Rubens and His Legacy

To April 10

Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD

The first art blockbuster of 2015 will see Peter Paul Rubens’ reputation for painting generously endowed women, plump nymphs and cherubs reassessed by the Royal Academy of Arts to explore how he has influenced Europe’s best-loved painters over the last 400 years.

Curator Nico Van Hout has said he thinks the Flemish painter is “more revered than loved” and wants to “show him as the basis of a lot of other art as well. He is a very influential figure”.

The “Prince of Painters” show will be divided into six themes: Poetry; Elegance; Power; Lust; Compassion and Violence, with each section including major paintings by Rubens, followed by works from artists who drew direct inspiration from them: Van Dyck, Watteau, Turner, Delacroix, Manet, Cézanne, Renoir and Picasso.

More at royalacademy.org.uk

Women Fashion Power

To April 26

Design Museum, Shad Thames, London SE1 2YD

Kent’s Zandra Rhodes is among 25 high-profile women from the worlds of politics, culture, business and fashion who have contributed outfits to this Design Museum exhibition. The fashion designer’s “Conceptual Chic” punk wedding dress is one of the highlight pieces alongside a Mansfield suit worn by Margaret Thatcher when she was elected as Tory leader in 1975 and a black sequin Jacques Azagury dress given to Diana, Princess of Wales, which she wore on her 36th birthday when she was reinventing herself after a grizzly divorce.

Co-curator Colin McDowell says the exhibition is “not simply about fashion but clothes”. He said: “It’s about how women have used clothes to empower themselves, to intimidate people and to make them feel sexy. It looks at how intelligent women take what they need from fashion.”

From Elizabeth I to Coco Chanel and Vivienne Westwood the storyline unfolds; the suffragettes ensured they looked like “proper” Edwardian ladies to stem the media portraying them as vulgar creatures while the First World War altered everything and women’s fashion evolved as quickly as their role in society changed. Hollywood glitz plays its part in the 20th century displays and there’s plenty of opportunity to reminisce over the 1970s wrap dress, flowery Laura Ashley creations and Dynasty-style power suits before entering the 21st century to focus on the 25 women who demonstrate how their clothes define them.

More at designmuseum.org

Grayson Perry: Who Are You?

To March 15

National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London WC2H 0HE

Perry focuses on the theme of identity and Kent grabs the limelight with The Ashford Hijab, showing Muslim convert Kayleigh Khosravi and her children on the path from what he describes as “the temple of consumerism” at Ashford Designer Outlet Centre to the focal point of her Muslim faith at Mecca.

Perry said: “In this show I investigate our slippery sense of who we feel we are. Identity seems to be something that is only an issue when it is threatened or problematic. I have chosen individuals, families or groups who are in situations that highlight certain aspects of being human. I am hoping that they will throw some light on experiences we all share.”

More at npg.org.uk

Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915 – 2015

To April 6

Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX

This landmark exhibition will include more than 100 works by 100 modern masters and contemporary artists to ask how art relates to society and politics. As well as following the rise of Constructivist art from its revolutionary beginnings among the avant-garde in Russia and Europe, the exhibition sheds new light on the evolution of geometric abstraction.

More at whitechapelgallery.org

Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends

February 12 to May 25

National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London WC2H 0HE

Smallhythe’s Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth is one of three John Singer Sargent’s great theatrical portraits to be featured in the exhibition, alongside Edwin Booth and La Carmencita, the wild Spanish dancer. The collection of Sargent’s intimate and informal portraits of friends is being brought together for the first time and will include Robert Louis Stevenson, Claude Monet and Auguste Rodin.

More at www.npg.org.uk

Goya: The Witches and Old Women Album

February 26 to May 25

Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

The Courtauld Gallery will present a ground-breaking exhibition which reunites for the first time all of the surviving drawings from one of Goya’s celebrated private albums. They were never intended to be seen beyond a small circle of friends, giving him the freedom to create images which range from the humorous to the macabre and satirical.

