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The Royal Academy of Art has just announced its exhibitions for 2025

From radical modernism to some old art favourites, here are all the art shows happening at the venerable old London institution next year

Eddy Frankel
Written by
Eddy Frankel
Art & Culture Editor
Kerry James Marshall, School of Beauty, School of Culture, 2012. Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama. © Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Photo: Sean Pathasema
Kerry James Marshall, School of Beauty, School of Culture, 2012. Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama. © Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Photo: Sean Pathasema
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We’re only in July, but London’s art institutions have already started announcing their exhibition programmes for 2025. The Tate did it a couple of weeks ago, and now the RA’s getting in on the act, promising a new year filled with new art. Well, some new art, and some very, very familiar art too. 

Things are kicking off in January with ‘Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism’, an ultra-colourful look at how modernism took hold over in that bit of South America. It will feature over 130 artworks from the 1910s to the 1970s by ten Brazilian artists, including quite a few you might have seen in Raven Row’s very good and very recent exhibition ‘Some May Work As Symbols: Art Made in Brazil, 1950s-70s’.  

Then you’ll get the chance to say ‘did you know Victor Hugo could draw? Yes, him who did Les Mis, he could draw, no really’ to all your mates down the pub after you’ve been to ‘Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo’ in March. 

The Summer Exhibition comes next, as it inevitably must, before ‘Kiefer/Van Gogh’ in June pairs postwar-German art giant Anselm Kiefer with history’s favourite Q-tip dodger Vincent Van Gogh. The RA did a huge Kiefer exhibition back in 2014, and no one’s saying he’s not deserving of a revisit but there are other artists.

The autumn will bring a very exciting major look at the work of American painter Kerry James Marshall, one of the most important artists around today, while October sees the RA look eastwards with ‘A Story of South Asian Art: Mrinalini Mukherjee and Her Circle’ for an exploration of Indian modernism.

Can’t wait. 

Find out more about the Royal Academy of Art here.

Can’t wait until 2025? Here are the top 10 exhibitions you can see in London right now.

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