Cultureshock Connects

For this issue of Cultureshock Connects we asked our talented editors, who work closely with many of the world’s great museums and galleries, to preview the exhibitions they are most excited about as the autumn season fast approaches. Featured in this issue: Lee Bul, Tate Britain, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, The Armory Show, Es Devlin, Hilma af Klint, Design Doha, Richard Dadd and more.

Nancy Groves, senior editor

I’ll never forget seeing Sensation at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. It was 1997, I was 16 and dipping my toes into exhibition-going for the first time. Then – pow! – all the Young British Artists in one show. It’s a funny old thing witnessing the art and fashions of your youth come round again, but I can’t wait to see them curated by former British Vogue editor Edward Enninful, who as i-D magazine’s youngest ever fashion director was right there in the maelstrom of 1990s creativity. Perhaps that is my own xennial nostalgia talking, but gen Z is sure to love The 90s: Art and Fashion at Tate Britain (8 October 2026-14 February 2027). In the same year as Sensation, the South Korean artist Lee Bul was ruffling feathers (and fins) with Majestic Splendour at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The installation of bagged and bejewelled dead fish caused such a literal stink it was taken down. But Lee has never been one for constraints. An autumn show at Hauser & Wirth New York titled Lee Bul. The Anatomy of Every Setting Sun (10 September-24 October) features new and recent work showcasing the artist’s fascination with our drive to transcend nature.

Mark Grassick, chief subeditor

George Lucas and Mellody Hobson’s ambitious Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles (opening 22 September) is most obviously exciting because of its Lucas Archive, a collection of props, artwork and costumes that spans its namesake’s wildly influential career, from the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series to Willow and… um… Howard the Duck. But the museum goes far beyond fan service with its wider art collection, all accumulated or supported by Lucas and Hobson. Storytelling sits at the heart of it all, whether that’s a Judy Baca mural, a Frida Kahlo self-portrait, classic Americana by Stevan Dohanos and Norman Rockwell or Robert Colescott’s satirical take on Washington Crossing the Delaware. All is on show in a building by Ma Yansong that looks like it descended on Los Angeles from a galaxy far, far away…

Alex McFadyen, senior editor

After a long hot summer it’s always nice when the autumn social calendar gets into full swing. This season I’m excited for New York’s annual contemporary and modern art fair The Armory Show (24-27 September), where an emphasis on Caribbean art includes a focus section on modernism from the region curated by María Elena Ortiz.

Back in London, Es Devlin takes over the Design Museum with Other Worlds (2 October 2026-4 April 2027); as a longtime Kendrick Lamar fan, I’ll be checking out the set she built for the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show. It coincides with The Everythingists (until 18 October), Devlin’s new contemporary dance installation at V&A East Storehouse.

At the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, Hilma af Klint: Artist and Visionary (15 October 2026-7 February 2027) will be filled with the groundbreaking painter’s hugely popular spiritual works. Cristín Leach wrote a brilliant primer on it for The Gallery magazine, which I edit, and I can’t wait to see the artworks up close.

Katie Armstrong, writer and researcher

Seemingly forgotten to history, Richard Dadd’s 1855-64 masterpiece The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke (which inspired a Queen song of the same name) only reached the public consciousness when the war poet Siegfried Sassoon donated it to London’s Tate Gallery in 1963, and an extraordinary yet complex talent was “rediscovered”. Plagued with mental illness, Dadd was a rising star at the Royal Academy of Arts before developing severe psychosis and murdering his father, believing him to be the devil. Despite being hospitalised at Bedlam and, later, Broadmoor hospitals, Dadd was encouraged to continue painting. Today, over 100 of his works are brought together in Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam (on until 25 October) at the RA in celebration of his fantastical, fairy-littered and deeply enigmatic scenes – every look guarantees to uncover something you hadn’t noticed before.

Mandi Keighran, editor

Every autumn Qatar launches a new cultural programme across Doha. Creating Q+A magazine (in collaboration with Qatar Museums) means we’ve been excited about this season for a while. In November the Design Doha biennial (5 November 2026-31 January 2027) – an essential review of design practice across the Arab world – returns for its second edition, quickly followed by the inaugural Rubaiya Qatar, a new international contemporary art quadrennial. Its programme is led by a major show about ecology, geography and geopolitical change called Unruly Waters (21 November 2026-30 April 2027) at ALRIWAQ Art + Architecture.

Other must-see exhibitions include Giuseppe Penone: The Inner Flow of Life (26 October 2026-13 February 2027) at the National Museum of Qatar, which spans more than five decades of the Italian artist’s career; Uzbekistan: Heritage in Motion (3 September-28 November), a landmark exhibition at the Museum of Islamic Art in collaboration with the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation; and ERDEM: About Time, About Her (27 October-26 December) at M7, the first museum retrospective for the celebrated British-Turkish fashion designer Erdem Moralioglu.