{"id":454380,"date":"2026-03-02T23:58:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T23:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/454380\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T23:58:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T23:58:14","slug":"the-five-best-exhibitions-to-book-in-london-this-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/454380\/","title":{"rendered":"The five best exhibitions to book in London this March"},"content":{"rendered":"

The five best exhibitions to book in London this March <\/p>\n

, The Times<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Tracey Emin\u2019s soul-baring solo show A Second Life at Tate Modern. Here is my round-up of the five best exhibitions to book this month.<\/p>\n

Samurai \u2014 a ravishing, bloody trip to Japan<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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<\/a>
Read the full review<\/a><\/p>\n

Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting \u2014 surprising and spellbinding\"Etching<\/p>\n

Bella in her Pluto T-Shirt (etching), 1995<\/p>\n

THE LUCIAN FREUD ARCHIVE. 2025\/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. COLLECTION: NATIONAL PORT<\/p>\n

National Portrait Gallery, London
Aren\u2019t we over Lucian Freud? Isn\u2019t he due the well-documented dip in reputation that follows a few years after an artist\u2019s death before rediscovery a decade hence? Haven\u2019t 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<\/a>
Read the full review<\/a><\/p>\n

Hawai\u2019i \u2014 I was dazzled by this royal razzmatazz\"Featherwork<\/p>\n

Featherwork ornaments at the Hawai\u2019i exhibition at the British Museum<\/p>\n

MKH\/THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM<\/p>\n

British Museum, London
While I felt somewhat walloped by the history and the who\u2019s 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\u2019iwi bird (the scarlet honeycreeper) and the o\u2019o bird (now sadly extinct), tied together with twine from the olona nettle. To May 25, britishmuseum.org<\/a>
Read the full review<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more art reviews, guides and interviews<\/a><\/p>\n

Ramses and the Pharaohs\u2019 Gold \u2014 up close to Egypt\u2019s king of kings\"Two<\/p>\n

From left: the coffin lids of Pinudjem II\u2019s wife and Pinudjem I<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

Neon, Battersea Power Station, London
\u201cOne thousand years after the pyramids,\u201d intones a voice from on high. \u201cOne thousand years before Cleopatra\u2026\u201d Visitors to Ramses and the Pharaohs\u2019 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\u2019s 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 \u2014 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<\/a>
Read the full review<\/a><\/p>\n

Tracey Emin \u2014 a show that gets under your skin and into your bowels\"Illustration<\/p>\n

I followed you to the end, 2024<\/p>\n

TRACEY EMIN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2026<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 the loose group of Young British Artists who established a mouthy reputation for themselves in the late Eighties and early Nineties \u2014 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<\/a>
Read the full review<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The five best exhibitions to book in London this March , The Times The days are getting longer,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-454380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}