Exhibitions

Francesca Woodman: Lately I Find a Sliver of Mirror Is Simply to Slice an Eyelid at Gagosian, Rome: 29 April – 31 July, 2026

The American photographer Francesca Woodman had a long-standing affinity for Italy. During a year’s fellowship in Rome in 1978, she held her first European solo at Libreria Maldoror, a hub for Dada, surrealist and futurist art. Fittingly, Gagosian Rome will soon present an exhibition of Woodman’s work dedicated entirely to her surrealist sensibilities – namely, “the transformative use of allegory, language and everyday objects to evoke the marvellous and uncanny”. The show will unite nearly 50 of Woodman’s prints, many of which have never been shown before, revealing her persistent fascination with the dreamlike, symbolic and mysterious.

Nam June Paik: Rewind / Repeat at APMA Cabinet, Seoul: 1 April – 16 May, 2026

A major retrospective of the late video-art pioneer Nam June Paik will soon open in Seoul, his birthplace. Paik studied art and classical music in Tokyo, joined the Fluxus group in West Germany, and later moved to New York where he emerged as a leading innovator among a new wave of artists exploring alternative ways to create and disseminate art. There, he developed his practice across painting, sculpture, performance and music, while expanding the possibilities of electronic media in radical new ways. Taking place at Amorepacific’s headquarters, this key exhibition will feature many of Paik’s most seminal works, alongside a number never shown before.

Senga Nengudi: Performance Works 1972-1982 at Whitechapel Gallery, London: 1 April – 14 June, 2026

At Whitechapel Gallery, a new show has turned the spotlight on US artist and educator Senga Nengudi. A central figure in the experimental Black art scenes of 1960s and 70s Los Angeles and New York, Nengudi’s practice spans sculpture, choreography and performance. This exhibition homes in on a pivotal decade of her career, 1972 to 1982 – a period when she “refined both her approach and creative forms, building on a background in dance and art”. Made up of found objects and materials like hosiery, masking tape, rocks and sand, Nengudi’s works from this time were designed to be activated by spontaneous or choreographed interactions: a living exchange between object and body. 

Isaac Julien: All That Changes You. Metamorphosis at The Cosmic House, London: 22 April – 18 December, 2026

This month, the British filmmaker and artist Isaac Julien will unveil a new work at post-modern landmark The Cosmic House in Holland Park, drawing upon Charles Jencks and Maggie Keswick’s vision of the site as “an architectural model of the universe with layered, non-linear time”. Titled All That Changes You. Metamorphosis, the installation is an iteration of Julien’s 2025 piece of the same name, made specifically with the Cosmic House in mind. Developed with Mark Nash, and drawing on the writings of Octavia E Butler, Ursula K Le Guin and Donna Haraway, among others, it is a timely and poetic moving-image work that explores transformation as “a defining condition of existence”.

Calder. Rêver en Equilibre at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris: 15 April – 16 August, 2026

Fondation Louis Vuitton is hosting a major exhibition of Alexander Calder, that master of mobiles. Curated with Calder’s foundation to mark the centenary of his death, the show spans over 50 years of creation, from the whimsical Cirque Calder – his miniature mechanical circus performed in 1920s Paris – to the artist’s monumental public sculptures of the 60s and 70s. Almost 300 works will inhabit Frank Gehry’s sweeping architectural spaces, displayed chronologically to trace the evolution of Calder’s practice, revealing his playful experiments, kinetic ingenuity and unique sculptural vocabulary. 

Beyond the Manosphere at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam: 17 April – 2 August, 2026

What does it mean to be a man today? This is the question posed by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam’s upcoming exhibition, Beyond the Manosphere – Masculinities Today. In the context of the Manosphere, defined by the museum as “a loose network of online spaces where a brash [misogyny] is asserted”, masculinity is a force that, to many, feels threatening. But in reality, it is of course a broad and layered construct that can be conflicting, banal, wavering and tender. The exhibition will explore all these facets of manhood and more, bringing together work by 35 international artists from the 60s to now, including Pope.L, Sophie Calle, Sylvie Fleury, Salman Toor and Bruno Zhu.

