Tate Britain to Explore 1990s Art and Fashion in Major 2026 Exhibition

Tate Britain will stage 'The 90s: Art and Fashion' from 8 October 2026 to 14 February 2027, the first major exhibition to examine the decade's collision of contemporary art, photography, and fashion. Featuring over 100 works by nearly 70 artists, photographers, and designers, the show begins with the lo-fi visual language of photographers like Corinne Day, Nigel Shafran, and Juergen Teller, who rejected 1980s glamour for intimacy and grit. It then moves to the Young British Artists—Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Jenny Saville, Gillian Wearing—whose confrontational work placed British art at the center of international attention. Their pieces sit alongside runway visions of Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan, dissolving boundaries between fashion and performance. The exhibition also addresses what the Cool Britannia narrative obscured: Steve McQueen's 'Bear' (1993), Chris Ofili's 'No Woman, No Cry', and Keith Piper's work tackle race and identity, while designers Ozwald Boateng and Joe Casely-Hayford expanded British style. Nightlife and subculture are represented via Mark Leckey's 'Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore' and documentation of the Haçienda and Bagley's. Darker conceptual threads include Helen Chadwick, Cathy de Monchaux, and Damien Hirst's formaldehyde works. The exhibition closes with Yinka Shonibare, Maud Sulter, Vivienne Westwood, and John Galliano, reflecting on the decade's contradictions.