The Courtauld Gallery just announced its 2027 exhibition programme, and it features some huge names

Housed in the North Wing of Somerset House, the Courtauld Gallery might be relatively small compared to some of London’s other major art institutions, but gosh does it punch above its weight. Founded in 1932 by art collector Samuel Courtauld, the gallery boasts a genuinely jaw-dropping collection of paintings and drawings dating from the Middle Ages through to the modern day, with a particularly impressive collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.

And alongside its stellar permanent collection, the gallery has an excellent reputation when it comes to its programme of temporary exhibitions; recent hits have included Monet and London and Seurat and the Sea, while the coming months promise hotly anticipated exhibitions on Pakistani painter Salman Toor and Bloomsbury group artist Winifred Gill. 

And next year’s schedule looks equally exciting, featuring the mother of American Modernist painting, one of the twenty-first century’s best-loved female artists, and a Flemish Baroque master. 

The 2027 season kicks off with Paula Rego: Dog Woman (Feb 5-May 23), exhibition focused on a series of sensual and unsettling pastel works exploring ‘the animal in the human’ created by the late British-Portuguese artist in the mid-nineties. The exhibition constitutes the most comprehensive display of these groundbreaking works since their creation, and will feature alongside a small display of etchings and aquatint prints from the artist’s Pendle Witches series, on view simultaneously in the gallery’s Project Space. 

Over the summer months, the Courtauld will host Turner and the Landscape Generation. Journeys in Watercolour (June 18-Sep 5), an exploration of the shared experiences, friendships and rivalries among British landscape artists JMW Turner, John Constable, Thomas Girtin and John Sell Cotman, four pioneering artists that formed the core of the the so-called ‘Landscape Generation’, who together revolutionised British art in the late eighteenth century. 

Landscape paintings will also be the focus of the Courtauld’s autumn exhibition on Georgia O’Keeffe, the celebrated twentieth century American artist best known for her flower paintings. Georgia O’Keeffe: Ghost Ranch (Oct 1-Jan 30 2028) gathers together a variety of landscapes painted around the artist’s home and studio at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico across two decades from the mid 1930s to the mid 1950s. This will be complimented by a display of photographs of the artist working at Ghost Ranch, originally commissioned by Life Magazine, in the Drawings Gallery. 

Alongside these major exhibitions, the gallery will host a series of smaller displays across its Project Space and Drawings Gallery. These include a pair of exhibitions themed around Flemish masters; Drawing in the Age of Bruegel: New Discoveries (Feb 5-May 16) explores the creativity and technical skill of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his contemporaries in sixteenth and seventeenth century Flanders, while Rubens: The Master and his Circle (May 26-Sep 12) delves into the draughtsmanship of Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens and the artists he taught and inspired. 

Finally, visitors to the gallery will be able to get up close to a newly acquired work  by one of the key figures of the Bloomsbury Set in Vanessa Bell: A Rediscovery (Oct-Feb 2028), with the Courtauld Project Space playing host to the significant new acquisition, a pair of painted wooden panels made at the Omega Workshops in the 1910s. 

More details on all of the newly announced exhibitions can be found here, with tickets on sale in due course. If you’ve been thinking of getting a membership, now is certainly the time; that’s a lot of brilliant art to get through. 

Check out our brand new guide to the 35 best art galleries in London. 

Plus: You can get £10 tickets to Kew Gardens every Tuesday this autumn.

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Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and trends. Just follow our Time Out London WhatsApp channel.

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