Rirkrit Tiravanija: The House that Jack Built at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan: Until 26 July, 2026

The Argentina-born Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija lives between New York, Berlin and Chiang Mai. His practice reveals the tensions of this nomadic lifestyle, intertwining and reconfiguring different cultural contexts. At Milan’s former industrial plant, the Pirelli HangarBicocca, don’t miss your chance to see the largest collection of his architectural works to date – spaces whose value is determined by those that inhabit them by function rather than form. Typical of the artist’s visionary approach, the show will take an active, participatory format, requiring visitors to bring the work to life, “embracing interruptions and unforeseen events” along the way.

The Music is Black: A British Story at V&A East, London: 18 April, 2026 – January 3, 2027

This month marks the opening of the V&A East Museum in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The newest branch of the storied London institute comprises two free galleries – where 500 objects from the V&A’s collection of art, architecture, design, performance and fashion will be on permanent display – and a new exhibition space. The first temporary exhibition will open, along with the museum, on April 18. Titled The Music is Black: A British Story, it will focus on the ways in which Black British music has influenced British, and global, culture from 1900 to today. Visitors will encounter Joan Armatrading’s childhood guitar, fashion designs worn by Little Simz and a decade-spanning array of photographs that tell “a story of excellence and struggle, resilience and joy”.

Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists at American Folk Art Museum, New York: 10 April – 13 September, 2026

The term “self-taught artist” comes replete with associations – that of the amateur, for instance, or the isolated genius working without references or artist networks. At the Folk Art Museum in New York, a soon-to-open exhibition will free self-made artists from any such assumptions, examining how they have “depicted, conceptualised and identified themselves on their own terms”.  Spanning the early 20th century to the present day, the show will bring together paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos and artists’ notebooks by more than 50 self-taught American artists, including Henry Darger (a janitor), Minnie Evans (a gatekeeper at a North Carolina Air Force base), Martin Ramírez (a Mexican immigrant confined in psychiatric hospitals for much of his life) and Bill Miller, a former industrial worker who uses discarded linoleum flooring as his primary medium.

Marcel Duchamp at MoMA, New York: 12 April – 22 August, 2026

A new retrospective of Marcel Duchamp will open this April at MoMA – the first survey of the French artist’s work in the US since 1973. Duchamp challenged the very notion of what art could be, confounding critics and audiences alike with found objects (urinals, snow shovels) presented as “readymade” sculptures and a goateed version of Mona Lisa, while paving the way for conceptual art. Resistant to labels but forever chasing reinvention, Duchamp turned his hand to cubism, Dada, surrealism, Pop art and more over his six-decade career. At MoMA, museum goers will discover some 300 of his artworks, experiencing the full breadth of his creative output and imagination.

Free and Queer: Black Californian Roots of Gay Liberation at California African American Museum: 7 April, 2026 – 28 February, 2027

Long before Stonewall, generations of queer Black Californians were paving the way for LGBTQ equality, civil rights and recognition. A new exhibition at California African American Museum will shine important new light on these figures, their allies and the spaces they occupied through photographs, film, vintage newspapers, and archival objects. Traversing McCarthyism and the eruption of the civil rights movement through the AIDS crisis protests and the 2013 victory for marriage equality, the show will reveal a vital, oft-overlooked history of activism, artistry and expression on the West Coast.

Paula Rego: Story Line at Victoria Miro, London: 16 April – 23 May, 2026

Londoners, don’t miss your chance to admire Paula Rego’s exquisite draughtsmanship at Victoria Miro’s upcoming exhibition, Story Line, the most comprehensive presentation of the Portuguese artist’s works on paper to date. Foregrounding Rego’s transformative use of line in different media – from pen and ink to pastel, conté, charcoal and pencil – the exhibition considers the role of drawing in Rego’s singular mode of storytelling, from her formative years as a young artist in the 1950s until her death in 2022.

Events & Performances

In the event of April showers, this month’s live performances offer a very good excuse to hit the theatre. Two years after its debut at the Barbican, UK dance pioneers Boy Blue have reimagined their acclaimed production, Cycles – a “tenacious exploration of hip hop dance in all its forms” – for the Roundhouse’s 270-degree stage. Arriving at the venue from April 11–12 as part of the Three Sixty festival, the show is a joyous ode to movement and the power of music, set to a live score by a seven-piece band. Another chance to revisit a masterpiece comes courtesy of Kontakthof – Echoes of ‘78, at Sadler’s Wells from April 7–11, which sees nine of the original dancers from Pina Bausch’s seminal early work, Kontakthof, reunite for a fresh encounter with the piece. Created by choreographer Meryl Tankard, one of the original cast members, the new production integrates projections of archival footage with live performance, creating a poignant interaction between past and present. While a transportive new production of Kenneth MacMillan’s psychologically thrilling ballet Mayerling – at the Royal Opera House until 18 May – sees all-consuming passion give way to royal scandal and wild choreography.

April’s best plays are also made up of revivals and reprisals. At the Almeida until 23 May, be sure to catch Joe Hill-Gibbins’ take on the Ibsen classic, A Doll’s House, newly translated by Anya Reiss. A riveting portrait of a stifled married woman on the brink of change, the play never fails to pack a powerful punch, and with Romola Garai at its helm, this version will no doubt prove no exception. If you missed Inter Alia, Suzie Miller’s brilliant follow-up to Prima Facie, when it premiered at the National Theatre last year, don’t fret – it has just transferred to Wyndham’s Theatre until 20 June. Directed by Justin Martin, Rosamund Pike reprises her leading role as a London Crown Court judge in a truly memorable study of justice, motherhood and modern masculinity. Last but not least, book your tickets for Clint Dyer’s bold new production of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, starring Aaron Pierre, Giles Terera and Olivia Williams, and showing at the Old Vic until 23 May. Based on Ken Kesey’s brilliant countercultural novel of the same name, it is the story of Randle P McMurphy, a rebellious inpatient at a psychiatric hospital, who sets out to challenge the institution’s oppressive rules, sparking chaos, courage and confrontation in the process.

Film

This month’s standout films include The Stranger, François Ozon’s taut, masterfully restrained take on Albert Camus’s existential classic, following an indifferent Frenchman in 1930s Algeria whose routine is unsettled by his mother’s death and a fateful seaside encounter. Jim Jarmusch returns with the quiet, deeply resonant drama Father Mother Sister Brother, a triptych of stories about estranged siblings and the emotionally distant – or recently departed – parents that reunite them. Italian theatre director Damiano Michieletto makes his feature debut with Primavera, the beautifully shot story of Cecilia, a 20-year-old violin prodigy at the Pièta orphanage in 18th-century Venice, whose life is transformed when she meets the institution’s new music instructor, Antonio Vivaldi.

In Rose of Nevada, the new film from acclaimed British director Mark Jenkin (Bait), a mysterious boat returns to the village from which it disappeared 30 years earlier. An enigmatic, time-twisting reflection on memory and loss ensues. Giulio Bertelli, son of Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli, makes a confident directorial debut with Agon, a raw, elemental exploration of athletic rigour centred on three women athletes training for the fictional 2024 Ludoj Olympics. US filmmaker David Lowery makes his anticipated return with Mother Mary, a psychological thriller about a celebrated pop star (Anne Hathaway) and her former best friend and costume designer (Michaela Cole), whose reunion on the eve of the former’s comeback unearths long-buried conflicts.

April’s best documentaries include Kinaesthesia, Gerald Fox’s mesmerising exploration of “dream films” – the bold, oneiric sequences of the silent cinema era. Searching for Satyrus sees acclaimed photographer Rena Effendi embark on a quest to find an endangered butterfly named after her late father, a Soviet entomologist. Finally, there’s The Last Spy, Katharina Otto-Bernstein’s stirring portrait of the 100-year-old CIA spymaster Peter Sichel, who escaped Nazi Germany as a Jewish refugee before returning to his homeland as the first CIA station chief in post-war Berlin.

