The Best London Exhibitions — 10 Art and Design Shows on Our Culture Editor's Agenda This Spring

With over 200 museums and countless commercial and independent galleries to choose from, making the most of the Big Smoke's cultural offering requires equal amounts of discerning, open-mindedness, and dedication. That's understandable: even as a Culture Editor, I am the first to feel overwhelmed by the ever-expanding density of its year-round artistic program, and often find myself missing out on the best London exhibitions as a result. To prevent the number of initiatives organized in the city from pushing you away from — rather than bringing you closer to — the workshop of innovation that is its artistic community, every month I am narrowing down all local creative happenings to the ten best exhibitions to visit in London.

How do I pick the best cultural events in the British capital? In short, with an eye toward meaning. In a historical moment where multiple global challenges seem to converge, from climate change and migration to the resurgence of conflicts, I want my selection of the best London exhibitions to hold a mirror up to the complexity of our times — engaging viewers through both skillfully crafted artworks and complex conversations that can favor new ways of being together, conceiving our time on Earth, and preserving the planet for generations to come.

Gathering the most thought-provoking showcases in town in one place, this interdisciplinary roundup will help you put the right names on the map. From the latest artistic outings of burgeoning young galleries to anticipated solo presentations by some of the world's leading creative talents and must-visit collectible design fairs, these are the best exhibitions in London right now.

1. Collect 2025. Somerset House

As spring approaches, a new iteration of Collect, an annual, international contemporary craft and design fair presented by the UK's Crafts Council, is ready to take over the Georgian architecture of London's Somerset House. Launching with exclusive preview days on February 26 and 27, and open to the public between February 28 and March 2, the 21st edition of the event will spotlight the works of more than 400 living artists in curated booths by 40 specialist galleries from over 30 countries. A unique opportunity to feel the breadth of experimentation of today's artistic community, Collect 2025 will see hundreds of imaginatively crafted furniture pieces, home accessories, artworks, and jewelry creations blend seamlessly with the majestic frame of its hosting institutions.

Edinburgh-based &Gallery's participation at the fair will explore the reciprocal relationship between structure, form, and the passage of time via wall-based and three-dimensional sculptural ceramics by Rebecca Appleby, Derek Wilson, and Richard Perry. Elsewhere, Chichester's Candida Stevens Gallery will unpack the experience of displacement through textile and fiber pieces imbued with memory, contemporary history, and belonging. James Trundle's furniture will establish a link between Japan's simplicity-oriented crafts and the UK to address the concealed 'spirit' of objects and the soothing influence they hold on our lives. While in Collect Open, ten avant-garde projects by individual artists and collectives will shed light on the future of creativity across multiple mediums, genres, and narrations.

February 28-March 2. Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA. Book your tickets

2. Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley. Alison Jacques

One of the most intergenerational and best London exhibitions currently on view, Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley borrows its title from the opening line of Daphne du Maurier's 1938 Gothic novel Rebecca, whose eerie, suspense-filled atmospheres are echoed throughout the show. Juxtaposing masterpieces by seminal artists like Leonora Carrington, Gordon Parks, and Dorothea Tanning with contributions from rising local as well as international artists, this quirky multidisciplinary presentation puts the notion of fairytale on its head, guiding visitors along a journey delineated by surreal visions, dark manifestations, and metamorphoses. Comprising paintings, photographs, sculptures, and ephemera from the most disparate eras, Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley dissolves the boundaries between past, present, and future in an enthralling, filterless portrayal of the human experience and its countless facets, including the conscious and the unconscious.

