1. ‘Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting’ at the National Portrait Gallery
It’s hard to believe, given she was part of Saatchi’s infamous ‘Sensation’ exhibition back in the ‘90s, but ‘The Anatomy of Painting’ will be the first major exhibition in London dedicated to the work of Jenny Saville. Since then, she has become one of the most important, influential and distinctive painters in the UK: a natural successor and heir to Bacon and Freud, a vicious, extreme, passionate painter of flesh, whose work tears bodies apart and rebuilds them in shocking, beautiful ways.
June 20 – September 7, 2025
2. ‘From the Heart to the Hand: Dolce & Gabbana’ at the Grand Palais
Dolce & Gabbana, one of the world’s most renowned fashion houses, is celebrating its 40th birthday this year. To mark the occasion, a dedicated exhibition (which debuted at the Palazzo Reale in Milan) is coming to Paris’s Grand Palais. Featuring everything from the objects that inspired Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana (Sicilian ceramics, Venetian glassware) to the dazzling garments produced as a result, it will be an immersive journey taking visitors from the designers’ nascent ideas to their opulent creations.
January 10 – March 31, 2025
3. ‘Doll House – A Retrospective’ at the Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art
Humlebaek, Denmark
In the first retrospective since her death from cancer in 2021, Kaari Upson’s evocative, boundary-pushing work will be showcased in Denmark’s gorgeous Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art. What will be on display? Well, Upson’s art spans everything from performances to paintings and sculptures to drawings, which probe themes of identity, the body, relationships, emotions and loss. Highlights include the warped figures of ‘Alice in the Land of Doom’ and the fantastical paintings of ‘When Kaari Met Larry’.
May 27 – October 26, 2025
4. ‘Roma Pittrice: Female artists at work between the 16th and 18th centuries’ at Museum of Rome at Palazzo Braschi
Rome isn’t short of iconic masterpieces, so it’s pleasing that its museums continue to highlight artists in the shadows and their works that languish in storerooms. This exhibition tells the forgotten life stories and innovations of female painters often almost totally obscured by their male counterparts in the sixteenth – eighteenth centuries. The roughly 130 works on display include names that have now regained the spotlight, like Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia Gentileschi and Angelika Kauffmann, as well as lesser-known painters whose works were often attributed to male masters or family members, such as Laura Piranesi, Louise Seidler and Emma Gaggiotti.
Until March 23, 2025
5. ‘Ryuichi Sakamoto: seeing sound, hearing time’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
‘Artist’ is a broad term, and Ryuichi Sakamoto, one of Japan’s most renowned creators, definitely pushed that title to its limits – he was one of the country’s most lauded musicians and composers, but also had a talent for multimedia art and became a prominent social activist. For much of the last 20 years until his passing in 2023, Sakamoto focused on three-dimensional sound installations, which will be showcased in this exhibition. Audiovisual installations will be on display both indoors and outdoors, with several works drawing upon the music Sakamoto created for his 2017 album ‘async’.
Until March 30, 2025
