London Museums Pair Old Masters with Contemporary Art in Transhistorical Curatorial Wave

Key facts

• The National Gallery's Yinka Shonibare and Thomas Gainsborough: A Conversation runs until 7 February 2027, pairing Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews (around 1750) with Shonibare's Mr and Mrs Andrews without their Heads (1998).
• The Wallace Collection's Rachel Kneebone: Metamorphoses runs until 25 April 2027, with nine porcelain sculptures including Bower and Temple responding to François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
• The Courtauld Gallery presents Salman Toor until 10 January 2027 and an ongoing commission by Ella Walker, both informed by its collection.
• The Wallace Collection began its contemporary programme with a Lucian Freud exhibition in 2004, the first living artist to exhibit there, alongside works by Anthony van Dyck, Diego Velázquez and Titian.
• The National Gallery's Artist's Eye programme (1975-87) invited living artists including Lucian Freud, Anthony Caro and Richard Hamilton to curate from the collection.
• Penelope Curtis, former director of Tate Britain, called the vogue for contemporary art in historic settings 'ageing and … hackneyed' in a 2023 Apollo piece.
• Nicholas Penny, former director of the National Gallery, decried 'a quarter of a century of intrusive interventions by contemporary artists' in a 2022 London Review of Books essay.
• Frieze Masters director Emanuela Tarizzo says the fair was built on showing continuity and diversity across historical art, and first-time exhibitor Sascha Mehringer will present sculpture spanning the 14th to early 20th centuries.