Events
April 2025 / May 2025 / June 2025 / July 2025 / August / September / October 2025 / online + ongoing / current
DON’T MISS
12 April — 19 May 2025
Paulo de Cantos: 8 + 1 = 1. Designer of Pedagogical Theories
Paulo de Cantos (Portugal, 1892-1979) was a Portuguese educator and amateur typographer who immersed himself in the educational reform movements of the early 20th century. Between the 1920s and 1960s, he published a wide range of textbooks designed to support learning. His books combined structural experimentation with resourcefully designed visualizations: diagrams, typography, and especially the tactile possibilities of letterpress composition.
The exhibition is organized in 8 nuclea: grid, code, acrostic, upsidedown, number, machine, PAK and 8.
Print Gallery Tokyo, 9-2-113 Funamachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0006, Japan
OPEN: Friday, Saturday, Sunday & Monday
CLOSED: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and on Monday of April 14 and 28
CURRENTLY ON
12 April – 1 September 2025
Boom: Art and Design in the 1940s
The 1940s witnessed major shifts in politics, science, economics, industry, the arts, and culture, which coincided with a time of scarcity, limitation, and the catastrophic global conflict of World War II. Throughout this tumultuous period, artists brought new ideas to their work across media, from fashion and textiles, craft and design, to printmaking, drawing, photography, painting, and sculpture. Boom: Art and Design in the 1940s will be a testament to the creative spirit that flourished despite the restrictions and adversity of the era. This exhibition will showcase art from across the decade, featuring works drawn entirely from the museum’s permanent collections.
Check site for admission pricing.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Dorrance Galleries, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130
24 April 2025
Looking Back with Rob Saunders: The Importance of Material Culture
with Rob Saunders, Stephen Coles
Letterform Archive founder Rob Saunders sits down with associate curator Stephen Coles to discuss—and show—a personal collection that became a public resource for inspiration. Why does one collect? What does it mean to collect for other people? How does physical contact with analog artifacts change how we experience design, typography, and visual culture? Rob will share some of the first objects he saw that taught him a new way to perceive letterforms. Stephen will tell the story of visiting Rob’s home library for the first time, and then embarking on the journey that transformed a private home into a place for anyone who loves letters.
See ‘Letterform Archive: Objects of Inspiration’ from Eye 100.
This event is part of The 10th Anniversary Symposium celebrating ten years of Letterform Archive.
6:00–7:30pm PT / Hybrid – Onsite and Letterform Archive and Online via Zoom
Register to attend here.
Letterform Archive, 2325 Third St. Floor 4R, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA
30 April – 2 May 2025
Lisbon will host a three-day festival where creatives, systemic thinkers, purpose-driven organisations, and change-makers come together to envision an interconnected future between urban resilience, collective intelligence, and governance paradigms. ‘Towards symbiotic futures’ is the theme of this year's edition, and the event will explore symbiosis, envisioning a future where humanity, technology, and the natural environment are not just connected but truly interwoven.
Check site for ticket prices.
Estufa Fría, Parque Eduardo VII, 1070-051 Lisboa, Portugal
to 20 April 2025
This new exhibition by designer-artist Sarah Boris includes five paintings on canvas depicting the word ‘AMOUR’ in large letters distributed over a grid of six frames. Each painting has slight variations on the letters from the counterspace of the ‘O’ to the shape of the dot on the exclamation mark alongside a chequered edge on all four sides of the canvas. Surgery Gallery is a display window gallery located in a former Doctor’s Surgery, ‘nestled atop one of London’s largest plague pits dating back to the Black Death (1665-66)’.
Surgery Gallery, 79A Pitfield Street, London N1 6BT
to 21 April 2025
Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism
This exhibition celebrates this 60-year period between 1910 and the 1970s through the stories of ten influential artists, showing work by artists who have historically received less exposure in this country, including Anita Malfatti, who spearheaded the movement and Tarsila do Amaral, now internationally celebrated as a leading female figure of Brazilian Modernism. The exhibition also includes self-taught artists Alfredo Volpi and Djanira da Motta e Silva, an artist of Indigenous descent, Afro-Brazilian artist Rubem Valentim and performance artist Flávio de Carvalho.
Venue: Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BD
Tues–Sun: 10am–6pm; Fri: 10am–9pm. Tickets: £23.50–£25.50.
Above. Geraldo de Barros, Arrangement of Three Similar Shapes within a Circle, 1953.
to 20 April 2025
This exhibition explores the overlooked richness and diversity of working-class life and creative expression from the 1950s to now. ‘Lives Less Ordinary’ will bring together ceramics, film, painting, photography and sculpture from wide-ranging public collections, archives and contemporary artists across the UK to explore a nuanced and authentic reflection of working-class experience, within an architectural setting that both manifests and ‘interrogates’ wealth and privilege.
Free entry, no booking required.
Tue & Thu-Sat: 11am – 6pm; Wed: 11am – 9pm; Sun: 11am – 4.30pm; Mon: closed.
Venue: Two Temple Place, 2 Temple Place, London WC2R 3BD
Image: Rene Matić, Import & Export, Peckham, 2022.
extended to 26 May2025
Delve into the fantastical world of Tim Burton in this major exhibition exploring his remarkable creations and key collaborations with designers. Tim Burton is the creative force behind some of the most celebrated films of the last four decades, internationally recognised as a master of the comically grotesque and the endearingly misfit. This major exhibition will invite visitors into his world through an exploration of the design of his unique aesthetic. While most well-known for his cinematic work, this show will display the full extent of his production as an illustrator, painter, photographer and author, as well as exploring key collaborations with designers. As a multi-disciplinary artist, his creations extend beyond the limits of mediums and formats. Open from October just in time for Halloween, this will be the final stop in a decade-long global tour for this exhibition, and it will be its only ever showing in the UK.
See ‘Books received #24’ for Ian Nathan’s book about the fantasy film director’s career and work.
Admission: Adult tickets from £19.69, Children from £9.85, Concession / Student from £14.77.
Under-sixes go free.
Exhibition open Monday to Thursday 10:00 – 17:00, Friday to Sunday 10:00 – 18:00
The Design Museum, 224–238 Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG
to 21 April 2025
Citra Sasmita: Into Eternal Land
The Indonesian artist transforms The Curve in her first solo UK exhibition. Via painting, installation, embroidery and scent, take a sensory journey exploring ancestral memory, ritual and migration. Sasmita’s practice engages with the Indonesian Kamasan painting technique. Dating from the fifteenth century, and traditionally practiced exclusively by men, Kamasan was used to narrate Hindu epics. Reclaiming this masculine practice, Sasmita dismantles misconceptions of Balinese culture and confronts its violent colonial past. Admission is free.
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
to 26 April 2025
From the Roster is an expansive and evolving exhibition, which features significant works from many of the artists Hamiltons has had the privilege of exhibiting over its long history. Artists such as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton and Sir Don McCullin are presented alongside rare and unique works by Horst P. Horst (see Eye 89), Steven Meisel, Sante D’Orazio, Peter Beard, Daidō Moriyama, Andy Warhol (See ‘Showbiz kids’ on the Eye blog) and many more. Ever in the pursuit of quality the gallery is pleased to showcase new works by represented artists Murray Fredericks, Roger Ballen and Philippe Garner.
Hamiltons Gallery, 13 Carlos Place, London W1K 2EU
to 27 April 2025
Zhang Yimou and MGM join forces to present a groundbreaking show through the integration of art and cutting-edge technology that transcends boundaries and time.
Admission: Prices range from MOP 888 – MOP 288
MGM Theater, MGM COTAI
to 27 April 2025
Digital Witness: Algorithmic Spaces for Typography and Language
The commercialisation and distribution of personal computers and software beginning in the 1970s, paved the way for the significant advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence the world is currently experiencing. These algorithmic technologies have rapidly transformed the possibilities of typography, visual communication, and culture, both aesthetically and systematically. The exhibition explores how collaborating with computers through algorithmic thinking and computational processes are influencing typography and language. The work featured in the exhibition highlights how creativity has evolved into a dialogue between humans and machines. It features the work of Vera Van de Seyp (see the Eye blog), Martín Azambuja, Andrea Trabucco-Campos, Allison Parrish, Michael Schmitz, and Anne-Dauphine Borione (aka Daytona Mess).
Admission is free. Open daily 8:00am–10:00pm.
HMCT Gallery, ArtCenter College of Design, South Campus, 950 S. Raymond Ave. Pasadena, CA 91105
to 21 May 2025
Principles of Typeface Design: Sketch to Vector
with Zrinka Buljubašić
For designers and type enthusiasts keen to delve into typeface creation, this course will enhance their understanding of letterforms, typefaces, and the significance of hands-on work. Learn to transform ideas into sketches, evaluate iterations, and transition from analog to digital, creating new type systems along the way. Depending on experience and time commitment, students can develop a whole digital font with U&lc, figures, punctuation and more.
Ten sessions on Zoom / 6:30–9:30pm EST
Fee: $1,170
Type@Cooper, 30 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003
to 26 April 2025
Bauhaus Typography at 100 explores the school’s unique legacy in graphic design and typography through artifacts of its own making – its books, magazines, course materials, product catalogs, stationery, promotional fliers, and other ephemera — as well as objects created by its many students and teachers before and after the time of the school. The exhibition draws a throughline from the Bauhaus’s iconic style to the shape of typography today.
A collaboration with San Francisco-based Letterform Archive, the exhibition features work by Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, Joost Schmidt, and Herbert Bayer (See ‘Big business, big world’ in Eye 82 and ‘The holiday of a lifetime’ in Eye 53) along with others whose innovative typographic contributions are often overlooked, including women such as Friedl Dicker.
Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies, 610 Gillespie Ave, Aspen, CO 81611, United States
to 3 May 2025
Perrotin presents fifteen artworks by French artist JR, the inaugural exhibition of its new gallery in London. This includes two series of recent projects: Déplacé·e·s (begun in 2022) – giant portraits refugee children on huge banners visible from the sky, and Les Enfants d’Ouranos (Children of Ouranos). The exhibition also showcases two video screenings documenting Déplacé·e·s.
Tue-Sat, 10am-6pm, Claridge’s, Brook’s Mews, London
Above: Déplacé.e.s, Thierry #1, Rwanda, 2022.
to 27 April 2025
With a Bird, explores birds as transgressors, inspiring humans in both scientific and spiritual understandings of life. This exhibition showcases projects, objects, and investigations where artists explore our relationships with birds. These works delve into how we seek to understand, emulate, and connect with birds while examining how they transcend categories such as human and non-human, science and folklore, life and death, reality and dreams, and the realms of land, water, and sky. With a bird, supports resident city birds like sparrows, black crows, blackbirds, magpies, and tits with supplementary foods and invites humans to dream, imagine, speculate, observe, converse, listen, read, feed, reminisce, and reflect. With works by: Daniel Godínez Nivón, Ignace Cami, Bryony Dunne, Ai Ozaki, Sergio Rojas Chaves, Monika Czyżyk, Manjot Kaur and Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide).
Admission is free / Open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday between 12:00-5:00pm
Onomatopee, Lucas Gasselstraat 2a, 5613 LB Eindhoven
to 29 April 2025
Type Sound Code – Animating Typography with Coldtype with Rob Stenson
Can typography dance? Ever since moving pictures got sound (and even before), motion designers have been combining letters and sound to great effect. But with today’s technology, typography can move more musically than ever: variable fonts can shapeshift in time with drums; color fonts can shift hue to match harmony. Enter Coldtype: a cross-platform Python library that makes it possible to write complex typographical animations in real-time. Each session will centre on an example of type + sound – some from film, some from the instructor’s own work using Coldtype.
ten online sessions / 6:30–8:30pm EST
Fee: $840 Type@Cooper, 30 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003
to 5 May 2025
Linder’s first London retrospective showcases 50 years of the pioneering feminist artist’s work, dissecting our fascination with the body and its representation. From the early photomontages made while she was part of the punk scene of late 1970s Manchester (notably in Malcolm Garrett’s record sleeves for the Buzzcocks), to new work in digital montage shown for the first time, the exhibition presents the breadth of Linder’s artistic output across montage, photography, performance and sculpture. ‘Linder: Danger Came Smiling’ is recommended for audiences aged sixteen and older. The exhibition includes depictions of nudity and images of a sexual nature.
See ‘Scalpel sharp’, Rick Poynor’s Critique about the work of Linder aka Linder Sterling.
Admission: £19 general, Concession tickets available, Members free.
Open: Tue-Fri 10am-6pm, Saturday 10am-8pm, Sunday 10am-6pm, Closed Mondays.
Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XX
to 5 May 2025
Yasumasa Morimura and Cindy Sherman: Masquerades
M+ presents a two-person exhibition of the photographic works of Yasumasa Morimura (Japanese, born 1951) and Cindy Sherman (American, born 1954) (see the Eye blog). Both artists are renowned for their visual and conceptual strategies of masquerade, transforming their appearances to portray multiple identities that offer incisive commentary on contemporary culture and history. Presented as part of the Pao-Watari Exhibition Series, Yasumasa Morimura and Cindy Sherman: Masquerades features works from major early series by Morimura and Sherman. The exhibition traces the genesis of their practices, which reimagine iconic imagery from art history, cinema, and media culture.
Admission: Standard HKD 120, Concessions HKD 60
Hours: Tuesdays to Thursdays and weekends 10:00am-6:00pm, Fridays 10:00am-10:00pm, closed Mondays.
M+, West Kowloon Cultural District, 38 Museum Drive, Kowloon
to 5 May 2025
The 80s: Photographing Britain
Explore powerful photography in a decade of social and political change
Explore one of the UK’s most critical decades, the 1980s. This exhibition traces the work of a diverse community of photographers, collectives and publications –creating radical responses to the turbulent Thatcher years. Set against the backdrop of race uprisings, the miner strikes, section 28, the AIDS pandemic and gentrification – be inspired by stories of protest and change.
Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG
£20 / Free for Members
to 11 May 2025
Breaking Lines
Futurism and the Origins of Experimental Poetry / Dom Sylvester Houédard and Concrete Poetry in Post-war Britain
The Estorick Collection starts 2025 by exploring the revolutionary world of experimental poetry. Although perhaps better known today for its contribution to the visual arts, Italian Futurism was in fact founded and led by a poet – Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (see the Eye blog) – and the many writers who gravitated toward the movement would go on to produce a body of work that was as vast and as groundbreaking as that of its painters. The first part of this display charts the distinct phases through which Futurist poetry passed, with a particular focus on those forms of experimentation that reflected the movement’s desire to ‘redouble the expressive force of words’ by emphasising and exploiting the visual and/or sonic dimensions of language. This contextualising display complements an exhibition focusing on the work of Dom Sylvester Houédard (or dsh, see Eye 20), widely recognised as one of the masters of concrete poetry. A Benedictine monk and noted theologian, Houédard wrote extensively on new approaches to creativity, spirituality and philosophy, and collaborated with figures such as Gustav Metzger, Yoko Ono and John Cage.
Design by Studio Bergini; texts by Christopher Adams.
Admission: adult £9.50; concessions £7.50; National Art Pass £4.75; full time students £4.00 (incl. access to library, by appointment only); Universal Credit £1.00; free entry to Estorick Collection Members, Under 18s and Carers. Admission to café and shop free.
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 39a Canonbury Square, London N1 2AN
to 18 May 2025
The Face Magazine: Culture Shift celebrates iconic fashion images and portraits from The Face, a trail-blazing youth culture and style magazine that has shaped the creative and cultural landscape in Britain and beyond. Founded by editor Nick Logan in 1980, The Face played a vital role in the contemporary culture of the 1980s and 90s. Musicians featured on its covers achieved global success and the models it championed – including a young Kate Moss – became the most recognisable faces of their time.
See ‘Looking at magazines looking at themselves’ in Eye 96, ‘Mags out for the lads’ in Eye 24 and Reputations: Neville Brody (who became the art director of The Face in 1981) in Eye no. 6.
This exhibition brings together the work of more than 80 photographers, including Sheila Rock, Stéphane Sednaoui, Corinne Day, David Sims, Elaine Constantine and Sølve Sundsbø, and will feature 200+ photographs.
Admission: £23 / 25.50 with donation, Free for Members
National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 0HE
Above. Kate Moss by Glen Luchford, March 1993 © Glen Luchford. Styling Venetia Scott.
to 18 May 2025
Energy: Sparks from the Collection
Whether generated by sunlight passing through a camera lens, triggered by the burst of a flash bulb, or forged by electricity coursing through a microchip, all photographs need some form of energy to exist. This display shines a light on the diverse kinds of energy in photography, from the hidden processes intrinsic to creating a picture, to the subjects in front of the camera.
Admission is free.
V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL
Photo: Palermo, Sicily, 1972, gelatin silver print, by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1972, Italy
to 22 May 2025
John Baskerville: printer, publisher, typefounder, deist
The Baskerville typeface is familiar to billions of readers and users of standard computer software across the world. However, the story behind its creation by John Baskerville, in eighteenth-century Birmingham, is much less widely known, even though he was England’s foremost printer, and his typeface is one of the world’s most popular and influential. This exhibition, at the Library of Birmingham, which coincides with the 250th anniversary of Baskerville’s death, presents the man, his typeface, his books and legacy. It also presents some of the research that is going on to try and understand the man and his work.
Hours: Monday to Tuesday 9:00am-7pm, Wednesday to Saturday 9:00am 5:00pm, Closed Sundays
Library of Birmingham, Centenary Sq, Birmingham B1 2ND
Photo: David Osbaldestin
to 25 May 2025
Threads of Change: Design & Data
Experience the transformative power of textile art in Threads of Change an exhibition that explores the intricate connection between humanity and the natural world. By translating scientific data into striking textile installations, this exhibition brings vital environmental issues to life, inspiring action and fostering a deeper understanding of our planet. Discover works that highlight the beauty and fragility of the Earth.
Admission: Adult $10, Student $8, Children admission is free.
Open Wednesday – Sunday, 12:00-7:00 PM.
MODA, Museum of Design Atlanta, 1315 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, GA 30309
to 26 May 2025
Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious
The first major exhibition devoted to visionary artist and designer Tirzah Garwood (1908–1951). Known as the wife of Eric Ravilious and the author of Long Live Great Bardfield, Garwood excelled as a fine artist and printmaker. This retrospective marks the first time the full extent her output has been shown, including more than 80 of Garwood’s works plus eleven watercolours by Ravilious that draw out the thematic similarities, shared interests, and distinct artistic personalities of this remarkable couple. Curated by James Russell.
Dulwich Picture Gallery, College Road, London SE21 7AD
Opening Hours: Tue–Sun, 10am–5pm; Closed Mon except Bank Holidays.
See also ‘The crew with no name’ in Eye 95.
to 31 May 2025
The Wonderful World of the Ladybird Book Artists
This exhibition shines a spotlight on the talented illustrators who brought Ladybird stories to life for more than 30 years, contributing to the success of one of the legendary publisher. The exhibition collection, curated and loaned by Helen Day, presents an unparalleled array of books, original artwork and artefacts that highlight the role of Ladybird illustrators in creating some of the most cherished books of our time. The show includes a giant wall of 480 Ladybird books, showcasing an extraordinary collection of titles spanning decades; hand-drawn artwork; unframed books, ephemera and wall-mounted books; and a reading corner.
Peterborough Museum & Art Gallery Priestgate, Peterborough, PE1 1LF
Read Adrian Shaughnessy’s article ‘Mystery and clarity’ in Eye 52 and Clare Walters’ review of Boys and Girls in Eye 66.
to 1 June 2025
Explore the drama of social activism in New York City from the 17th century right up to the present. In a town renowned for its in-your-face persona, New Yorkers have banded together on issues as diverse as civil rights, wages, sexual orientation, and religious freedom. Using artefacts, photographs, audio and visual presentations, as well as interactive components that seek to tell the story of activism in the five boroughs past and present, Activist New York presents the passions and conflicts that underlie the city's history of agitation.
Admission: Adults: $23, Seniors: $18, Students: $14, 18 and under and members: free
Hours: Monday to Friday 10:00am-5:00pm, Saturday to Sunday 10:00am-6:00pm
Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Ave, New York, NY 10029, United States
to 1 June 2025
Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition
Discover the multifaceted history of the fight to end transatlantic slavery through the stories of the people, communities and anti-slavery movements who campaigned for abolition in the face of oppression and opposition. Bringing together historic artworks and objects in conversation with works by contemporary artists, Rise Up explores the battle to abolish the British slave trade and end enslavement between 1750 and 1850, as well as the aftermath, its legacies and the ongoing struggle for equality and social justice today.
The exhibition includes the Black British History Quilt by Jahnavi Inniss (see the cover of Eye 103 and ‘Reclaim their names’ on the Eye blog).
Admission is free.
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10:00-17:00, Sundays and Bank Holidays 12:00-17:00.
Fitzwilliam Museum, Trumpington Street,Cambridge CB2 1RB
to 8 June 2025
pool7, the first solo presentation in the UK by Amsterdam-based artist Nora Turato (b. 1991, Zagreb) features a site-specific exhibition of newly commissioned work spanning performance, writing, graphic design, video and sound. In an enveloping installation that is the artist’s most personal to date, Turato investigates our collective relationship to language, exposing the ideologies, failures and pleasures that characterise communication today. At yearly intervals, Turato creates text 'pools', collections of found language she gathers and samples from a range of sources such as media headlines, conversations with friends, books, advertising, overheard speech and online content. In this three-part installation and accompanying performance, Turato debuts her latest text ‘pool’, which incorporates the artist’s own writing to a new degree.
Admission: £6 full price / £4 concession
Open Tuesday – Thursday: 4-9pm, Friday – Sunday: 12-9pm
ICA, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH
to 1 June 2025
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet
This exhibition will celebrate the early innovators of optical, kinetic, programmed and digital art, who pioneered a new era of immersive sensory installations and automatically-generated works. Electric Dreams will offer visitors a rare chance to experience incredible works of vintage tech art in action - from psychedelic environments created in the 1950s and 60s, to early machine-made art from the 70s and 80s, which has paved the way for today’s experiments with AI. Bringing together an international network of artists who used machines and algorithms to create mesmerising and mind-bending art between the 1950s and early 1990s, the exhibition will show how these groundbreaking figures imagined a visual language for the future.
Admission: General £22, concessions available
Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
To be reviewed in Eye 108.
to 9 June 2025
The Rijksmuseum presents the first comprehensive survey of American photography in Europe. With more than 200 works spanning three centuries, American Photography will be an exploration of the rich and multifaceted history of photography in the United States, showing how the medium has permeated every aspect of our lives: in art, news, advertising and everyday life.
Admission: Adults: € 22,50, Free for 18 and under / Open daily 9:00am to 5:00pm
Rijksmuseum, Museumstraat 1, 1071 XX Amsterdam, Netherlands
to 9 June 2025
Carrie Mae Weems: Painting the Town
Concurrently with American Photography, Carrie Mae Weems’s 2021 series Painting the Town will be on show in the Rijksmuseum’s photography gallery. At first glance Weems’ large and powerful works resemble abstract paintings. During the Black Lives Matter protests, campaigners wrote texts on the panels that shopkeepers had used to board up their windows as a precautionary measure. The authorities then rendered the slogans illegible by covering them with large patches of paint. The unintended result of this act of censorship was a series of painterly compositions. Weems uses her work to explore what it means to be a witness to history, through themes such as racism, sexism and discrimination.
Admission: Adults: € 22,50, Free for 18 and under / Open daily 9:00am to 5:00pm
Rijksmuseum, Museumstraat 1, 1071 XX Amsterdam, Netherlands
to 15 June 2025
Peter Mitchell: Nothing Lasts Forever
Peter Mitchell (b.1943, UK) is regarded as one of the most important early colour photographers of the twentieth century. A powerful storyteller and social historian, Mitchell’s photography unfolds a longstanding and poetic connection with Leeds. He has chronicled the people and the changing fortunes of the city with warmth and familiarity for over forty years. Described as ‘a narrator of who we were, a chaser of a disappearing world’, Mitchell continues to photograph his home town today.
Admission: General £10 / £7 concession, Advance: £8.50 / £6 concession
The Photographers’ Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies Street, London W1F7LW
to 30 June 2025
Alan Kitching: London’s Building Blocks
Alan Kitching: London’s Building Blocks serves as a tribute not only to Kitching's renowned career but also to the history of London’s typographic printing. This is an exhibition about the transmission of heritage and the craft of the printer. Alongside work by Alan Kitching (see ‘Marks on paper’ in Eye 15 and ‘The show must go on’ in Eye 74), the exhibition will also feature pieces by three designers whom Kitching has mentored and influenced throughout his career: Michelle Dwyer, Theo Hersey and Christian Granados (see ‘Noted #77’ on the Eye blog).
Admission is free.
GRAGRA Gallery & Letterpress Studio, Carnicer 18, Tetuán, 28039 Madrid, Spain
See ‘In Mr Kitching’s footsteps’ on the Pulp website.
to 30 June 2025
IDENTITA – The Story of Czech Graphic Design
A new exhibition devoted to the legacy of Czech graphic design at Notting Hill’s Vitrínka and Bouda galleries. The exhibition showcases an extensive collection of Czech graphic design from the early twentieth century to the present day, highlighting significant achievements as well as the evolution of graphic design and its effects on society.
Curated by Filip Blažek and Linda Kudrnovská, in collaboration with commissioner David Korecký.
The exhibition is part of a comprehensive multi-genre project Identita - The Story of Czech Graphic Design (projektidentita.cz) which also includes a TV series, a feature film and a book. This London show is accompanied by events throughout the spring and summer.
Venue: Czech Centre’s Vitrínka and Bouda galleries, 30 Kensington Palace Gardens, W8 4QY. Open Tuesday to Friday, 10am – 5pm or by appointment.
Above: Prague Metro orientation system designed by Jiří Rathouský.
to 13 July 2025
Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film
Over the last four decades, image-editing software has radically transformed our visual world. The ease with which images and text can be digitally generated and altered has enabled new forms of creative experimentation, while also sparking philosophical debates about the very nature of representation. Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film examines the impact of digital manipulation tools from the 1980s to the present, for the first time assessing simultaneous developments and debates in the fields of photography, graphic design, and visual effects. Featuring over 150 works, the exhibition traces the emergence of distinctive digital aesthetic strategies, relationships to realism, and storytelling modes. The nearly 200 artists, designers, and makers, including Zuzana Licko (see Eye 43) illuminate today's visual culture where digital editing tools are easier to access than ever before.
Ticket info and hours on website.
LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036
to 30 July 2025
180 Studios will present the largest exhibition to date of photographer and filmmaker Gabriel Moses, bringing together over 70 photographs and 10 films showcasing his work across the worlds of fashion, music and sport, including the premiere of new work.
180 Studios, 180 The Strand, London, WC2R 1EA
Open Wednesday to Sunday 12 midday - 7pm
Tickets £20 - pre-booking recommended
to 31 August 2025
Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home
Drawing on a rich range of visual and aural material, this exhibition explores the early years of radio. Focusing on the first two decades of radio, the exhibition is brought to life with newly uncovered first-hand accounts, giving a voice to the listeners who lived through this huge social and technological change.
Venue Treasury, Weston Library, Monday – Friday: 10am–5pm; Saturday: 10am–5pm; Sunday: 11am–4pm. Bodleian Libraries, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BG
Curated by Beaty Rubens, former BBC radio producer, writer and Byrne Bussey Marconi Fellow 2023–24.
to 27 July 2025
Remembering is the first solo exhibition of Arpita Singh outside India, featuring key works selected in close collaboration with the artist from her prolific career spanning more than six decades. Singh’s paintings centre on her emotional and psychological state, drawing from Bengali folk art and Indian stories, interwoven with experiences of social upheaval and global conflict.
Admission is free.
Serpentine North, W Carriage Dr, London W2 2AR
to 31 August 2025
The late Leigh Bowery (1961-94) left a mark on the world of visual culture, taking on many roles, including performer, model, TV personality, club promoter, fashion designer and musician. This exhibition shows many of Bowery’s ‘Looks’ alongside his collaborations with Michael Clark, John Maybury, Baillie Walsh, Fergus Greer, Nick Knight, Lucian Freud and others.
Monday to Sunday 10.00–18.00. Tickets from £5-18.00
Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
to 17 August 2025
Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style
A major exhibition celebrating our enduring love of the water over the last 100 years. Explore the full spectrum of the design of swimming — from sports performance and fashion, to architecture.
Admission ranges from £7 - £15. The museum opens daily from 10:00 to 17:00.
The Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High St, London W8 6AG
to 7 September 2025
Fallout: Atoms for War & Peace
This exhibition chronicles the global development of the nuclear industry, for peaceful and offensive means, examining posters that both promoted and protested its use throughout the second half of the 20th century. It features the entire General Dynamics series, long heralded as one of the finest examples of corporate propaganda ever created, as well as over 60 other posters criticising the proliferation of nuclear technology.
