JUNE REOPENING FOR THE NPG

The National Portrait Gallery has announced its 2023/24 programme, commencing this June, after a two-year closure for the largest redevelopment in its history. 

David Hockney, Self Portrait, 22nd November 2021, Acrylic on canvas copyright David Hockney. Photo credit: Jonathan Wilkinson

The first exhibition of the West End gallery’s reincarnation, Yevonde: Life and Colour, features the career of the eponymous colour photographer, aka ‘Madame Yevonde’, a trailblazer in the field of British portrait photography. The show is part of a three-year project, Reframing Narratives, Women in Portraiture, enhancing the representation of women in the gallery’s extensive collection (June 22 – October 28).

 This will soon be joined by a real crowd-pleaser, Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm (June 28 – October 1), a chance to view Beatlemania through the eyes (and lens) of the Beatles’ mop-topped singer-songwriter, as the Liverpool band took the UK, then the USA, by storm.

The year closes with David Hockney; Drawing from Life (November 2 – January 21), originally scheduled for March 2020, before Covid hit. This show features Hockney’s portraits over six decades, focusing on five sitters: his mother Laura; Celia Birtwell; Gregory Evans; Maurice Payne, and the artist himself. It showcases Hockney’s experimentation with different styles and media, from pencil, pen and ink and crayon, to photographic collage and the iPad. It also features a series of new portraits created between 2020 and 2022 in his Normandy Studio.

Further down the line, we can look forward to the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize (November 8 – February 24), The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure (February 22 – May 19, 2024) and Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In (March 21 – June 30, 2024).

Tickets for the whole season are already on sale from the gallery’s website, npg.org.uk.