London

13 September 2025 ‒ 8 February 2026

The National Gallery 

See paintings by artists including Seurat, Van Gogh, Signac and Pissarro 

Connect the dots as you experience the world's most significant collection of Neo-Impressionist art. 

When critics first saw Georges Seurat’s new style of painting, they thought it might bring about the death of painting itself. But what was it about artists like Paul Signac, Anna Boch, Jan Toorop and Henri-Edmond Cross, that ruffled so many feathers?

Neo-Impressionists painted in small dots of pure colour. Viewed from a distance, the colours blend to create nuanced tones and an illusion of light. Now known as pointillism, this technique simplified form and played with colour in an entirely new way, verging on the edge of abstraction.

Alongside this exciting approach to colour, their style went hand-in-hand with radical political ideas. They captured late 19th-century European society through luminous landscapes, portraits and interior scenes, while also depicting the struggles faced by the working class, in reaction against the industrial age. 

Most of the paintings we’re exhibiting were collected by Helene Kröller-Müller, one of the first great women art patrons of the 20th century. She assembled the most comprehensive ensemble of Neo-Impressionist paintings in the world. Collected with the aim of being publicly accessible, these works now form part of the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, which Helene Kröller-Muller founded.

See these radical visions of pure colour for yourself in Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists. 

This exhibition is a collaboration between the National Gallery and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

More www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Copyright Text: The National Gallery

Serpentine Pavilion 2025 A Capsule in Time, designed by Marina Tabassum, Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA). Exterior view. © Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA), Photo Iwan Baan, Courtesy: Serpentine.

Serpentine Pavilion 6 June - 26 October 2025

The Serpentine Pavilion 2025, A Capsule in Time, designed by Bangladeshi architect and educator Marina Tabassum and her firm, Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA), opens on 6 June 2025 with Goldman Sachs supporting the annual project for the 11th consecutive year.

Tabassum’s Pavilion will mark the 25th year of this pioneering commission and continues Dame Zaha Hadid’s ethos of pushing the boundaries of architecture. Her mantra “There should be no end to experimentation”, is the foundation in which this commission is built upon and Tabassum’s Pavilion exemplifies this.

Celebrated for her work that seeks to establish an architectural language that is contemporary while rooted and engaging with place, climate, context, culture and history, Tabassum’s design will resonate with Serpentine South and aims to prompt a dialogue between the permanent and the ephemeral nature of the commission.

The 2025 Pavilion is elongated in the north-south direction and features a central court that aligns with Serpentine South’s bell tower. Inspired by the tradition of park-going and arched garden canopies that filter soft daylight through green foliage, the sculptural quality of the Pavilion is comprised of four wooden capsule forms with a translucent façade that diffuses and dapples light when infiltrating the space. Marking the first structure by Tabassum to be built entirely from wood, it also employs light as a way to enhance the qualities of the space. Emphasising the sensory and spiritual possibilities of architecture through scale, geometry and the interplay of light and shadow, Tabassum’s design also features a kinetic element where one of the capsule forms is able to move and connect, transforming the Pavilion into a new spatial configuration.

Built around a semi-mature Ginkgo tree – a climate resilient tree species that dates back to the early Jurassic Period – Tabassum’s Pavilion, like much of Tabassum’s previous projects, considers the threshold between inside and outside, the tactility of material, lightness and darkness, height and volume. Throughout the course of summer and into autumn, the Gingko tree leaves will slowly shift from green to luminous gold-yellow. The selection of a Gingko, was inspired by the fact this species is showing tolerance to climate change and contributes to a diverse treescape in Kensington Gardens. The species is not susceptible to many current pest and diseases, and will be replanted into the park following the Pavilion’s closure in October.

In an era of increasing censorship, Tabassum expands on her desire for the Pavilion to function as a versatile space where visitors can come together and connect through conversations and sharing of knowledge. Tabassum and her team at MTA have compiled a selection of books that celebrate the richness of Bengali culture, literature, poetry, ecology and Bangladesh. Stored on shelves built into the structure, it draws on the Pavilion’s afterlife once no longer sited on Serpentine’s lawn, which is envisioned as a library open to all.

More www.serpentinegalleries.org

Copyright Text: Serpentinegalleries

9 October 2025 - 11 January 2026

National Portrait Gallery, London

Cecil Beaton – ‘The King of Vogue’ – was an extraordinary force in the 20th-century British and American creative scenes. Renowned as a fashion illustrator, Oscar-winning costume designer, social caricaturist and writer, Beaton elevated fashion and portrait photography into an art form.

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World is the first exhibition dedicated solely to Beaton’s ground-breaking contributions to fashion and portrait photography. The exhibition will showcase Beaton at his most triumphant – from the Jazz Age and the Bright Young Things, to the high fashion brilliance of the fifties and the glittering, Oscar-winning success of My Fair Lady. Via London, Paris, New York and Hollywood, his era-defining photographs captured beauty, glamour, and star power in the interwar and early post-war eras.

With over 200 items displayed, including photographs, letters, portrait sketches, fashion illustration and costume, Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World will feature portraits of some of the twentieth century’s most iconic figures, including Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando; Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret; as well as Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Salvador Dalí.

More https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2025/cecil-beaton/

Copyright Text: National Portrait Gallery, London