Exhibitions to catch in Liverpool in 2024

A new year brings with it a fascinating and exciting range of new exhibitions at Liverpool museums and galleries – along with the continuation of some favourites from the past 12 months.

Curators have drawn together a series of shows which are set to be staged across the city and beyond during 2024.

While Tate Liverpool is closed for a major refurbishment, it will continue to run smaller exhibitions and installations at RIBA North on Mann Island.

Meanwhile National Museums Liverpool, Bluecoat, FACT, Victoria Gallery & Museum and Open Eye Gallery are just some of the arts and cultural organisations bringing unmissable shows to Liverpool audiences.

And there’s also plenty planned beyond the city’s boundaries for fans of the visual arts.

Here’s a taste of what you can see where during 2024.

Current exhibitions continuing into the New Year

Catch Photie Man: 50 Years of Tom Wood at the Walker Art Gallery until January 7.

Tim Spooner: A New Kind of Animal is at the Bluecoat until January 21, while work by Jenkin van Zyl and Uma Breakdown is at FACT until January 28.

Louise Waller: 20 Years of Clay has been extended until February 17 at the Victoria Gallery & Museum, and both the John Moores Painting Prize at the Walker Art Gallery and Return of the Gods at World Museum Liverpool run until February 25.

There’s a chance to Travel In Style: Iconic Cunard Advertising of the 20s and 30s at Victoria Gallery & Museum until March 16 and enjoy the Abstract Thinking: Fanchon Frohlich and her Contemporaries exhibition at the same venue until March 30.

And see the Ken Dodd exhibition Happiness! at the Museum of Liverpool until July 7.

New exhibitions for 2024

Future Forecast - Tate Liverpool + RIBA North

January 15-March 10

Toxteth-based Greenhouse Project Young Event Producers are behind this 24-minute film – an imagined vision of the future in which extreme weather conditions have changed the landscape of Liverpool and the rest of the world.

See how they predict what the future might look and sound like.

Members of the group worked with Birkenhead-born, Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Leckey, composer and sound producer Silv-o and artists Roy Claire Potter and Kim Coleman.

You Get a Car (Everybody Gets a Car): Resolve Collective - Tate Liverpool + RIBA North

February 9-mid July

Explore interactive installations created by RESOLVE Collective both in Tate Liverpool + RIBA North and just outside the entrance in the Winter Garden.

RESOLVE has been working with communities across Liverpool to redistribute and re-use material from Tate Liverpool’s site on the Albert Dock.

Their work aims to create a sustainable legacy of redistribution in Liverpool which has a positive, long-term impact for the climate and creative aims of community aims of community organisation across Liverpool.

Babak Ganjei: Thanks For Having Me – Bluecoat

February 9-April 14

The Bluecoat’s The Lives of Artists season opens with London-based Babak Ganjei’s Thanks for Having Me, in which he reflects on vignettes from his life and career as an artist.

He restages the market stalls from which he started selling his work, a means of sharing his work that Ganjei has outgrown but can’t let go of.

The title of the exhibition reflects on a life of operating at the margins and never being quite sure where he belongs.

Joshua Clague: And it Feels Like I Just Got Home – Bluecoat

February 9-April 1

The title of Merseyside visual artist Joshua Clague’s exhibition echoes a line from Madonna’s Ray of Light.

Clague, who has a studio space at the Bluecoat, is interested in the enduring memory of the female voice in his life and the exhibition riffs on the pop icons and divas he once emulated.

His work lays out how his sense of self changes at different times and in different places.

Part of The Lives of Artists season.

Another View: Landscapes by Women Artists – Lady Lever Art Gallery

April 20-August 18

This new exhibition at the Lady Lever explores and celebrates the history of landscapes painted by women artists.

The genre has historically been dominated by men but, beginning with works by amateur female artists, the show will move through 19th and 20th Century, presenting the changing ways women have looked at the outside world – and how that has been affected by social, economic, cultural and environmental developments.

The works on display will range from paintings to drawings and prints, both from National Museums Liverpool collections and work on loan from other places.

Michelle Williams Gameker: Our Mountains are Painted on Glass – Bluecoat

May 3-June 30

Through her practice, British-Sri Lankan artist Michelle Williams Gameker explores race, identity, her love of cinema and the power of storytelling.

Known for her inventive film making and screenwriting, the artist draws on and celebrates the classic movies she watched growing up, and takes inspiration from early Hollywood and British cinema.

This exhibition – a continuation of the gallery’s The Lives of Artists season - will screen Thieves, a fantasy adventure retelling of The Thief of Baghdad, with Williams Gameker reimagining the marginalised characters as claiming leading roles in her film, played in the originals by Chinese-American actor Anna May Wong and Indian-born American actor Sabu.

Dahong Hongxuan Wang: Role Model – Bluecoat

May 3-June 20

Part of the Bluecoat’s The Lives of Artists season, Role Model follows the path of Anna May Wong who travelled to her ancestral hometown of Taishan in Guangdong.

Having been rejected by Hollywood in favour of actors wearing ‘yellowface’, Wong sets off on a tour of China, reflecting on her time in both America and China.

Wang has played Wong in several of Michelle Williams Gameker’s works.

Bees: A Story of Survival – World Museum

May 4-May 5, 2025

Bees: A Story of Survival promises to be a visually stunning and immersive exhibition that reveals the epic tale of these incredible creatures and their essential relationship with the natural world. 

It will transport visitors into a world of bees, to explore their importance to our own lives and to understand their fight for survival.

In a unique partnership with award-winning artist and sculptor Wolfgang Buttress, the immersive exhibition is a beautiful harmony of art and science featuring cutting edge technology.

Using sound and light environments, the exhibition provides visitors with a real-time connection to the bees within their natural habitat and reveals the changing picture of their activity.

National Treasures: Velazquez in Liverpool – Walker Art Gallery

May 5-August 26

The only surviving nude artwork by artist Diego Velázquez, The Rokeby Venus, is the focal point of National Treasures: Velázquez in Liverpool which opens at the Walker Art Gallery in May.

The masterpiece is being loaned to the Walker as part of the National Treasures programme celebrating the 200th birthday of the National Gallery in London.

The William Brown Street gallery will display the painting alongside a selection of unexpected works from the collections of National Museums Liverpool, exploring this iconic 17th century painting in a contemporary light.  

Image top: Diego Velázquez, 1599 – 1660, The Toilet of Venus ('The Rokeby Venus'), 1647-51 Presented by the Art Fund, 1906 © The National Gallery, London