See site for more information.
This exhibition is rated PG-13 for images of violence.
Poster House, Main Gallery, 119 W. 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011
Photo: Protect and Survive, 1980, Peter Kennard.
to 7 September 2025
Puerto Rico in Print: The Posters of Lorenzo Homar
Lorenzo Homar was a pioneering printmaker, poster designer, calligrapher, painter, illustrator, caricaturist, and costume and theatrical set designer. Active from the 1950s through the 1990s, few equal his impact and influence as a teacher of poster design and printmaking in Latin America. This exhibition focuses on his poster output over a thirty year period during which time his work reflected the complex history of Puerto Rico, encompassing elements of Taíno, Spanish, and African cultures as well as the rising tensions between tradition and modernity under the Luis Muñoz Marín government. His influence is so extensive that today he is known as the father of the Puerto Rican poster.
See site for more information.
Poster House, Programs Gallery, 119 W. 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011
17 April 2025
Info We Trust: The Craft of Data Graphics
Data graphics wrangle the chaos of data into intriguing forms bursting with clarity. Join RJ Andrews, author of Info We Trust (Visionary Press, 2025), in conversation with Ellen Lupton to discuss charts ranging from simple products of civilization to potent instruments of persuasion.
The event will be followed by a reception in an associated gallery exhibition that traces the evolution of the book and broadens its lens to celebrate the field of information design as a whole. Works by leading figures such as Shirley Wu, Nadieh Brehmer, Nigel Holmes, Zan Armstrong, Mona Chalabi, Giorgia Lupi, Data Vandals, and Kenneth Field showcase today’s expanding visual vocabulary alongside historic examples chosen for aesthetic and thematic resonance.
Admission is free / Event is 6:30 - 8:30pm EDT
The Rose Auditorium, in Cooper Union's New Academic Building, 41 Cooper Square New York, NY 10003 United States
APRIL 2025
22 April 2025
Pioneers of Graphic Design: Mucha, Teige, Sutnar and Šašek
Curator Tomoko Sato (Mucha Foundation), Peter Zusi (The Integrity of the Avant-Garde, Karel Teige and the Biography of an Ambition, Legenda 2024), Adrian Shaughnessy (graphic designer and RCA senior lecturer), and Lukáš Novotný (designer and illustrator) will shed light on how these Czech designers helped shape modern visual culture through a series of illustrated presentations, followed by a panel discussion and Q&A. Chaired by John L. Walters, editor of Eye, the international review of graphic design.
7-9pm, tickets: £5 (+ Eventbrite fee): £5 (+ Eventbrite fee)
Czech Centre at the Czech Embassy Cinema, Embassy of the Czech Rep, 26-30 Kensington Palace Gardens, London W8 4QY
This is an event accompanying ‘Identity – The Story of Czech Graphic Design’ exhibition at the Vitrínka Gallery and Bouda Gallery, Czech Centre London, running from untill 30 June 2025.
24 April 2025
Looking Back with Rob Saunders: The Importance of Material Culture
with Rob Saunders, Stephen Coles
Letterform Archive founder Rob Saunders sits down with associate curator Stephen Coles to discuss—and show—a personal collection that became a public resource for inspiration. Why does one collect? What does it mean to collect for other people? How does physical contact with analog artifacts change how we experience design, typography, and visual culture? Rob will share some of the first objects he saw that taught him a new way to perceive letterforms. Stephen will tell the story of visiting Rob’s home library for the first time, and then embarking on the journey that transformed a private home into a place for anyone who loves letters.
See ‘Letterform Archive: Objects of Inspiration’ from Eye 100.
This event is part of The 10th Anniversary Symposium celebrating ten years of Letterform Archive.
6:00–7:30pm PT / Hybrid – Onsite and Letterform Archive and Online via Zoom
Register to attend here.
Letterform Archive, 2325 Third St. Floor 4R, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA
22-26 April 2025
The ATypI 2025 conference venue is the Royal Danish Academy located by the harbour and the Refshaleøen. The Copenhagen local chair is Sofie Beier, professor at the Academy’s School of Design and head of its Centre for Visibility Design. Sofie is joined by her colleagues Anders Thulin, Head of the Institute for Visual Design, and PhD Research Fellow Matthias Horneman-Thielcke.
Tickets (from $300) on sale now.
24 April – 2 November 2025
Copy/Paste/Print/Repeat: Mike King & the Art of the Gig Poster
Mike King is a prolific American gig poster artist. What began as a means of promoting his own bands’ shows in the late 1970s gradually morphed into a full-time specialty in the art of the eye-catching concert poster. Today, there are few major venues or bands that have not worked with him—his imagery has saturated into the tapestry of American music culture, appearing on album covers, t-shirts, and, most importantly, posters. The posters in this exhibition are a mere slice of a much larger visual pie – a taste of some of King’s rarest posters from a thirty-year spread within his ongoing career.
See site for more information.
Poster House, Lower Level Hallways, 119 W. 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011
24 April – 2 November 2025
From the Bronx to the Battery: The Subway Sun
The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) opened New York City’s original underground subway line in October 1904. While the city was one of the most diverse in the country, before the introduction of the subway, most New Yorkers were not in regular contact with people outside their own neighborhoods. Initially extending from the Bronx to Lower Manhattan (with service to Brooklyn beginning in 1908) and forming part of the wider transit system, the convenient and affordable IRT encouraged riders to travel beyond their communities for both work and leisure.
In order to entice people to regularly use the subway, the IRT printed two in-car poster campaigns, The Elevated Express and The Subway Sun, that highlighted each borough’s unique attractions. Of these, The Subway Sun was especially successful.
See site for more information.
