The Best Exhibitions To See Across The UK This Summer

Art lover pencilling in your summer plans? There’s plenty to see across the UK this season, from sculptures spread across 300 acres to historical surveys of still life. Here is our top pick of exhibitions in the UK to see this summer.

UK Exhibitions To See This Summer

REꓘONCILIATION, Nottingham Contemporary

Multidisciplinary artist, musician and social researcher Julian Abraham ‘Togar’ is presenting a solo exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary this summer, inviting visitors to participate in the artist’s exploratory world. With sound as a central instrument, Togar’s practices focus on the organic formation of relationships, with his artworks often moving between installation, sound, music, programming, automation, and science.

Details: 25 May–8 September 2024 at Nottingham Contemporary (Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB). nottinghamcontemporary.org

Antony Gormley, Time Horizon, 2006. Photograph by Pete Huggins

Antony Gormley’s Time Horizon, Houghton Hall

Sculpture and Gormley fans should visit Norfolk’s Houghton Hall this summer, where one of his most spectacular large-scale installations will be shown for the first time in the UK. Featuring 100 life-sized sculptures across 300 acres of parkland, Time Horizon features a series of classic Gormley sculptures, each weighing 620 kg, all standing at different heights, from burial up to the head, to standing on a concrete column four metres off the ground.

Details: 21 April–31 October 2024 at Houghton Hall (Bircham Rd, King’s Lynn PE31 6TY). houghtonhall.com

© India Hobson

Imaginary Conversations, Chatsworth House

For fashion fans, try this exhibition at Derbyshire’s Chatsworth House. Imaginary Conversations celebrates the legacy of the country house’s late dowager, Duchess Deborah Devonshire and the Devonshire Collections, which have inspired fashion designer Erdem Moralioglu’s Spring Summer 2024 collection. Exploring the house as a source of inspiration for Erdem, the exhibition welcomes visitors into Duchess Deborah’s world and reveals how the rich history and archives of Chatsworth have informed the creative process for this new fashion collection.

Details: 21 June–20 October 2024 at Chatsworth House (Bakewell DE45 1PP). chatsworth.org

Blenheim Palace. Dreilly95, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; cropped.

Icons Of British Fashion, Blenheim Palace

A special, blockbuster exhibition is running at the UNESCO World Heritage Blenheim Palace this spring: Icons of British Fashion. The exhibition will showcase a creative curation of fashion clothing, accessories, archival materials, drawings, photography, and patterns by an array of legendary designers – including Terry de Havilland, Barbour, Bruce Oldfield, Jean Muir, Lulu Guinness, Stella McCartney, Stephen Jones Millinery for Christian Dior, Temperley London, Turnbull & Asser, Vivienne Westwood and Zandra Rodes – dramatically lit and displayed amongst the Palace’s own priceless collections.

Details: 23 March–30 June 2024 at Blenheim Palace (Woodstock OX20 1PS). blenheimpalace.com

Wadsworth, Edward Alexander – Bright Intervals (1928)

Still Life, Pallant House Gallery

This summer, Pallant House Gallery will present the first major exhibition considering still life in British art. Beginning with the genre’s historical origins from 17th century vanitas paintings, the exhibition traces this enduring theme across movements and genres from post-impressionism to surrealism, abstraction to pop-art.

Details: 11 May–20 October 2024 at Pallant House Gallery (9 N Pallant, Chichester PO19 1TJ). pallant.org.uk

Jacqueline Poncelet: In the Making, MIMA

This solo exhibition surveys five decades of work by Jacqueline Poncelet, spanning large-scale watercolour paintings to delicate ceramics, sculpture and textile works. As an artist she is fascinated by how tastes and fashions play out in the ways that humans dress, decorate living spaces, shape architecture and build infrastructures. Presented at Middlesbrough’s MIMA, Poncelet is also developing a new site-specific work for Middlesbrough train station.

Details: 1 February–23 June 2024 at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (Centre Square, Middlesbrough TS1 2AZ). mima.art

Paris 1924: Sport, Art and the Body, Fitzwilliam Museum

Olympic fever is taking over, and Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum is celebrating in style. The landmark summer exhibition Paris 1924 will survey how, 100 years on from the first Paris Olympics, the modernist culture of the vibrant City of Lights and Love shaped the future of sport and the Olympic Games as we know it today.

Details: 19 July–13 November 2024 at The Fitzwilliam Museum (Trumpington St, Cambridge CB2 1RB). fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk