - focuses on the last thirty years of Japan’s most renowned artist’s, Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), career from around 1820 to 1849.

Dulwich Picture Gallery

• Sargent: The Watercolours - 21 Jun 2017 - 8 Oct 2017 - The first UK show in nearly 100 years devoted to watercolours by the Anglo-American artist, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925).

Gagosian Gallery (20 Grosvenor Hill)

• Picasso: Minotaurs and Matadors (28th April 25th August 2017) - examines the bullfighting imagery by Picasso; curated by John Richardson

Garden Museum

• Eileen Hogan: Artist-Not-In Residence (May-September 2017) -  twelve large-scale oil paintings, one for each month of the year of places, parks and gardens in London that mean something to people. Includes an exhibition of her sketchbooks. Executed while the 'artist-in residence' for a museum that was closed for refurbishment.

Jerwood Gallery

• Jean Cooke - Delight in the Thing Seen (24th May - 17th September 2017) Jean Cooke RA (1927-2008) delighted many people with her very personal view of the world and the way she could make art from the everyday activities
• Quentin Blake: The Only Way to Travel (14th June - 15th October 2017) - news works created featuring extraordinary beasts, machines and narrative scenes, exploring themes such as dislocation, loneliness and depression.

National Gallery

• Chris Ofili - Weaving Magic (26 April – 28 August 2017 - Sunley Room) A new work in a new tapestry medium for Chris Ofili; imagery reflects Ofili’s ongoing interest in classical mythology and the stories, magic, and colour of the Trinidadian landscape he inhabits

National Portrait Gallery

• Howard Hodgkin: Absent Friends (23 March - 18 June 2017 - Porter Gallery) - the first exhibition of portraits by Howard Hodgkin (b.1932), one of Britain’s leading artists

Queens's Gallery

• Canaletto and the Art of Venice (19 May 2017 - 12 November 2017) - series of views of 18th century Venice in a series of paintings, drawings and prints by Venice's most famous view-painter, Canaletto (1697-1768). It also includes works by other Venetian artists but Canaletto is very much star of the show

Serpentine Gallery

• Grayson Perry: The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever (8 June - 10 September 2017) - a major exhibition of new work - ceramics, prints and tapestries - commenting on modern society, politics and social media

Tate Modern

• Alberto Giacometti (10 May – 10 Sep 2017) - focusing on influences and practices
• Fahrelnissa Zeid - 6 Jun – 8 Oct 2017 - Zeid (1901–1991) was one of the most influential female Turkish artists; best known for her large-scale abstract paintings

White Cube. Mason's Yard

• Wayne Thiebaud (1962-2017) (24 May – 2 July 2017) - a selection of paintings and works on paper that date from 1962 to 2017.

Group Art Exhibitions

British Museum

• The American Dream: pop to the present (9 March – 18 June 2017) an outstanding collection of modern and contemporary American prints 
• Places of the Mind: British watercolour landscapes 1850–1950 (23 February – 27 August 2017 - Room 90) The 125 watercolours and drawings on display examining the ways artists interpreted landscape on paper during the Victorian and early Modern period

Courtauld Gallery

• Bloomsbury Art & Design 18 February – 21 September 2017 Special Display - a wide-ranging selection of work by the early twentieth century Bloomsbury Group. A new selection of works on paper will be displayed from 24 May 2017.

Garden Museum

• Tradescant's Orchard: A Celebration of Botanical Art (May-September 2017) - a contemporary exhibition comprising watercolours of fruit by fifty eminent botanical artists alongside alongside a display of ‘The Tradescants’ Orchard’, a seventeenth-century volume of sixty-six watercolours depicting fruit varieties that John Tradescant and his son might have grown in their market garden at Lambeth

Mall Galleries

• New English Art Club Annual Exhibition 2017 (16 June 2017 to 25 June 2017) - an exhibition by a group of visual artists whose work is based principally upon direct observation of nature and the human figure
• Wildlife Artist of the Year 2017 (28 June 2017 to 2 July 2017) - the ever popular exhibition organised by David Shepherd includes fine art in various media by international wildlife artists

National Gallery

• Michelangelo & Sebastiano - 15 March – 25 June 2017 (North Galleries) - About the creative artistic relationship between two great Renaissance masters, Sebastiano and Michelangelo, from the 1510s through to the 1540s

National Portrait Gallery

• BP Portrait Award 2017 (22 June - 24 September 2017 - Wolfson Gallery) - an internationally prestigious exhibition and the most visited of exhibitions at the NPG
• The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt (13 July - 22 October 2017) - featuring portrait drawings by some of the outstanding masters of the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Natural History Museum

• The Art of British Natural History : Images of Nature (over 200 illustrations via 4 rotations) - Images of Nature Gallery - 11 March 2017 to summer 2018.

Royal Academy of Arts

• Summer Exhibition 2017 (12 June — 20 August 2017 - Main Galleries) - the biggest open art exhibition in the world. A unique platform for emerging and established artists to showcase works across painting and printmaking, photography, sculpture, architecture and film. 

Saatchi Gallery

• From Selfie to Self Expression (31 March - 23 July 2017) - the world’s first exhibition exploring the history of the selfie from Velazquez to the present day, while celebrating the truly creative potential of a form of expression often derided for its inanity.

Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Kew Gardens

• British Artists in Shirley Sherwood Collection (25 March to 17 September 2017) - Her vast collection of botanical art contains 330 works by 86 British botanical painters. Some of these are showcased in this exhibition, including Brigid Edwards, Coral Guest, Rory McEwen, Rosie Sanders, Pandora Sellars and Graham Rust..

Tate Britain

• Queer British Art 1861 - 1967 (5 April - 1 October 2017) - Featuring works from 1861–1967 relating to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) identities, the show marks the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England.

Tate Modern

• Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (12 Jul – 22 Oct 2017) - explores how the category ‘Black Art’ was defined, rejected and redefined by artists across the United States

Victoria & Albert Museum

• The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains (13 May – 1 October 2017 - Room 39 - Exhibition Space) - includes set and construction pieces from some of Pink Floyd’s most innovative and legendary album covers and stage performances, original designs, architectural drawings, handwritten lyrics and psychedelic prints and posters.