The five best exhibitions to book in London this March
, The Times
The days are getting longer, the daffodils are out and the spring exhibition season is in full swing. Will you surf the waves all the way to Hawaii at the British Museum for a dazzling display of feathered headdresses or travel to an antique land (by way of Battersea) for an encounter with the pharaoh Ramses the Great and the treasures of his ancient kingdom? Will you choose to cut a swathe through the samurai warriors of Japan or get up close and personal with the intensely intimate drawings, paintings and etchings of Lucian Freud? For the truly fearless, there’s Tracey Emin’s soul-baring solo show A Second Life at Tate Modern. Here is my round-up of the five best exhibitions to book this month.
Samurai — a ravishing, bloody trip to Japan
British Museum, London
The trouble with myth-busting is that some of us like the legend. Facts can get in the way of the fire, the fury, the fun. I confess I was worried that the British Museum’s Samurai, in seeking to present the samurai less as traitorous, throat-slitting warriors and more as poetry-reciting aesthetes, might go too far down the tea bowls and folding screens route. Samurai sanitised. No chance. This magnificent exhibition comes at you blades flashing. There is gore galore and more decapitations and dismemberments than you can shake an (amputated) fist at. To May 4, britishmuseum.org
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Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting — surprising and spellbinding
Bella in her Pluto T-Shirt (etching), 1995
THE LUCIAN FREUD ARCHIVE. 2025/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. COLLECTION: NATIONAL PORT
National Portrait Gallery, London
Aren’t we over Lucian Freud? Isn’t he due the well-documented dip in reputation that follows a few years after an artist’s death before rediscovery a decade hence? Haven’t we had enough of the Freud industry? The biographies (in two volumes), the volumes of letters, the memoirs by sitters, daughters and toadies? Those were my thoughts on the way to Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting at the National Portrait Gallery. One room into the show and, damn it, the old seducer had done it again. It was the thistles. Three Scotch thistles, barbed, beautiful, sinister in their strangeness, picked and drawn on the Isles of Scilly and practically prickling off the paper. To May 4, npg.org.uk
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Hawai’i — I was dazzled by this royal razzmatazz
Featherwork ornaments at the Hawai’i exhibition at the British Museum
MKH/THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
British Museum, London
While I felt somewhat walloped by the history and the who’s who of Hawaiian royal genealogy, the artefacts on display are dazzling. The showstopper is a case of feathered cloaks, capelets, chokers, tokens, garlands and fans, all ravishingly presented and lit. The feathers are thought to have come from the i’iwi bird (the scarlet honeycreeper) and the o’o bird (now sadly extinct), tied together with twine from the olona nettle. To May 25, britishmuseum.org
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Ramses and the Pharaohs’ Gold — up close to Egypt’s king of kings
From left: the coffin lids of Pinudjem II’s wife and Pinudjem I
ALAMY
Neon, Battersea Power Station, London
“One thousand years after the pyramids,” intones a voice from on high. “One thousand years before Cleopatra…” Visitors to Ramses and the Pharaohs’ Gold start their journey in tomb-like darkness. A screen flickers into life. Arrows fly. Battles rage. Empires rise. Statues fall. Ramses II, king of kings, was ancient Egypt’s greatest pharaoh. He ruled for 66 years (1279-1213BC), lived to the age 92 and fathered 100 children. (Or so the cartouches say.) Watching the introductory film I had an ominous feeling we were about to get Ramses: The Immersive Experience — settle back for sensory overload. In truth, this is a proper, old-fashioned exhibition of beautiful artefacts with a few digital bells and whistles on the side. To May 31, feverup.com
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Tracey Emin — a show that gets under your skin and into your bowels
I followed you to the end, 2024
TRACEY EMIN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2026
Tate Modern, London
This is both a fitting tribute to her own brand of belligerent resilience and yet curiously un-Tracey-like in its presentation. The show is overdue. Other YBAs — the loose group of Young British Artists who established a mouthy reputation for themselves in the late Eighties and early Nineties — have had their Tate tributes: Damien Hirst at Tate Modern in 2012, Sarah Lucas at Tate Britain in 2023. To Aug 31, tate.org.uk
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