Our top picks of exhibitions together with cultural spaces and places, both online and in the real world.


All, Art, Auctions, Exhibitions, Travel & Hospitality, Initiatives

Viewing the David Bowie Centre at V&A East Storehouse

Another free cultural offering from the V&A, the David Bowie Centre is the V&A East Storehouse’s newly opened home for Bowie’s archive. The centre hosts small displays by guest-curators offering new and personal perspectives on Bowie’s life and work: the first is a series of objects and items selected by Bowie collaborator Nile Rodgers, and Brit-Award-winning indie rock band, The Last Dinner Party.

This show is one for fans of Bowie’s music and fashion, with handwritten lyrics and instruments Bowie played and performed with throughout his career as well as the outfits that made him so utterly unique: such as the frock coat designed for Bowie to wear to his 50th birthday by Alexander McQueen, the Yamamoto Ziggy Stardust jumpsuit that became synonymous with Bowie’s unique style.

Incredibly, the archive contains more than 80,000 items in all – including 414 costumes and accessories and nearly 150 musical instruments, as well as objects, props and scenery for concerts, film and theatre, and even Bowie’s own desk, and fan mail. As Bowie himself once said: “I’m an instant star. Just add water and stir”.

Share story

Viewing Don’t Look Back at Unit London

Curated by Beth Greenacre and Sigrid Kirk, this group exhibition at Unit, open from today, explores the visual culture of the 1990s & Noughties, with wit, wistfulness and just a drop of nostalgia. Moving dynamically between various mediums, Greenacre and Kirk have chosen artists who capture the essence of the Nineties & Noughties spirit.

The fashion world is already in the throes of its own Nineties and Noughties revival, and this show might have the same effect on the art world. Tracing parallels between the politicised urgency, audacity and youthful irreverence of the art of the Cool Britannia and YBA era and today, Don’t Look Back re-tells history, including voices less celebrated and often excluded at the time. Among the stellar line-up, the likes of Gavin Turk, Tracey Emin, Richard Billingham and Sarah Lucas rub shoulders with Lakwena Maciver, Thomas J Price and Bex Wade.

The curators say: “With Don’t Look Back, we set out to create a defining cultural moment that reflects on the evolving legacies of the 1990s and 2000s while looking decisively forward. Staged like a multi‐gig event, it rips up the rulebook on what an exhibition can be, reimagining that era’s defiance through today’s expansive artistic expressions. It avoids nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, instead foregrounding experimentation, humour, and the idea of a living legacy.”

Share story
Dates
25 September 2025 — 25 October 2025

Viewing Kerry James Marshall: The Histories at Royal Academy of Art

Kerry James Marshall is one of America’s greatest living painters. The 69-year old artist and professor was born in Alabama and grew up in the Watts neighbourhood of Los Angeles, close to the Black Panther’s headquarters in the 1960s and the period of race riots and protests across the city at the time would come to instill in Marshall an acute sense of social responsibility and justice.

This sense is keenly felt in Marshall’s figurative paintings, gorgeous, glorious and powerful paintings of Black Americans. Large in scale they cannot be ignored, giving the figures a presence in the hallowed halls of culture they had previously been denied. Referencing art history, civil rights, comics, science fiction and personal memories, Marshall’s works are each enriched by reality and imagination, steeped in allegory. But as the artist once said: “I don’t want the pictures to mean things. But the implication of the image and its relationship to the people that are viewing it is something I’m really interested in.”

This anticipated exhibition at the Royal Academy is the largest exhibition ever held on the American artist outside of the US and includes over 70 works made over his career to date, including his giant public commission Knowledge and Wonder (1995) – on loan for the first time.

Share story
Dates
20 September 2025 — 18 January 2026
READ MORE
The Wick Culture - Anuk Rocha, 2026
Spotlight

Spotlight Anuk Rocha creates patchwork portraits from fleeting feelings

The Wick Culture - Yeonjoon Yoon, Gavin Poole, Conrad Shawcross, Tristram Hunt at UMBILICAL

Happenings Conrad Shawcross: UMBILICAL at Here East

Happenings
The Wick Culture - Gallery view of the 2025 Summer Exhibition
Photo: © David Parry/ Royal Academy of Arts

Happenings RA Summer Party

Happenings
The Wick Culture - Katy Wickremesinghe at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Happenings Rachel Jones at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Happenings
The Wick Culture - Katy Wickremesinghe at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Happenings Rachel Jones at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Happenings
The Wick Culture - The Weston Collections Hall at V&A East
Storehouse, including over 100 mini
curated displays ‘hacked’ into the ends
and sides of the storage racking. Image by Hufton + Crow for V&A

Happenings V&A East Storehouse

Happenings