Art News: The best art exhibitions in London this winter, with Conceptual Art and Symbolist Paintings to know

London's big winter exhibitions are open or opening this month, and the first of them close soon after New Year. Here is what is on, in the order the shows close, followed by what opens in November, what to book first and what you can see for free. After that come two kinds of art worth knowing: famous conceptual art pieces and Symbolist painting.

London art exhibitions this winter, by closing date

Exhibition	Where	Until (2027)
Frida: The Making of an Icon	Tate Modern	3 January
Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji	Dulwich Picture Gallery	17 January
Ana Mendieta	Tate Modern	17 January
Renoir and Love	National Gallery	31 January
Painting the French Riviera	Royal Academy	31 January
Korea	British Museum	31 January
Henry Moore: Monumental Nature	Kew Gardens	31 January
Tim Walker's Fairyland: Love and Legends	National Portrait Gallery	7 February
The 90s: Art and Fashion	Tate Britain	14 February
Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography	Tate Modern	21 February
Robert Ryman: The Real Thing	Barbican	28 February
Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector	Royal Academy, from 21 November	14 March
Nan Goldin: You Never Did Anything Wrong	Hayward Gallery, from 24 November	14 March
Van Eyck: The Portraits	National Gallery, from 21 November	11 April
Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury	Tate Britain, from 12 November	11 April
The Bayeux Tapestry	British Museum	11 July

We checked these dates at the start of November, but check with the venue before you travel.

Opening in November

Van Eyck: The Portraits is the one to plan around. The National Gallery is bringing together all nine known painted portraits by Jan van Eyck, about half of his surviving work, and says it is the first time they have been seen together. It runs from 21 November to 11 April, and standard tickets are £18 with an audio guide.

Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury opens at Tate Britain on 12 November, organised with Charleston, the Sussex farmhouse the two painters shared. Tate calls it the first major exhibition to chart the partnership of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, with more than 300 works. Our guide to modern British artists has more on the Bloomsbury Group.

Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector opens at the Royal Academy on 21 November, and Nan Goldin: You Never Did Anything Wrong opens at the Hayward Gallery three days later. Nan Goldin's show runs until 14 March.

What to book first

The first to go is the Frida Kahlo exhibition at Tate Modern, which closes on 3 January, so the Christmas weeks are your last chance. Hokusai at Dulwich and Ana Mendieta at Tate Modern both close on 17 January. Then three of the largest shows close on the same day, 31 January: Pierre-Auguste Renoir at the National Gallery, the French Riviera at the Royal Academy and Korea at the British Museum, which is the museum's first major exhibition on Korea's art and history in more than 40 years.

Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave), from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, about 1830–32. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Free art exhibitions in London this winter

• Yinka Shonibare and Thomas Gainsborough: A Conversation, National Gallery, until 7 February
• Michael Landy: Future Ruins, Sir John Soane's Museum, until 17 January
• Liz Larner: A hard line to bend, Camden Art Centre, until 17 January
• Yuko Mohri, the Curve at the Barbican, until 24 January
• Nicole Eisenman, Royal Academy, until 5 February
• Rachel Kneebone, Wallace Collection, until 25 April

Looking ahead to 2027

Next year's big shows are already drawing attention. We have separate guides to Monet at Tate Modern and David Hockney at Tate, and our art events calendar for 2027 covers the fairs, biennials and major exhibitions. At the National Gallery, German Expressionism: Modern Painting 1900–1918 follows from 18 March, and Rembrandt comes to the Royal Academy from 9 April.

Famous conceptual art pieces

Conceptual art puts the idea ahead of the object, and the works below show why it still starts arguments.

1. Fountain, Marcel Duchamp, 1917. A shop-bought urinal, signed "R. Mutt" and submitted to an open exhibition in New York. The original was lost, and it is known through Alfred Stieglitz's photograph.
2. Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility, Yves Klein, 1959–62. Klein sold empty space for gold and gave buyers a receipt. Many buyers burned the receipt as part of a ritual while Klein threw half the gold into the Seine, so few survive. One sold at Sotheby's in 2022 for nearly $1.2 million.
3. Artist's Shit, Piero Manzoni, 1961. Ninety numbered tins, priced by weight against gold.
4. One and Three Chairs, Joseph Kosuth, 1965. A real chair, a photograph of it and a dictionary definition of the word.
5. Wall drawings, Sol LeWitt, from 1968. Other people draw them on the wall, following his instructions.
6. An Oak Tree, Michael Craig-Martin, 1973. A glass of water on a high shelf, with a text explaining that it is now an oak tree. Australian officials once stopped it at the border as vegetation. An artist's copy has been on loan to Tate since 2000.
7. My Bed, Tracey Emin, 1998. Shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999. It made £2,546,500 at Christie's in London in July 2014, and the buyer lent it to Tate.
8. Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan, 2019. The banana taped to a wall. An edition made $6.2 million at Sotheby's in New York in November 2024.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, photographed by Alfred Stieglitz. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

What a buyer of conceptual art actually owns

Often the answer is paperwork. The buyer of Comedian received a roll of duct tape, instructions and a certificate of authenticity, and the banana was not included. A LeWitt wall drawing can pass between owners as a certificate and a diagram, and the certificate gives its owner the right to have the work made. If you own a work like this, the documents are close to being the work itself, so keep them safe and keep them with it.

Symbolist paintings

Symbolism began in 1886, when the poet Jean Moréas published a manifesto in Le Figaro, and its painters turned from the visible world to dream, myth and mortality. Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon led the way in France, Edvard Munch took it to Norway and Gustav Klimt to Vienna. Arnold Böcklin painted several versions of The Isle of the Dead from 1880, and Paul Gauguin's Vision after the Sermon, of 1888, is in the National Galleries of Scotland. Our guide to Symbolism covers the movement in full.

Arnold Böcklin, The Isle of the Dead, third version, 1883, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Paul Gauguin, Vision after the Sermon, 1888, National Galleries of Scotland. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

If you own a work by any of these artists

For any work, the first checks are the medium, the date, the signature and the back of the frame, where labels can show where it has been. If you would like to know what you have, send us photographs for a free valuation. There is no obligation to sell, and we act for you rather than for the saleroom.

Cover: Jan van Eyck, Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?), 1433, National Gallery, London. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.