Here are nine exhibitions selected by Artlyst opening in July 2026. Four are in London, including Ana Mendieta’s films, paintings and sculptures at Tate Modern and the fantastical world of Richard Dadd at the Royal Academy, and five are outside the capital, including the thought-provoking Ai Wewei in Manchester, the vibrant Gillian Ayres in Plymouth, and the inspiring Eva Rothschild in Edinburgh.
London
Waldmüller: Landscapes 2 July – 20 September 2026, National Gallery
In summer 2026, the National Gallery will present the first-ever UK exhibition of paintings by the Austrian 19th-century artist Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793–1865). Waldmüller: Landscapes (2 July – 20 September 2026), additionally the first devoted solely to his work as a landscapist, is a collaboration between the National Gallery and the Belvedere Museum, Vienna, which is lending most of the works on display. Waldmüller is one of the most important figures in Austrian 19th-century art, significant for his work both as an artist and as an influential teacher. As well as landscapes, he painted portraits, genre pictures and still lifes, all characterised by his absolute commitment to truth.
Free
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Ana Mendieta 9 July 2026 – 10 January 2027, Tate Modern
This major exhibition dedicated to Ana Mendieta presents many of her iconic works alongside newly remastered films, early paintings, and late sculptural pieces, many of which have never been seen in the UK before. The show will continue outside the gallery walls, embracing Mendieta’s deep relationship with the natural world. Mendieta is best known for her Silueta Series, exploring the presence and absence of the human body, using a number of natural materials including fire, water and flowers. These ephemeral works were recorded as photographs and films.
£18
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Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam, 25 July – 25 October 2026, Royal Academy of Arts The Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries
In July 2026, the Royal Academy will present a survey of the Victorian artist Richard Dadd (1817-1886). Dadd constructed fairytale worlds and compelling compositions inspired by Shakespeare. Dadd’s art reflects a unique perspective from within the Victorian asylum. He experienced psychosis and spent 42 years as a patient in Bethlem and later Broadmoor Hospitals, where he drew upon his previous works, his powerful visual memory, and the landscapes and people available within the context of his confinement, to create his art. These paintings and watercolours are full of extraordinary detail and technical refinement, conveying the painstaking dedication Dadd devoted to keeping alive his memory, his imagination and his profession. This exhibition will bring together around 60 of Dadd’s most impressive oils and works on paper – art that was radical in his own time and which has since inspired artists, writers and musicians, including Cornelia Parker, Angela Carter and Freddie Mercury – Queen’s ‘The Fairy-Feller’s Master Stroke’ was directly inspired by Dadd’s painting of the same name. This will be the first major retrospective devoted to the artist in over 50 years.
£15
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Clare Woods: Garden Without Seasons, 29 July – 8 November 2026, Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery
This summer, the fluid and vibrant paintings of Clare Woods RA (b.1972) will be displayed throughout Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery. Clare Woods: Garden Without Seasons will feature 29 new and recent works — all created over the last four years — comprising paintings, collages, and prints that are infused with both her trademark wet-look oil paint as well as layers of contemplative meaning. At the centre of the exhibition are the flora, still life and natural world that Woods returned to during the pandemic, at a time when familiar objects took on a heightened resonance. By responding to photographs of flowers and everyday items, Woods has created a new visual world of nature that lies between abstraction and figuration — both familiar and ambiguous — where forms are ever-moving through a semblance of oil paint swirls.
From £12
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Around the UK
Gillian Ayres: A Life in Colour, The Box, Plymouth, 4 July – 4 October 2026
Gillian Ayres: A Life in Colour brings together 26 of Ayres’ vibrant paintings. Tracing her bold and expressive style, they span seven decades of creative practice. Seminal works such as Hampstead Murals from the late 1950s and works created at her rural North Devon home in the 1990s and early 2000s are shown alongside Harlyn Bay, made when she was just 15 years old. Known for her energetic brushwork and rich use of colour, the exhibition showcases the feeling and emotion that guided Ayres, giving you the chance to encounter the fearless experimentation and emotional intensity that defined her approach to painting.
A perfect opportunity to visit The Box which has just been awarded the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2026.
Free (£5 with donation)
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The Hay Wain: Walking Constable’s Landscape, Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, 11 July – 4 October 2026
Continuing the Constable 250 celebrations, Christchurch Mansion presents The Hay Wain: Walking Constable’s Landscape brings unprecedented key loans from the National Gallery, Tate, V&A, Royal Academy, National Galleries of Scotland to Suffolk for the very first time to explore themes of landscape, place and walking.
Historic loans including Dedham Vale (1828, National Galleries of Scotland) will be seen alongside Colchester + Ipswich Museum’s own Constable collection, including the two most personal paintings from his childhood home, Golding Constable’s Flower Garden and Golding Constable’s Kitchen Garden (both 1815).
A highlight will be Constable’s iconic masterpiece, The Hay Wain (1821, The National Gallery) making its first ever visit to the county it depicts.
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Eva Rothschild
Eva Rothschild: The Void Presses The Wall, Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, 10 July – 11 October 2026
The Void Presses The Wall is a major exhibition by London-based Irish artist Eva Rothschild, whose work grows out of a commitment to sculpture’s capacity to create bodily encounters in space. Her sculptures are born of the city and redolent of the urban landscape. Some, cast or constructed in bronze, plaster or steel, are supported on plinths, ‘behaving’ like sculptures ‘should’, while others stretch, twist, balance, or form whole environments in concrete, polystyrene, cotton and canvas that the viewer must negotiate. Her work creates a constant push-and-pull of the power dynamic between audience and object, drawing attention to how we occupy space.
Free
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Ai Weiwei: Button Up! 2 July – 6 September 2026, Aviva Studios, Manchester,
Internationally renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei turns his critical gaze to the last 200 years of global history with this major new exhibition. Monumental in scale and ambition, Ai Weiwei: Button Up! is the artist’s most expansive presentation in the North to date. In Button Up!, the artist turns his lens on two centuries of Chinese and British relations. Taking inspiration from Manchester, a city at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, Button Up! explores how historic systems of trade, empire and exploitation resonate in today’s humanitarian and political crises. Conceived as a total environment, Ai Weiwei: Button Up! brings together new and existing large-scale works on display in the UK for the first time.
£10
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Jakob Rowlinson: ROTATOR, From 18 July, YSP Centre, /
Jakob Rowlinson: REVIVER, The Art House, Wakefield, 18 July – 19 September 2026
ROTATOR is Jakob Rowlinson’s first institutional project, presented as an installation in YSP’s Visitor Centre and a solo exhibition, REVIVER at The Art House in Wakefield, having developed from a 2024 collaborative residency between both organisations. Spanning across the two venues, this new body of work weaves together complex material histories, explores the ecology of the Park’s landscape, and continues the artist’s interest in queering the archive. Rowlinson merges the sacred and profane, drawing on religious and folkloric imagery such as angels, demons and green men, and combining them with contemporary queer fashion and fetish references.
Visit YSP Here
Visit The Art House, Wakefield Here
In addition, catch these exhibitions before they close in July:
Konrad Mägi at Dulwich Picture Gallery, closing 12 July – Visit Here
Marthe Armitage: Pattern Maker at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, closing 19 July – Visit Here
Wes Anderson: The Archives at The Design Museum closing 26 July – Visit Here
Lead image: Aviva Studios, Manchester. Photo by Marco Cappelletti. Courtesy of OMA and Factory International