Against the exciting backdrop of Frieze, London’s galleries and cultural institutions will be buzzing this autumn, offering everything from landmark retrospectives to bold new commissions. With so much happening across the city, London Art Week is the perfect moment to focus on the unmissable. Here are our highlights:

1. Kerry James Marshall: The Histories, 20 September 2025 – 18 January 2026

The largest UK exhibition of Marshall’s work brings together 70 paintings that place Black lives at the centre of art history. Known for his vivid, large-scale canvases, Marshall draws on civil rights, comics, personal memory, and Western painting traditions to reframe the past and imagine new futures. A highlight is Knowledge and Wonder (1995), his monumental Chicago Public Library commission, loaned for the first time.

2. Lee Miller at Tate Britain, 2 October 2025 – 15 February 2026

This extensive retrospective positions Miller as one of the 20th century’s most vital voices. From her Surrealist beginnings in Paris to her pioneering work in fashion and war photography, the show highlights both her collaborations and her lesser-known explorations, such as striking images of Egypt in the 1930s.

3. Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life at The Courtauld, 10 October 2025 – 18 January 2026

In the first UK museum exhibition of Thiebaud’s work, The Courtauld showcases his lushly painted still lifes of quintessentially post-war American subjects—from diner food and deli counters to pinball machines and gumball dispensers. These works, which defined his career in the 1960s, bring a playful yet meticulous eye to everyday life.

4. Nicolas Party: Clotho at Hauser & Wirth, 14 October – 20 December 2025

Swiss painter Nicolas Party presents his first solo exhibition in London, filling Hauser & Wirth with new treescapes and pastel portraits. Known for his reimagining of representational painting, Party blends tradition and innovation in works that are at once familiar and otherworldly.

5. Ways of Making, Ways of Thinking at Cristea Roberts, 19 September – 18 October 2025 

This group show brings together Rana Begum, Lubna Chowdhary, Eva Rothschild, and Anni Albers, exploring how materiality transcends hierarchy and medium. Expect new lenticulars and mesh sculptures from Begum, Chowdhary’s debut suite of woodblocks, Rothschild’s ceramic multiples, and graphic works and jewellery by Albers, drawn from the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation.