More Visual Arts News
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Solihull gets Surreal
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Rembrandt: Masterpieces in Black and White shows at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
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The Midlands has a wealth of art galleries and museums hosting a range of fantastic exhibitions - both permanent and temporary. Here's a selection of what's showing across the region.
BRITISH MOTOR MUSEUM, WARWICKSHIRE
FROM SKETCH TO STREET - until April
Exhibition exploring the transformative nature of car design, and taking a fascinating journey across five key themes from the motor industry's design world: interior design, exterior design, functional design, materials, and trim.
The exhibition will offer a unique opportunity to witness the intriguing evolution of car design, what the process includes, and the results it provides using cars and objects from the collection and on loan to the Museum. Star display pieces include designers' initial sketches, items on loan from luxury car brands and even a highly anticipated modern clay model!
COMPTON VERNEY, WARWICKSHIRE
THE REFLECTED SELF: PORTRAIT MINATURES, 1550-1850 - until Friday 28 February
Across a period exceeding 300 years, portrait miniature paintings created in Britain performed numerous functions. Not only did they serve as emblems of love and loyalty, they were also used as markers of royal favour and exchanged as diplomatic gifts between foreign courts.
Compton Verney’s new exhibition celebrates these exquisitely painted portable portraits, bringing together artwork from the gallery’s own collection with important loans from the Dumas Egerton Trust Collection and private lenders.
The exhibition also includes specially commissioned films, bringing to life the highly personal nature of the portraits. Work by contemporary artists - demonstrating the miniatures’ ongoing relevance and ability to captivate - also features.
Image: Simon Bevan
BREATHING WITH THE FOREST - Saturday 8 February - Sunday 6 April
An immersive video installation that illuminates the ecosystem surrounding a capinuri tree (Maquira coriacea) in the Colombian Amazon.
The installation recreates a real plot of Amazonian forest in its full majesty and astounding detail, revealing the beauty and fragility of these tropical environments, bringing to light the many delicate interactions and relationships that exist between the major kingdoms of life.
Standing within the installation surrounded by the pulsing rhythms of the rainforest you will find that your breath begins to synchronise with the life of the forest as you become connected and part of the forest ecosystem.
COVENTRY CATHEDRAL
AND THE EARTH SHALL MELT AWAY - Tuesday 18 Feb - Monday 17 Mar
An exhibition ‘in the time of climate change’, inspired by Psalm 46 and created by Caroline Meynell and Claire Christie Sadler, two Oxford-based artists, who have created a series of paintings and drawings that form their individual response to environmental and spiritual themes suggested by the psalm. Their work is both challenging and contemplative, and incorporates questions of faith.
HERBERT ART GALLERY & MUSEUM, COVENTRY
COLLECTING COVENTRY - until Sunday 27 April
Seventy-five years of collecting is being celebrated in this brand-new and long-running exhibition.
Featuring a selection of objects dating from the founding of the Herbert Art Gallery in 1949 through to the present day, the show is being presented across four of the Herbert’s rooms.
Featured objects and curiosities include a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite, a Covid testing kit, LS Lowry’s famous painting of Ebbw Vale and a number of items being displayed for the very first time.
DIPPY IN COVENTRY: THE NATION'S FAVOURITE DINOSAUR - until Tues 21 February 2026
The Natural History Museum’s iconic Diplodocus cast - life-size, made of plaster-of-paris, and affectionately referred to as Dippy - has taken up residence in Coventry for an initial period of three years.
Diplodocus carnegii, to give it its official name, lived during the Late Jurassic period, somewhere between 155 and 145 million years ago. Huge, plant-eating dinosaurs with long, whip-like tails, they grew to about 25 metres in length and are believed to have weighed around 15 tonnes, making them three tonnes heavier than a London double-decker bus.
Dippy first arrived in London in 1905 and recently visited Birmingham as part of an eight-city tour that attracted a record-breaking two million visitors.
MEAD GALLERY, WARWICK ARTS CENTRE, COVENTRY
THE FUTURE IS TODAY - Wednesday 15 January - Sunday 9 March
Taking the subtitle Prints And The University Of Warwick, 1965 To Now, this brand-new major survey exhibition of work from the university’s art collection - and from other museums, artists and private collectors - examines the ideas that have been explored by successive generations during the 60 years since the university opened and the collection was founded.
The exhibition contains a free, working print studio, where visitors can make monoprints inspired by what they see in the show.
Image: Lubaina Himid, A Rake's Progress Hole in her Stocking (2022)
Elsewhere in the Midlands...
THE COURTYARD GALLERY, THE CORE THEATRE, SOLIHULL
TRANQUILITY IN A LANDSCAPE - until Sat 22 Feb
An Exhibition by Catherine Holland. The Solihull artist presents views from the borough in oil pastels.
HOLI ART EXHIBITION 2025 - Wednesday 26 February - Saturday 15 March
Exhibition featuring new interpretations of Holi, the Festival of Colour, and including vibrant and colourful artwork by Art At The Heart's community artists.
BIRMINGHAM MUSEUM & ART GALLERY
WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR - until Sunday 20 April
“We are facing urgent biodiversity and climate crises, and photography is a powerful catalyst for change.”
So says Dr Doug Gurr, director of the Natural History Museum, which has developed and produced this prestigious competition.
“As we celebrate 60 years of Wildlife Photographer Of The Year,” adds Dr Gurr, “we also celebrate the generations of visitors who have been inspired by the beauty and majesty of its images, and the millions of connections made with nature.”
Visiting Birmingham as part of an extensive national and international tour, the exhibition features a host of awe-inspiring images capturing fascinating animal behaviour and breathtaking landscapes.
Image credit: Jason Gulley
MIDLANDS ARTS CENTRE (MAC), BIRMINGHAM
RUBBISH REDESIGNED - until Sunday 2 March
This group exhibition reflects and celebrates the imaginative approaches which are being taken to circular design and waste innovation across the West Midlands.
The showcase highlights the creative uses of common waste materials, such as orange peel and cow manure, and addresses the pressing need to reconsider how the planet’s resources are utilised and recycled... Rubbish Redesigned forms part of MAC’s sustainability season.
WASTE AGE: WHAT CAN DESIGN DO? - until Sunday 23 February
MAC’s first collaboration with the Design Museum is a group exhibition focusing on a new generation of designers who are ‘rethinking our relationship to everyday things’.
Telling the story of the environmental crisis, the show explores how design can transform waste into valuable resources.
The exhibition features a new sculptural commission inspired by clothes waste markets in Nigeria. The work has been created by Birmingham-based artist Abdulrazaq Awofeso.
IKON GALLERY, BIRMINGHAM
FRIENDS IN LOVE AND WAR: L'ÉLOGE DES MEILLEUR·ES ENNEMI·ES - until Sunday 23 February
An exhibition exploring the nature and role of friendship in contemporary life, Friends In Love And War features paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, textiles, film, sculpture and installation.
The exhibition is showing at Ikon as part of the venue’s 60th anniversary year.
CROOME PARK, WORCESTERSHIRE
PAGES FROM NATURE - until Sun 2 March
Exhibition celebrating the publication of William Dean’s Hortus Croomensis: a detailed record of the vast and varied plant collection at Croome in 1824.
WILD IMAGINATION - until Sun 2 March
A new animation and accompanying soundtrack by artist Sarah Taylor Silverwood, presented in creative response to Croome’s Pages From Nature theme.
NUMBER 8 PERSHORE
NEAR & FAR - Thursday 6 - Wednesday 26 February
Based in Twyning, Tewkesbury, Hilary Davies works in acrylics to produce colourful, expressive paintings. Her work is largely a reflection of her response to travels abroad and to the English countryside.
TWO WAYS OF SEEING - until Wednesday 5 March
Exhibition featuring a wide-ranging body of work, the result of a close collaboration between a ceramic artist and a photographer, Phill Little & Peter Bryenton.
WORCESTER CITY ART GALLERY & MUSEUM
H. H. LINES: ARCHITECTURE, ARCHAEOLOGY & ART - until Sunday 1 June
Exhibition exploring the three loves of renowned local artist, Henry Harris Lines.
GENERAL DYNAMIC F.U.N. - until Sunday 30 March
Series of 50 screenprints and photolithographs, created between 1965 and 1970 by the Pop Art pioneer, Eduardo Paolozzi.
NEW ART GALLERY, WALSALL
EARTHBOUND - until Sunday 8 June
Work by nine artists and community makers is featured in this topical exhibition, a show set within the context of global anxiety about the climate crisis.
Addressing earthbound themes that connect people with soil, plants, seeds, mycelium, animals and birds - and the histories, cultures and knowledge surrounding these - the exhibition includes sculpture, drawing, painting and installation, as well as work produced via natural art-making techniques.
Image: Charmaine Watkiss, The warrior focuses intent to overcome adversity, 2022.
REFLECTOR - until Sun 9 March
Reflector is the culmination of an intensive professional development programme for emerging photographers, artists and curators from diverse backgrounds across the country.
The exhibition both celebrates the participants’ achievements to date and also provides an important step towards their future creative and professional development.
WOLVERHAMPTON ART GALLERY
PAINTED DREAMS: THE ART OF EVELYN DE MORGAN - until Sunday 9 March
Pre-Raphaelite artist Mary Evelyn Pickering De Morgan (1855 - 1919) painted in an elegant style inspired by Italian Renaissance paintings - particularly the work of Botticelli - and often featured female figures and mythological or allegorical subjects in her work.
This month, Wolverhampton Art Gallery exhibits 30 of De Morgan’s oil paintings and drawings. And it’s not the first time that her work has visited the city... The exhibition - titled Painted Dreams - is a recreation of a show held at the same venue in 1907.
The artworks will be reunited for the first time in 120 years, having been loaned for exhibition from private collections and by the Trustees of the De Morgan Foundation.
Image: Love’s Passing, 1883, Evelyn De Morgan © Trustees of the De Morgan Foundation
POP, PRINT, PROTEST - until Sunday 11 May
Featuring artwork created in the mid-20th century, this fascinating show explores how Pop Artists used mixed-media collage and combined text and image in order to protest against capitalism, racism and conflict. In the process of doing so, the artists were responding to some of the biggest social and political issues of the time, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War... The exhibition has been curated by Sophie Hatchwell, who is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Birmingham.
Image credit: Bela Lugosi Journal (1964) Joe Tilson, © DACs
STOURBRIDGE GLASS MUSEUM, WORDSLEY
GREENER GLASS - until Sunday 27 July
With an emphasis on eco-friendly practices and the artistic exploration of environmental themes, the future of glassmaking is brought firmly into focus in this long-running exhibition.
The show - co-curated by UK artists in collaboration with University of Birmingham students - features a diverse array of glass artworks produced using a wide range of techniques, including kiln work, glass blowing, mosaic, flame working and cast glass.
THE POTTERIES MUSEUM & ART GALLERY, STOKE-ON-TRENT
NO GOING BACK - Sunday 2 March
A thought-provoking and, for visitors of a certain vintage, memory-stirring exhibition, No Going Back is presented by North Staffs Miners Wives and revisits the Miners’ Strike of 1984/85.
Featuring photographs and memorabilia recalling an event which radically changed Britain’s industrial landscape forever, the display will remain available to view until early March, its closure coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the end of the strike.