Well, it’s time to see some of the best art exhibitions around. If you’ve been postponing your art museum date due to the daily grind, 7 Best Art Exhibitions in London: A December 2024 Guide is your chance to get out and explore before these shows end. These exhibitions are well worth your time, with stunning collections and boundary-pushing displays. Don’t miss out!

Lewis Hammond: ‘This Glass House’ at The Perimeter

13 Sep – 20 Dec 2024

Lewis Hammond’s paintings hit you with a heavy, crushing sense of paranoia and bleakness. His biggest UK show packs the gallery with demons, depression, and disgust, offering a grim reflection on how modern society grinds you down. The works are dark, gross, and oppressive—not because they want to be, but because the world is. Maybe his art would be all rainbows and love hearts if life wasn’t so grim, but let’s be real, that’s not changing anytime soon.

For more, visit here

‘Picasso: Printmaker’ at the British Museum

7 Nov 2024 – 30 March 2025

To prove that you can’t have too much Picasso, the British Museum is putting on London’s umpteenth recent exhibition of the Spanish master’s work. This time, the focus is on Pablo’s prints, and there’s a lot to choose from, because he made over 2,400 prints throughout his career, taking in everything from the stark misery of the early Blue Period through his cubist experimentation and his later more freeform mark-making. This show will feature his earliest works from 1904 to pieces from his 1968 series of 347 prints called ‘The 347 Suite’, a body of work filled with Pablo’s etchings, drypoint, and aquatints ruminating and looking back at his life and legacy.

For more, visit here

‘Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael’ at the Royal Academy of Art

9 Nov 2024 – 16 Feb 2025

The Royal Academy’s big Autumn exhibition dives deep into the Renaissance, spotlighting three towering figures: Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael. While Donatello sits this one out, the show explores a fascinating period when these legends weren’t contemporaries but fierce rivals. It’s almost a full Ninja Turtle moment—just missing one! Fingers crossed for a 2025 exhibition on April O’Neil and her influence on early conceptual installation art.

For more, visit here

Nicola L: ‘I Am The Last Woman Object’ at Camden Art Centre

23 Nov – 29 Dec 2024

This Moroccan-born French artist (1932-2018) brought together utopian ideas and subversive politics in her work while keeping it playful and inventive. She designed furry suits that let multiple people merge into one giant collective body, banners that worked as 11-faced masks stamped with “same skin for everybody,” and jumpsuits that turned you into the sky or the sun—her art channels radical politics through cozy, wearable creations. While not everything hits the mark or has aged perfectly, it bursts with energy, resistance, joy, and plenty of pyjamas.

For more, visit here

‘Chronoplasticity’ at Raven Row

27 Nov – 8 Dec 2024

You can tell a gallery is throwing everything at the wall when their latest show claims to ‘fold or stretch time’ while rethinking the ‘historical’—and somehow ties that to climate change, clairvoyance, and the ‘plasticity’ of the body. In other words, Raven Row has embraced a spectacularly chaotic approach with this exhibition, curated by Denmark-based theorist and art historian Lars Bang Larsen. It’s oddly brilliant as a masterclass in total absurdity. You’ve got to admire the confidence it takes to pack a gallery with random ideas, cover it in convoluted art theory, and head off to the pub, fully assured no one will ever figure out what it’s all supposed to mean.

For more, visit here

‘Fragile Beauty’ at the V&A

26 Nov 2024 – 5 Jan 2025

Sir Elton John has got an eye for art that stands on its own. Alongside his partner, David Furnish, he’s spent decades curating an incredible photography collection that’s earned global recognition, even making a stop at the Tate in 2017. Now it’s the V&A’s turn to showcase it. This exhibition paints a portrait of Elton himself—an icon—through portraits of others. It tells a story of style, fashion, the dizzying highs of fame, and the captivating pull of sexuality.

For more, visit here

‘The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998’ at the Barbican

5 Oct 2024 – 5 Jan 2025

Showcasing the work of over 30 Indian artists, this landmark exhibition explores a pivotal period in India’s history, framed by two major events: Indira Gandhi’s declaration of Emergency in 1975 and the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998. These years were marked by social unrest, economic struggles, and rapid urban growth. Amid the chaos, everyday life carried on, and artists created works that captured both key historical moments and personal, shared experiences. Through a variety of media, the exhibition presents vibrant and powerful works exploring themes like friendship, love, desire, family, religion, caste, community, violence, and protest—offering deeply personal insights into a time of immense transformation.

As the first institutional show to focus on this crucial period, it features many works being shown in the UK for the first time.

For more, visit here

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