Poster House, Entry Foyer, 119 W. 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011
27 April 2025
St Bride Foundation Wayzgoose 2025
Wayzgoose is a annual celebration of all things letterpress at St Bride Foundation. Explore numerous stalls selling letterpress supplies, type and ornaments, paper, printed items, second-hand books and type specimens and lots more inky goodness. And there will of course be cake! This is the perfect place to meet and network with the wider letterpress community. If you are new to the world of letterpress, you will be able to try your hand at it in our print workshop and see some of our treasury of historic presses.
Hours: 11:00am-4:00pm
St Bride Foundation, 14 Bride Lane, Fleet Street, London EC4Y 8EQ
Design by Sam Pritchard Design
30 April – 2 May 2025
Lisbon will host a three-day festival where creatives, systemic thinkers, purpose-driven organisations, and change-makers come together to envision an interconnected future between urban resilience, collective intelligence, and governance paradigms. ‘Towards symbiotic futures’ is the theme of this year's edition, and the event will explore symbiosis, envisioning a future where humanity, technology, and the natural environment are not just connected but truly interwoven.
Check site for ticket prices.
Estufa Fría, Parque Eduardo VII, 1070-051 Lisboa, Portugal
MAY 2025
1-4 May 2025
In its 21st edition, Pictoplasma, the world’s leading festival and conference on contemporary character design and art returns to its origins. Across 3 bustling days, international creators and producers from all visual genres – illustration, animation, game design, crafts, fine and graphic arts – meet for an exchange of strategies and stories to shape the future of figurative aesthetics: featured artist lectures explore the edges of contemporary creative practice; daily workshops, jam sessions and demos allow to get hands-on with new mediums; vibrant discussion spaces connect creators, characters, and commercial contributors; and cutting-edge animation screenings invite all to delve into next-level emerging worlds.
Admission: In person or online tickets available here.
Hosted by silent green, Gerichtstr. 35, 13347 Berlin
2 May — 9 June 2025
A collaborative design exhibition between Tom Etherington and Jon Gray at The Old School Gallery in Alnmouth, Northumberland.
Etherington is an editorial designer and art director based in London. Recent work includes the series design for Penguin Green Ideas, and he has collaborated with David Gentleman, Faber & Faber, Fantastic Man, Granta, Hay Festival, Hoxton Mini Press, Knopf, The New York Times, Scott King and The Photographers’ Gallery.
Jon Gray designs and illustrates book covers for publishers around the world. His work is featured on the jackets of authors including Zadie Smith, David Foster Wallace, A. M Homes and Roald Dahl. Other clients include: Nike, Stussy, Hewlett-Packard, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Observer and the The Berlin Opera. His work is regularly recognised by: D&AD, AIGA, Type Directors’ Club, and Art Directors’ Club.
The Old School Gallery, Alnmouth, Northumberland NE66 3NH
14-16 May 2025
All Flows is an annual creative, design and digital festival held in Milton Keynes, UK.
This year’s speakers include David Pearson, Astrid Stavro, Studio Dumbar / DEPT (DEMO image, above, see Eye 100), Yuri Suzuki, MURUGIAH, Tiziana Alocci and Seetal Solanki. More to be announced later.
Venue: MK Gallery, 900 Midsummer Blvd, Milton Keynes, MK9 3QA
Tickets from £175-300. Applications welcome for scholarship tickets until 28 April 2025.
4 May 2025
Magculture Live NYC : The return to print
The regular magCulture Live event returns to New York for another celebration of the creative culture of magazines. The line-up includes:
Steff Yotka (i-D), Jeppe Ugelvig (Viscose Journal), Lindsay Peoples (The Cut), Maria Dimitrova (AFM magazine), Richard Turley (Interview, etc.), Nicolas Kemper & Samuel Medina (New York Review of Architecture), Daniele Rodriguez (Superstars Only).
Tickets from US$70.
53 Scott Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11237 United States
22 May – 31 Aug 2025
This bold new multi-sensory exhibition experience explores our relationship to sound and embraces a world of listening. Frequencies, sound, rhythms and vibrations define everything around us. From the soundtrack of our environments to the rhythm of our heart, frequencies are constantly creating and changing how we see, hear and feel the world. Feel the Sound invites you to awaken your senses, embrace our sonic world and discover personal frequencies in a series of unique installations.
More information on tickets and hours here.
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
8-9 May 2025
On the Seam: Anthropology, Design, and Situated Practices
A symposium, co-organised by Futuress with the University of Applied Arts Vienna, navigating frictions, collaborations, and politics shaping present struggles and future possibilities.
If design imagines, anthropology questions. But can anthropology also imagine otherwise? This symposium sits with these tensions. What happens when anthropology and design meet—not in harmony, but in friction? How do their practices, methodologies, and ways of knowing collide, entangle, and transform? Can the meeting of anthropology and design become a site of worldmaking—not in the service of dominant social orders, but in response to the struggles of those who refuse them and are impacted by their injustices?
Online / admission is free.
31 May 2025
Now25 is the annual conference in Paris that brings together art directors, graphic designers, type designers, all passionate about good design and quality typography. Come to Paris for the Saturday 31 May 2025 to listen a mix of inspiring speakers, such as Studio Mut (see the Eye blog), Lucas Sharp (see Eye 106), Ariane Spanier, Joachim Roncin, and others, evoking topics as broad as graphic design, web design, motion design, publishing, visual identity, communication and type design.
Admission: Early bird €120, Regular ticket €170, Late ticket €220, Student ticket €40
Novotel Paris Vaugirard Montparnasse, 257 rue de Vaugirard, 75015 Paris
8-18 May 2025
Graphic Days® is an international annual festival of scientific dissemination, experimentation and reserach and an observatory on visual and social design thanks to the collaboration with a network of international and local actors.
Coming to Turin, Graphic Days®, the first festival dedicated to Italian and international visual and social design, is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. This annual event brings together artists, professionals, and studios from the international scene, welcoming experiences from around the world that bring the most cutting-edge creative practices to Turin.
The festival will be structured through an exhibition path and a calendar full of events, talks, workshops, collaborative projects, performances, DJ sets, activities for schools and families, and a market dedicated to this year’s theme: Love, Now!