To March 8. Alison Jacques, 22 Cork St, London W1S 3NG. Plan your visit

3. In the Warmth of Winter. Gallery FUMI

There is a reason why Gallery FUMI is never lacking an entry in my design exhibitions coverage; it's because Sam Pratt and Valerio Capo's platform for contemporary art and collectible furniture boasts one of the most immersive, uplifting, and inventive programs I have ever come across. Luckily for everyone, In the Warmth of Winter, their ongoing group presentation, is no exception. Garnering one-off and limited-edition pieces from 15 of their artists and designers, including whimsical contributions by Jeremy Anderson, Leora Honeyman, and Max Lamb, the show immerses viewers in a series of contrasting silhouettes, textures, and materials. Despite this apparent clash, the artworks part of In the Warmth of Winter are brought closer together by their inherently tactile essence: an aspect that, together with their playful, yet stunningly crafted aesthetics, infuses a dose of much-needed joy into the coldest months of the year. Iridescent tufted rugs hint at the unruly shapes of grass patches and bodies of water. Vividly woven tapestries blend the natural world with fantasy. Wiggly mirrors and totemic sculptures let movement through the door while jellyfish-shaped lighting sets the mood for a truly heartwarming show.

To March 22. Gallery FUMI, 2-3 Hay Hill, London W1J 6AS. Plan your visit

4. Theaster Gates. 1965: Malcolm in Winter: A Translation Exercise. White Cube Bermondsey

In 1965: Malcolm in the Winter: A Translation Exercise, American artist, professor, archivist, and curator Theaster Gates engages with the legacy of African American revolutionary and civil rights activist Malcolm X through the archive of late Japanese journalist Ei Nagata and his partner Haruhi Ishitani — two witnesses to his assassination. Landing on the centenary of his birth and 60 years after his death, this ambitious show redirects the attention to Malcolm X's final months of campaigning and the aftermath of his departure through architectural interventions, large-scale installations, archival works, and new audiovisual pieces. Incorporating Nagata and Ishitani's documentation of the Black Liberation Movement leader's life, struggle, and vision with Gates' own multimedia creations, 1965: Malcolm in the Winter: A Translation Exercise probes the role of art in "shaping political, ideological, and cultural legacies". As if, by exorcizing the past through creativity, we could pave the way for more egalitarian futures.

To April 6. White Cube Bermondsey, 144-152, Bermondsey St, London SE1 3TQ. Plan your visit

5. Daidō Moriyama: Encounters. The Photographers' Gallery

Few image-makers have defined the evolution of both Japanese and international photography like Daidō Moriyama, whose grainy, nuances and movement-filled black-and-white documentation of urban life has cemented his reputation as one of the most influential visual storytellers of our times. At once poetic and revealing, contemplative and disarming, throughout his decades-long career, Moriyama's work has successfully defied categorization to capture the curiosities and intricacies of the human realm. In Encounters, The Photographers' Gallery presents a lesser-known selection of the maestro's images in which quiet, intimacy, and nature are brought to the fore. Whether lensing laundry drying up in the sun or a nude woman lighting up a cigarette, because of the air of mystery intrinsic to them, each of these shots reminds us there's more than meets the eye — and that photography acts as a portal into what cannot be seen.

To April 13. The Photographers' Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW. Plan your visit

6. Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban: Captive Heart. FORMA

Three years on since I first came across their work, Athen Kardashian and Nina Mhach Durban's nostalgic mixed-media collages still get me every time. In their collaborative practice, the artist duo creates pinboard-like assemblages housing anything from image cutouts of female pop icons and religious symbols to stickers, glitters, book excerpts, and food in what feels like a large-scale, diaristic retelling of their lives. United by their shared British-Asian heritage, the two continuously engage with their diasporic experience through works that — although easily recognizable in their source material — bear deeper reflections on the domestic dimension, womanhood, love, loss, community, and transformation. With Captive Heart, their new street-facing public intervention at FORMA, they pay homage to the late Mexican-American musician Selena, a queer artist who was tragically murdered at 23 in 1995, to raise awareness of the state of erasure faced by the broader Latinx community and sew the gap between personal and collective histories.

