David Hockney Comes to Serpentine For the First Time Next Spring
The famed British artist will bring his most recent depictions of Normandy nature to a free exhibition at London’s popular, public gallery in Kensington Gardens. Save to My Ocula
The Serpentine unveiled the first of its 2026 programming this week with a David Hockney exhibition running from March to August—the artist’s first show to take place at the London institution.
‘We are thrilled that David Hockney has accepted our invitation to present new works at Serpentine North in 2026,’ CEO Bettina Korek and Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist said. ‘As a highlight of our Spring/Summer season, the exhibition promises to be a landmark cultural moment.’
The artist, who turned 88 this summer, said he is ‘excited’ to exhibit at Serpentine next year.
Visitors will be able to see recent work created since spring 2020, when the artist began to render his surroundings in Normandy on his iPad over lockdown. The exhibition will also include Hockney’s Moon Room night-time landscapes and digital paintings from his Sunrise series.
Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, his 90-metre frieze A Year in Normandy will also be on view. Its inclusion is especially timely, with its Norman inspiration closing to the public as of yesterday, as French officials prepare the fragile tapestry for a controversial loan to the British Museum next September.
The 2026 Hockney exhibition will follow the experiential, gaming-inspired Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley show at Serpentine North gallery, as well as a display of fellow British painter Peter Doig at Serpentine South just across its namesake lake.
David Hockney’s vibrant works have proven to be a major pull for blockbuster shows. Just yesterday, the largest exhibition of his work to date closed at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, extending its hours in the final week due to popular demand.
In the last decade, exhibitions featuring the artist have been staged in nearly every major London museum, including a 2023 drawings show at the National Portrait Gallery, a major display of iPad works at the Royal Academy in 2021, and a Tate Britain retrospective in 2017, to name a few. —[O]
Main image: A Year in Normandy (detail) (2020-2021). Composite iPad painting. © David Hockney.
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