Food & Drink

April’s new restaurant openings offer something for everyone. Opening in Notting Hill Gate on April 15, all-day Lebanese eatery Kinz will be serving up delicious dishes rooted in traditional home recipes in a newly refurbished 30s Lloyds Bank building-turned-brasserie. Conceived by Rasha Khouri Bruzzo, co-owner of Akub, alongside brothers Jad and Karim Lahoud, Kinz will offer a breakfast menu centred on tasty egg-based dishes, traditional rolls and sandwiches, while lunch and dinner options will range from mezze and small dishes like baba ghanoush and tabbouleh, to larger plates such as warak enab with koussa and lamb cutlet (tender vine leaves and baby courgettes wrapped around fragrant rice and spiced lamb), and fattet aubergine (baked aubergine layered with pine nuts, tomato, yoghurt and crisp pita).

For those in search of a different kind of Sunday lunch, Mayfair’s modern Georgian restaurant, DakaDaka, has just launched Supra Sunday Roasts, a traditional Georgian feast taking place every week from 12–4pm. Expect to sample classic Georgian dishes with a modern twist, from Krekhmara (roast leg of lamb) and Shkmeruli (half a roast chicken) to roast delica pumpkin, served with tantalising side dishes like crispy potatoes and onion, winter tomato salad, and grape salad with fresh honeycomb, and lashings of Georgian wine. 

We can’t wait for the opening of Bar Etna, a new East Coast-style pizza bar from Ed McIlroy (the founder of Four Legs) and Joe Beddia (the founder of beloved Philadelphia pizza joint, Pizzeria Beddia), arriving in Newington Green at the end of the month. The menu will bring together Beddia’s signature pies with McIlroy’s relaxed, ingredient-led approach, the press release teases, “offering a selection of core pizzas and seasonally rotating specials alongside Italian-American favourites”. And, of course, plenty of soft serve.

If wine, records and Slavic cuisine sounds like a dream combination, you are in luck. This month marks the launch of Sova, a new wine and vinyl bar in Notting Hill, specialising in Central and Eastern European wines. Alongside a wine list curated by sommelier Cristian Vega, an unfussy, sharing-style menu has been created by Moldovan chef Denis Calmis, encompassing cold starters (think: slow-roasted peppers with anchovies and dill oil, and a selection of Slavic cheeses) and main dishes like crispy sea bass with fennel, grapefruit and garden peas, and miso-glazed duck confit with roasted Jerusalem artichokes and plum sauce. Desserts are no less tantalising, including dark chocolate mousse with sea buckthorn, and sour cherry and buckwheat crumble with cream.

Holy Carrot, West London’s beloved vegetable-led restaurant, has just opened a new bistro in Spitalfields. There, founder Irina Linovich and chef Daniel Watkins are “building on Holy Carrot’s established fire-led cooking and fermentation approach, while allowing the kitchen to broaden its scope”. The menu combines fresh dishes with old favourites: “Koji-cured vegetables with tofu and pickles, and English ricotta with radicchio, truffle and koji honey set the tone, balancing brightness and depth,” the team explains. “[While] dishes like beets cooked in coal with ezme salad, and crispy artichoke with smoked tofu gribiche and peas offer something lighter.” New offerings include tempting pizzettas made using fermented koji and silken tofu, and a special, seasonal “Pie du jour”.

Finally, for east Londoners on the look out for impeccable Italian fare, new Milanese restaurant Ornella will soon open on Wilton Way. The brainchild of Ed Templeton, Naz Hassan and Theo James, the founders of Roman restaurant Lupa in Highbury, this new endeavour will celebrate the flavours of northern Italy, paying tribute to head chef Hassan’s Milanese heritage and the city’s dynamic restaurant scene. The seasonal menu will balance crowd pleasers such as Mondeghili meatballs, penne alla vodka and risotto alla Milanese, with signature dishes like vitello tonnato and cotoletta di vitello (a breaded veal cutlet in the shape of an elephant’s ear), followed by strawberry mille foglie and other such delights for pud. Buon appetito!