A new location: the spaces of Vitali Park, 10149 Turin, Italy
JUNE 2025
15-17 May 2025
The theme of this year’s festival, based in Lancaster is ‘Transparency’. Speakers include Claire Blyth & Claire Parker, Louise Sloper, Simon Dixon (DixonBaxi), Abbey Bamford & Dave Sedgwick and Peter & Paul.
Various venues, Lancaster, Lancashire, UK
5-29 June 2025
London Design Biennale returns to Somerset House from 05-29 June 2025 for its 5th edition. Featuring world-leading design, innovation, creativity and research by exhibitors from across the globe, London Design Biennale showcases today’s designers and ideas that will change our world. The three-week international exhibition features curated installations accompanied by a programme of events, thought-leadership talks, performances and workshops. This year’s theme ‘Surface Reflections’ by Artistic Director Dr Samuel Ross MBE, Founder of A COLD-WALL* and SR_A SR_A, explores how ideas are fuelled by both our internal experiences and external influences. Revelations in life are prompted by personal histories that inform who we are. Together, these form the multifaceted hues of human experience.
Tickets available here.
Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 1LA
6 June 2025
JULY 2025
AUGUST 2025
30-31 August
In an industry where just 3% of designers identify as Black, Where Are The Black Designers? is out to change things.
The collective's first ever in-person festival will be held at the Art-Deco cinema turned multi-use events venue, EartH in Hackney. Bringing together visual artists, musicians, designers, creative directors, leaders of prominent cultural organisations and more, the lineup will speak to ideas of inclusion, designing spaces to cultivate community, centering collectivity and the importance of curiosity.
Saturday 30–31 August 2025, EartH in Hackney.
Tickets now available (from £71.80)
SEPTEMBER 2025
OCTOBER 2025
9—11 October, 2025
ONLINE + ONGOING
3 June 2025
From print to virtual: Czech designers pushing boundaries
A high-energy showcase of contemporary design, featuring a dozen UK-based Czech designers presenting their work in a dynamic, timed format: twenty slides, twenty seconds per slide. From print to animation, experience design to virtual reality, and 2D to 3D, these creatives are pushing the boundaries of graphic design across disciplines.
7pm, admission: £5 (+ Eventbrite fee)
Czech Centre at the Czech Embassy Cinema, 30 Kensington Palace Gardens, London W8 4QY
This is an event accompanying ‘Identity – The Story of Czech Graphic Design’ exhibition at the Vitrínka Gallery and Bouda Gallery, Czech Centre London, running untill 30 June 2025.
Ongoing
Philip Sayer: A journey through East Anglia
A digital exhibition presenting an extended series of photographs taken by Philip Sayer between 2005 and 2023 within a thirty-mile radius of his Norfolk home.
Through Sayer’s lens, the viewer is transported into a richly atmospheric vision of the region as an impressive sequence of images that sweep across its varied terrain. In his distinctive style – developed over the course of a professional photography career that spans six decades – deep darks meet fluctuating patches of vibrant light and between them a dynamic interplay of bold contrasts emerges.
Ongoing
The 39th Graphic Design Exhibition of the Turkish Graphic Designers Association
This year the annual GMK Graphic Design Exhibition, a recollection of graphic design in Turkey since its debut in 1981, is being held online. The GMK Graphic Design Exhibition Digital Archive will also be publicly accessible in the coming months, displaying this recollection and allowing closer examination of the work and shifting tendencies in Turkish design over the past 39 years.
JULY 2025
Online
Reverting to Type 2020: Protest Posters
Reverting to Type 2020 is an exhibition of letterpress artwork with something to say, an international exhibition showcasing progressive letterpress artwork by 100 artists from seventeen countries, alongside the work of specially invited collaborators, including John Anstiss, Shelley Bird, Sarah Boris, Dennis Gould, Peter Kennard and Stewart Lee. (See Word play in Eye 101).
The full exhibition contents can be seen at: revertingtotype.com
Ongoing
The Letterform Archive have made their Online Archive public access. You can now enjoy virtual access to nearly 1500 objects and 9000 hi-fi images from their collection.
See ‘Access all areas’ by Claire Mason on the Eye blog and ‘Letterform Archive: Objects of inspiration’ in Eye 100.
Ongoing
Soho Photography Quarter is a permanent new outdoor cultural space, presenting the very best of contemporary photography, for free. A tranquil and accessible cultural space only seconds from Oxford Street, Soho, Photography Quarter will present a rotating, open-air programme of site-specific and interactive artworks, which will change twice a year. The presentations will feature a significant art frieze in the main square, large-scale over street banners, plus moving image projections, soundscapes and other interactive works depending on the project.
Soho Photography Quarter, 16-18 Ramillies Street, London, W1F 7LW
Ongoing
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Questions)
MOCA has reinstalled the monumental wall work by Los Angeles–based artist Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Questions) (1990/2018). The emblematic red, white, and blue artwork was originally commissioned by MOCA in 1989 for the exhibition A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation, and was last installed in 1990 on the south wall of MOCA’s building.
MOCA Gaffen, 152 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012
See ‘Barbara Kruger: Reputations’ in Eye 5
Above: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Questions), 1990/2018, on view October 20, 2018–November 2020 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, photo by Elon Schoenholz.
Ongoing
Ruben Pater of Untold Stories at Insights 2020
Focusing on the ethics of design, this lecture discusses the unspoken realities of designers working remotely across the globe, and from there dives into social and political issues such as climate change, surveillance, and affordable housing.
See Peter Buwert’s ‘Design’s ugly truths’, a review of Ruben Pater’s The Politics of Design, in Eye 93.
ongoing
The decade marks a historic turn in art history for photography. No longer was traditional landscape and documentary photography the same. Photography shared the spotlight with painting.
Online exhibition on the website of the PDNB Gallery.
Above: Bill Owens, Our House is Built with the Living Room in the Back, 1971.