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We look ahead and pick the best exhibitions to see in London’s galleries and museums, opening this July.
Heavenly glow-up: Luminiscence at Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral boasts some stunning architectural flourishes, and Luminiscence’s dazzling projections promise to bring out the best in them. This 360° projected light show will bathe the sacred space’s windows, walls, pillars and ceiling in remarkable shifting colourscapes. It will also digitally realise the cathedral’s never-completed mosaic-adorned domes, offering audiences a glimpse into what might have been. Plus there’s a choral soundtrack, with narration by Hugh Bonneville. Read our full preview.
Luminiscence at Westminster Cathedral. 1 July-27 September 2026, £32.50.
Better health: Audrey Amiss & Rudy Loewe at Wellcome Collection
The mental health-themed art of Audrey Amiss and Rudy Loewe join forces in this double exhibition. The late Amiss advocated for those who experienced harmful mental health treatment in the UK, and while she created art throughout her life, the full extent of her work wasn’t discovered until after her death in 2013. These drawings, paintings and archival material reveal an incredible back catalogue. Loewe reimagines a more equitable mental health care system through sculptures, paintings and sound — with a focus on those who have been impacted by racist discrimination.
Audrey Amiss: The Surviving Exhibitions & Rudy Loewe: Intimacies of Care – Spaces of Grief and Possibility at Wellcome Collection. 9 July 2026-7 February 2027, free.
Naturally brilliant: Ana Mendieta at Tate Modern
Flowers appear to spring forth from a body: is she dead or being reborn? Using herself as a canvas, Ana Mendieta’s ‘Siulea’ (silhouettes) series was an important part of her practice, and though a lot of the late Cuban-American’s work was performance-based or impermanent, Tate Modern reimagines the originals, including a silhouette made from ritual candles, and mounds formed of earth, leaves and plants. The retrospective covers Mendieta’s activism, including her role as a member of the first not-for-profit, artist-directed gallery for women artists in the US. A pioneering feminist icon, Mendieta sits comfortably in the company of Tracey Emin and Frida Kahlo, also currently celebrated at Tate Modern.
Ana Mendieta at Tate Modern. 15 July 2026-17 January 2027, £18.
Keeping it local: Backyard Biennial at Whitechapel Gallery and other east London venues
Most art biennials are glitzy affairs, with big art collectors jetting in and out, but Whitechapel Gallery’s Backyard Biennial offers a locally-tinged antidote. Focused on the diverse local communities of east London, it celebrates the unique historic, cultural, and creative identity of the East End, paying tribute to its diverse communities and industries. The Biennial unfolds across several venues, though the hub is at Whitechapel Gallery, which hosts exhibitions on artists who celebrate the cross-cultural nature of the area, alongside a collaboration with Oitij-jo Collective, a local Bengali arts and heritage organisation.
Backyard Biennial: East at Whitechapel Gallery and over 30 other venues. 15 July-6 September 2026, free.
South Asian art: The Meeting Ground at Christie’s
Auction house Christie’s once again gives over its space in St James’s to host a non-selling exhibition over the summer. In this, the forth year, it’s the turn of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi. The museum is currently building a standalone home in India, and in the meantime, we get a glimpse into its growing collection of works by Indian modernist artists, and pieces that reflect India’s many indigenous cultures.
The Meeting Ground: Scenes from the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art Collection at Christie’s. 16 July-21 August 2026, free.
Shakespearean scenes: Richard Dadd at Royal Academy of Arts
From his graduation from the Royal Academy of Arts to his final 42 years as a patient in Bethlem and Broadmoor Hospitals, Richard Dadd’s torturous journey was always accompanied by his art. Beyond Bedlam is our chance to see some 100 oil paintings, watercolours and drawings; best known for his fairy scenes drawn from Shakespearean subjects, the Victorian artist’s paintings are packed with intricacy and imagination, but there is shock and sadness behind them. Following a trip across Eastern Mediterranean, Dadd returned to England, where he became delusional, resulting in him killing his father. Even after being placed in secure hospitals, Dadd continued to work from memory, imagination and earlier sketches.
Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam at the Royal Academy of Arts. 25 July-25 October 2026, £15.
American photography: Portrait of a City at Dulwich Picture Gallery
Children playing in the street, mass migration and the Great Depression. Snapshots of US life are captured in these works by 38 photographers, charting the dramatic evolution of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco from the early 1900s to the close of the 20th century. This is evolution in duplicate; not just that of a country, but of photography as an art form, too.
Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography at Dulwich Picture Gallery. 28 July-4 October 2026, £16.
War is hell: Childhood in War at IWM London
War changes all aspects of children’s lives, from schooling to health to recreation. Over 450 million children — more than one in six globally — now live in areas affected by conflict, and IWM’s exhibition tells the stories of those who have experienced war from 1914 to the present day. There are personal testimonies of hope, danger and perseverance alongside interactive and hands-on experiences, from a large-scale evacuee train carriage to recreations of 20th century wartime games. With contemporary stories from Afghanistan, Ukraine and Sudan, this isn’t an easy visit, but it’s an important one.
Childhood in War at IWM London. 31 July 2026-28 February 2027, free.
Short-run exhibitions
Homelands Lost at P21 Gallery (2-10 July, free) features Alan Gignoux’s portraits of Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 and their descendants, shown alongside images of their former homes inside Israel. Gignoux photographed refugees in camps across Jordan, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, then travelled to their former homes, to photograph the places they cannot return to.
The Fitzrovia Chapel’s gold-lined interiors host two exciting exhibitions this month. With Supernatural Tendencies (1-9 July, free) Charlotte Colbert fills the space with her sculptures in bronze and stainless steel, including a tree adorned with votive objects inspired by her travels. Meanwhile, A Map of the Invisible (13-24 July, free), has Pete M. Wyer fill the chapel with sounds of Venice: bells, footsteps, lapping water. It’s a fitting sonic tribute, as the chapel’s interior was inspired by St. Mark’s Basilica.
We listed most graduate art exhibitions in our June preview, but there’s still a chance to catch the Goldsmiths postgraduate degree show (17-21 July, free), and perhaps scout a future art star.
Exhibition outside London
Teenagers hanging out on a bench. A woman reading in a coffee shop. The view through a window of a hairdresser’s. Rebecca Holton captures seemingly mundane moments with her brushes, to create stunning, near-photorealistic paintings. A winner of the Guildford House Open prize in 2025, she deservedly gets the gallery spaces to herself, for People Watching. (4 July-3 October, free).
