London Museums Pair Old Masters With Contemporary Art

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Six major London institutions are currently integrating contemporary works with historical pieces from their collections, signaling a growing curatorial trend. This approach extends beyond the proximity of Frieze Masters and Frieze London, aiming to foster dialogues across different artistic periods.

The National Gallery leads with Yinka Shonibare and Thomas Gainsborough: A Conversation, on view until February 7, 2027. This exhibition marks the first time Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews (circa 1750) is shown alongside Shonibare's life-sized sculptural response, Mr and Mrs Andrews without their Heads (1998). Meanwhile, the Wallace Collection's Rachel Kneebone's Metamorphoses, running until April 25, 2027, places contemporary sculptures alongside the museum's Rococo holdings. The Courtauld Gallery is showcasing works by Salman Toor (until January 10, 2027 ) and an ongoing commission by Ella Walker, both artists having engaged directly with its collection. Similar cross-period exhibitions are also featured at the Sir John Soane's Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Curators, artists, fair organizers, and advisers suggest that this method reflects a deeper appeal than mere fashion. They assert that looking back has always been integral to art creation, collecting, and display, driven by both artists and institutions. The deliberate curatorial framing of such encounters, where new works are placed beside inspiring Old Masters or living artists respond to historic collections, is a more recent development.

The Wallace Collection has been exploring this concept for over two decades, starting with a Lucian Freud exhibition in 2004. Freud was the first living artist to exhibit there, presenting his recent paintings in dialogue with works by Anthony van Dyck, Diego Velázquez, and Titian. This tradition continues with Kneebone's Metamorphoses, featuring nine porcelain sculptures installed throughout the galleries. These include Bower and Temple, which directly respond to pieces by François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Kneebone describes this interaction as a“metamorphosis,” capable of“generat[ing] both connections and discords.”

Alison Smith, the Wallace Collection's director of collections and research, noted that such displays can“encourage visitors to draw visual connections across time.” However, she also cautioned against potential pitfalls, such as forced juxtapositions that might misrepresent historical works, especially when interpreted through contemporary perspectives. These reservations echo those from other figures in the field, including Penelope Curtis, former director of Tate Britain, who in a 2023 Apollo magazine piece called the trend for contemporary art in historic settings“ageing and... hackneyed.” Nicholas Penny, former director of the National Gallery in London, voiced a blunter opinion in a 2022 London Review of Books essay, criticizing“a quarter of a century of intrusive interventions by contemporary artists in major collections of Old Masters or ancient art.”

Ironically, Penny's former institution has long championed this format. Its Artist's Eye program ( 1975-1987 ) invited living artists, including Freud, Anthony Caro, and Richard Hamilton, to curate selections from the collection and display their own works alongside Old Master pieces. Rab MacGibbon, associate curator of British paintings at the National Gallery, explained,“We have been bringing Modern art into conversation with the art of the past since at least the 1850s, when Turner's paintings were hung alongside works by the 17th-century French artist Claude Lorrain.” While chronology remains central to the institution's displays, he added that it can also be“instructive to interrupt that from time to time.”

The Shonibare pairing, organized for Gainsborough's tercentenary next year, makes this conversation particularly explicit. Shonibare's headless figures replicate the pose of Mr and Mrs Andrews but are clothed in African wax-print fabric, transforming a canonical image of property and privilege into a commentary on wealth, empire, and colonial exploitation. MacGibbon sees this juxtaposition as an extension of Gainsborough's own engagement with artistic predecessors, particularly Van Dyck.“Shonibare brings this long tradition of intergenerational dialogue into the present day in a way that disrupts and perhaps challenges our assumptions,” he stated.

Even though this transhistorical trend is most visible in institutions, artists frequently initiate it across non-profit and commercial contexts. Emanuela Tarizzo, director of Frieze Masters, noted,“Living artists are some of the most consistent visitors to Frieze Masters.” Artists have also participated as speakers at the fair, exploring how historical art can inform contemporary practice. Elena Crippa, senior curator of contemporary art at the Courtauld Gallery, observed a similar pattern:“Since joining the Courtauld and inviting artists to visit regularly, I have been struck by how many are drawn to the permanent collection.”

This engagement is evident in the Courtauld's two contemporary presentations this autumn. Toor's exhibition features works inspired by Johannes Vermeer and Édouard Manet, while Walker's commission resulted from repeated visits and close study of late medieval and early Renaissance painting, including Sandro Botticelli's altarpiece from the collection. Crippa identifies a generational shift in how artists approach influence, noting that earlier generations often felt compelled to“break barriers and consign forerunners to the past to stake a claim to the present.” In contrast, artists like Walker value dialogue with the past, understanding that artistic practices are“forged through conversations across time” as well as through“new and personal paths to reflect on current concerns.”

For Kneebone, such relationships are fundamental to artistic practice. She considers Old Masters“a constant presence that you live and work alongside.” Her 2010 Lamentations series drew from Michelangelo's Pietà (1498-99) and her interest in depicting grief. Influence can also be retrospective, as seen in her Raft series, begun in 2015, which developed from a formal experiment where the“simultaneous pull of opposing directions” led her to recognize an affinity with Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa (1818-19).

This same impulse shapes the market. Tarizzo explained that“Frieze Masters was built on this premise from day one... to show continuity and diversity across historical art, and to put different periods and cultures into dialogue.” At this edition of the fair, first-time exhibitor Sascha Mehringer will showcase sculpture spanning the 14th to the early 20th centuries, while Kent Antiques will present Iznik ceramics from the Ottoman Empire alongside Mughal and Safavid miniatures and textiles.“Bringing historical art, 20th-century practice and contemporary art together also reflect how people collect and look at art today,” Tarizzo affirmed. Alexander Adler, president and co-founder of the transhistorical Manhattan dealership Adler Beatty, emphasized that collectors have always behaved this way.“People who are genuinely aesthetically minded tend to respond to art across categories, whatever the period or medium or monetary value,” he said. He added that specialization, in his view, is a more recent phenomenon.

We previously reported:

Frieze Masters is seeing an increased presence of collectors and art from the Global South, with significant sales and interest in non-Western artists.

East London's Public Gallery, founded by Alex Harrison and Harry Dougall, has cultivated a dynamic experimental program by prioritizing artists.

Source: The Art Newspaper

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