More at courtauld.ac.uk/gallery

Wellington: Triumphs, Politics and Passions

March 12 to June 7

National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin’s Place, London WC2H 0HE

This year sees the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo and this exhibition will explore not only Wellington’s political and military career but his personal life through portraits of family and friends. Highlights include Goya’s portrait started in 1812 and modified twice to recognise Wellington’s battle honours and Thomas Lawrence’s 1815 portrait which became an iconic military image and was used as the basis of the design of the British £5 note from 1971 to 1991.

More at npg.org.uk or waterloo200.org

Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy

March 13 to September 1

The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB

When granted by King John in 1215, Magna Carta was a practical solution to a political crisis but in the centuries since it has become a symbol of liberty and the rule of law. As custodian of two original Magna Carta manuscripts, the British library will mark the 800th anniversary by drawing on its historical collections to bring to life a story that remains relevant today – and British artist Cornelia Parker has been commissioned to create a new artwork which will be unveiled on May 15.

More at bl.uk/events

Alexander McQueen – Savage Beauty

March 14 to July 19

Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL

Book your timed tickets in advance if you want to celebrate the British designer’s talent and watch restaged runway shows. Perhaps combine your visit with Shoes: Pleasure and Pain that also at the V&A.

Shoes: Pleasure and Pain

June 13 to January 31, 2016

From an ancient Egyptian sandal decorated in pure gold leaf to elaborate contemporary shoes by Caroline Groves, Christian Louboutin and Manolo Blahnik, shoe lovers will be seduced by the artistry.

More at vam.ac.uk

Barbara Hepworth

June 24 to October 25

Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG

Tate Britain will host London’s first major Barbara Hepworth exhibition in nearly half a century to highlight her importance on the international stage. From her garden gallery in St Ives, Cornwall, Hepworth became a global sculptor and the exhibition will present magnificent bronzes as well as pre-war carvings and rarely seen works including textiles, drawings, collages and photograms.

More at tate.org.uk

Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon

July 2 to October 18

National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin’s Place, London WC2H

Film star, fashion icon and humanitarian, Audrey Hepburn will feature in a photographic exhibition which coincides with the 65th anniversary of Hepburn’s career-changing performance at West End night club Ciro’s (in the space now occupied by the gallery’s public archive).

More at npg.org.uk

Ai Weiwei

September 19 to December 13

Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BD

It seems when Ai Weiwei speaks the world listens. The artist’s visionary and increasingly political work will be surveyed through this first significant British view of his artistic output. The exhibition will include major works as well as including new work by the artist.

More at royalacademy.org.uk

Frank Auerbach

October 9 to March 13

Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG

Britain’s most celebrated living artist spent his childhood on the North Downs after fleeing the Nazis in the Second World War. His parents died in concentration camps and so it was at Bunce Court, Lenham, that he was encouraged to enrol at Borough Polytechnic for night classes. He was taught by Vorticist David Bomberg; Bomberg had been taught by Sickert; Sickert learned from Degas; Degas from Ingres; Ingres was taught by David; David by Boucher; Boucher by Watteau; Watteau by Rubens.

Auerbach went on to St Martin’s School of Art from 1948 to 1952 and the Royal College of Art from 1952 to 1955. At his first solo show in 1956 he was criticised for his thick application of paint, but found support from the critic David Sylvester, who wrote of “the most exciting and impressive first one-man show by an English painter since Francis Bacon in 1949”. Expect an even more exciting and impressive exhibition in 2015.

More at tate.org.uk

Peter Lanyon’s Gliding Paintings

Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

October 15 to January 17, 2016

This major exhibition explores a remarkable series of paintings by one of Britain’s most original post-war artists. Lanyon (1918-64) sought to create a new vision of landscape painting that could express both sensory experience and a profound understanding of our fragile existence within the world. During the 1950s he produced radical, near-abstract paintings of the tough coastal landscape of his native West Cornwall inspired by his experience of gliding.

More at courtauld.ac.uk/gallery