To April 27. FORMA, 140 Great Dover St, London SE1 4GW. Plan your visit

7. Mickalene Thomas: All About Love. Hayward Gallery

Drawing from bell hooks' celebrated volume of the same title, Mickalene Thomas' All About Love faces the audience with the scope and resonance of the African American artist's work in an immersive manifestation of her portraiture production. Known for her vibrant, glitters and jewels-encrusted canvases showing Black women at play and repose, Thomas has made reclaiming the artistic representation of her community a lifeline in her practice. Responding to world-famous European paintings where this was, either, denied or trivialized with pieces that center the joy, rituals, and introspection too often overlooked in the portrayal of Blackness, she hasn't just filled a gap in art history but has also made the distortion in those dated artworks too obvious to ignore. At Hayward Gallery, her genius unfolds across multiple rooms, where blown-up prints of her most striking collages are layered on top of each other, juxtaposed with equally impressive three-dimensional installations, or hung in intimate booths that, complete with bean bags, invoke the peacefulness at the heart of her work.

To May 5. Hayward Gallery, Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XZ. Book your tickets

8. Noah Davis. Barbican Centre

In many ways, Noah Davis, a new retrospective delving into the painting production of the late African American artist, shares the vision behind Mickalene Thomas' All About Love. Another one of the best London exhibitions open to the public right now, the showcase groups over 50 of his most powerful canvases to render the "emotional and fantastical textures of everyday life". Still, despite being pervaded by a similar sense of quietness, rest, and rituality, the paintings on view in Davis' first British institutional show depart from the terrestrial dimension to reach realities and situations that only existed in the artist's mind — dreams, hopes, and wishes the talent had, perhaps, conceived of in reaction to the violence to which the Black American community was subjected to in the 'real' world. Developed between 2007 and 2015, the canvases, sculptures, and drawings here reunited, including the fantastical 40 Acres and a Unicorn (2007), Arabesque (2007), and Isis (2009), embody Davis' ability to translate the magical visions that lay in his imagination into the lived reality. Much like he did with the founding of the Underground Museum, the platform he co-created alongside his wife Karon in 2012 in support of the African American and Latinx communities of LA's Arlington Heights, whose mission continues to this day.

To May 11. Barbican Centre, Silk St, City of London, London EC2Y 8DS . Book your tickets

9. The Face Magazine: Culture Shift. National Portrait Gallery

At the National Portrait Gallery, a decades-spanning survey charting the rise of The Face Magazine, one of the first print publications to herald a teeming-with-talent era in the history of British fashion, music, and art at the dawn of the 1990s, proves how much printed matter can mean to the shaping of a country's identity and myth. Showcasing more than 200 photographs from over 80 photographers, including Sheila Rock, Stéphane Sednaoui, Corinne Day, David Sims, Elaine Constantine, and Sølve Sundsbø, the exhibition revisits some of The Face's boldest editorials as trend-setting vehicles for culture. From a fresh-faced Kate Moss and an irreverent Liam Gallagher to the magazine's most spirited portrayals of British youth, the showcase isn't just one of the best London exhibitions of 2025 — it's a reminder of how great storytelling reaches and inspires us all.

To May 18. National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin's Pl, London WC2H 0HE. Book your tickets

10. PLATFORM: Bethan Laura Wood. Design Museum

Unveiled as part of PLATFORM, a new exhibition series presented by the Design Museum, Bethan Laura Wood steps inside the richly layered, saturated world of the multidisciplinary artist and designer, absorbing visitors in a trail of some 70 maximalist sculptures, textiles, and furniture creations. A living example of how art and functional design are growing more intertwined than ever, Wood's creature-like homeware shows there are no rules that can't be broken in today's world, and that quirkiness and craftmanship can be a winning binomial. Mesmerizing, provocative, and amusing, this ongoing presentation invites us to ponder the meaning of objects in an increasingly digital society, disrupting our view of femininity, ornamentation, and reality as a whole by encouraging us to "look beyond the surface".

To January 2026. Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High St, London W8 6AG. Plan your visit

Taken note of the best London exhibitions to visit this spring yet? Great, because we've just got started. Whether you're looking for the top eateries fusing a love of food with an eye for dazzling décor or searching for the latest art and hospitality openings to bookmark ahead of your forthcoming escapes, our lifestyle section will fill you in on the hippest art, culture, and travel destinations — and all one click away.