Happy New Year!
Here at Smith Greenfield, we are looking ahead to a great year for exhibitions. From Donatello to Marina Abramović, treasures from the Hispanic world to contemporary African photography, 2023 brings a host of extraordinary art to the UK offering something for everyone!
National Gallery
6 May 2023 – 30 July 2023
The first major art exhibition in the UK to explore the life and legacy of Saint Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), one of history’s most inspirational and revered figures, will be staged at the National Gallery. The exhibition presents the art and imagery of Saint Francis from the 13th century to today and examines how his spiritual radicalism, his commitment to the poor, his love of God and nature, as well as his striving for peace between enemies and openness to dialogue with other religions, make him a figure of enormous relevance to our times. Saint Francis of Assisi brings together paintings from across the National Gallery’s collection – by Sassetta, Botticelli, and Zurbarán – with international loans, notably Caravaggio’s Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, about 1595), Josefa de Óbidos’s, Saint Francis and Saint Clare adoring the Christ Child in a Manger (Lisbon, Private collection, 1647), as well as works by Stanley Spencer, Antony Gormley, and Arte Povera artist, Giuseppe Penone. The exhibition will also include a new commission from Richard Long (b.1945).
The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Frans Hals
30 September 2023 – 21 January 2024
This exhibition, the first major retrospective of Hals in more than thirty years, promises to show why the prominent painter – who was born in Antwerp but worked for most of his life in Haarlem – deserves his place as one of the greatest painters in Western art. The exhibition brings together fifty of Hals’s finest works, including the first-ever loan of his most famous picture, The Laughing Cavalier (1624, Wallace Collection). From small works to large group portraits, genre scenes, and marriage portraits reunited for the first time from international collections, the exhibition includes the artist’s very best work.
V&A
Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance
11 February 2023 – 11 June 2023
The first exhibition of its kind to be staged in the UK, Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance, will explore the exceptional talents of the Renaissance master. Arguably the greatest sculptor of all time, Donatello (about 1386-1466), was in the vanguard of a revolution in sculptural practice in the early Renaissance. This major exhibition will offer a new vision of the artist and his impact on artistic development at this crucial time in the history of art. Featuring many works that have never been on display in the UK, the exhibition will explore Donatello’s diverse creativity within the vibrant artistic and cultural context of fifteenth-century Italy, and his influence on subsequent generations of artists. The exhibition has been developed as part of a collaborative partnership with Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, and the Staatliche Museen in Berlin. Each institution has drawn on its own collections and curatorial expertise to stage three interconnected, but distinct exhibitions offering a celebration of Donatello’s life and work in three parts.
Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto
With the support of CHANEL
16 September 2023 – 25 February 2024
The first UK exhibition dedicated to the work of French couturière, Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto will chart the evolution of her iconic design style and the establishment of the House of CHANEL, from the opening of her first millinery boutique in Paris in 1910 to the showing of her final collection in 1971. Featuring over 180 looks, seen together for the first time, as well as jewellery, accessories, cosmetics and perfumes, the exhibition will explore Chanel’s pioneering approach to fashion design, which paved the way for a new feminine elegance and continues to influence the way women dress today. Based upon the Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto exhibition organised by the Palais Galliera, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris, the exhibition will be re-imagined for the V&A and feature rarely seen pieces from the V&A’s collection, alongside looks from Palais Galliera and the Patrimoine de CHANEL, the heritage collections of the fashion House in Paris.
Tate
28 September 2023 – 14 January 2024
Tate Britain
Internationally celebrated for her bold and provocative use of materials and imagery, Sarah Lucas has consistently challenged our understanding of sex, class and gender over her 40 year career.
This career-spanning exhibition will cover the full scope of Lucas’ work in sculpture, installation and photography, which deftly explores what makes us human and how objects are imbued with meaning.
A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography
6 July 2023 – 14 January 2024
Tate Modern
A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography is a major group show bringing together photographers of different generations from across Africa. It will explore how artists have reimagined the continent’s diverse cultures, histories and geographies – from bustling cityscapes to dream-like utopias – and how photography can allow the past and the future to co-exist in powerful and transformative ways.
Royal Academy of Arts
Spain and the Hispanic World: Treasures from the Hispanic Society Museum & Library
21 January 2023 – 10 April 2023
Spain and the Hispanic World will celebrate the unrivalled collection of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library in New York, which is home to the most extensive collection of Spanish and Hispanic art outside of Spain. Shown in the UK for the first time, the exhibition will present a visual narrative of the history of Spanish culture, reflecting the great diversity of cultural and religious influences, from Celtic, Islamic, Christian and Jewish to American, African and Asian, that have shaped and enriched Spanish culture across four millennia. The selection of over 150 works will include paintings, sculptures, silk textiles, ceramics, lustreware, silverwork, precious jewellery, maps, drawings and illuminated manuscripts, with highlights including The Duchess of Alba, 1797, by Francisco de Goya as well as paintings by El Greco, Francisco de Zurbarán and Diego Velázquez; a monumental series of 14 paintings by Joaquín Sorolla, the celebrated World Map of 1526 by Giovanni Vespucci and a rare collection of stunning decorative lacquerware from Latin America.
23 September 2023 – 10 December 2023
In September 2023 the Royal Academy of Arts will present a solo exhibition of the internationally acclaimed artist Marina Abramović Hon RA. The exhibition will be Abramović’s first major survey in the UK, bringing together over 50 works spanning her entire career, including performance works within the galleries. It will explore how Abramović has reflected on the temporal nature of performance art by extending its impact through its traces: photographs, videos, objects, installations and re-performances of her works by young performers.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
1 April 2023 – 3 September 2023
For this solo show at YSP, Lindsey Mendick will create an immersive installation that excavates her own memories, the history and myths of the Bretton Estate, and television and cultural experiences from the 1980s to the early 2000s.
Mendick works predominantly with clay, a material that has historically been associated with decoration and the domestic sphere. Subverting these connotations, she creates intricate works that celebrate popular culture and explore contemporary feminine experience. These elaborate installations draw on the artist’s own stories, memories and dreams and the results are humorous, grotesque and beautiful in equal measure.
Since gaining her MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art in 2017, Mendick has established a highly successful practice and career. Her work has been shown in solo and two-person exhibitions at Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate; Somerset House, London; Goldsmiths CCA, London; and Eastside Projects, Birmingham. Her work is included in the major exhibition, Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art at the Hayward Gallery, London.
Scottish National Gallery (Royal Scottish Academy)
22 July 2023 – 12 November 2023
Covering the Turner Prize-winning artist’s 40 year career, this exhibition will be the biggest ever exhibition of work by Grayson Perry. Recognised as one of Britain’s most celebrated artists and cultural figures, Grayson Perry makes art that deals with difficult and complex ideas, in an accessible and often funny way. Exploring universally human themes of masculinity, sexuality, class, religion, politics and more, the exhibition will bring together the artist’s subversive pots, intricate prints, elaborate sculptures and huge, captivating tapestries to address controversial issues of our time.
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Image: London’s National Gallery in Trafalgar Square © National Gallery, London