{"id":374456,"date":"2026-03-31T09:52:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/374456\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T09:52:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:52:14","slug":"the-best-exhibitions-to-book-in-the-uk-this-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/374456\/","title":{"rendered":"The best exhibitions to book in the UK this April"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overwhelmed by the great wave of spring openings? You need the Times guide to the best exhibitions to book this month. If Japanese prints float your boat, make a pilgrimage to the Whitworth in Manchester, where Hokusai and Hiroshige go head-to-head in a ravishing exhibition of woodcuts. Make it a double on a trip to Kensington Gardens where David Hockney salutes the seasons at Serpentine North and Cecily Brown\u2019s poetic park life paintings fill the walls at Serpentine South. If you\u2019re still standing, sashay down to Schiaparelli at the V&A for haute couture with a side order of lobster.<\/p>\n

David Hockney: A Year in Normandie \u2014 the master\u2019s swansong?<\/p>\n

\"IllustrationDavid Hockney \u201cA Year in Normandie\u201d, 2020-2021\u00a9 David Hockney<\/p>\n

Serpentine North Gallery, London\u00a0
The year opens in mist. It lies in sullen stripes across grass the colour of a Dunlop flash. Bare trees rise upwards like bathers coming out of the sea. Pull your collar closer. This weather gets into your bones. You feel David Hockney\u2019s A Year in Normandie as much as you see it. Plenty of exhibitions promise an immersive experience. This one draws you in and wraps you up. Rarely has the Serpentine North Gallery made a happier marriage with an artist. It\u2019s a tricky space \u2014 a running track with two central chambers \u2014 often out of sympathy with its shows. The track works perfectly here. Laura Freeman
To Aug 23, serpentinegalleries.org<\/a>
Read the full review<\/a><\/p>\n

Cecily Brown \u2014 where has this mesmerising artist been?<\/p>\n

\"OilCecily Brown\u2019s Serpentine PictureGenevieve Hanson<\/p>\n

Serpentine South Gallery, London
Considering Cecily Brown is one of the most expensive living female painters, and home-grown (though she has been based in New York since the 1990s), it\u2019s remarkable how rarely we have had the chance to see her work in the UK. Since leaving London, because as a painter her work was out of step with the sensational shenanigans of the YBAs and Britain was breathless with the \u201cdeath of painting\u201d, she has had only two big public gallery exhibitions here \u2014 at Blenheim Palace and the Whitworth, Manchester \u2014 in the past 20 years. So Cecily Brown: Picture Making, a show of 32 paintings, plus 23 drawings and a handful of monotypes, at the Serpentine South Gallery, is a treat. Nancy Durrant
To Sept 6, serpentinegalleries.org<\/a>
Read the full review<\/a><\/p>\n

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art \u2014 give into a riotous imagination<\/p>\n

\"DesignerDesigner Elsa Schiaparelli is being celebrated at the V&AFredrich Baker\/Conde Nast\/PA <\/p>\n

V&A, London
Coco Chanel didn\u2019t think much of Elsa Schiaparelli. \u201cThat Italian artist who\u2019s making clothes\u201d was her dismissive assessment and on the face of it, it\u2019s accurate. As this absorbing exhibition at the V&A South Kensington shows, Schiaparelli\u2019s ethos was that fashion was not a profession but an art. Born into a family of academics and aristocrats in Rome in 1890, Schiaparelli was never going to conform. On the evidence here she was certainly an artist. I\u2019m not sure that was quite the insult Chanel intended. ND
To Nov 8, vam.ac.uk<\/a>
Read the full review<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Beneath the Great Wave \u2014 a fresh look at a Japanese icon<\/p>\n

\"IllustrationHokusai\u2019s infamous Great Wave2023 Christie\u2019s Images Limited<\/p>\n

Whitworth, Manchester
Last year an impression of Katsushika Hokusai\u2019s Under the Wave off Kanagawa sold for $2.8 million, a record for the artist, at Sotheby\u2019s Hong Kong. That\u2019s a lot of noodles. Although about 8,000 impressions are thought to have been printed from Hokusai\u2019s woodblocks, only a hundred or so survive today. We\u2019re so used to seeing The Great Wave, we forget to look. Beneath the Great Wave: Hokusai and Hiroshige, at the Whitworth gallery in Manchester, introduces us to Hokusai\u2019s most famous print as if we were encountering it for the first time. This perceptive, beautifully presented show is arranged across two rooms. LF
To Nov 15, whitworth.manchester.ac.uk<\/a>
Read the full review<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overwhelmed by the great wave of spring openings? You need the Times guide to the best exhibitions to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-374456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}