Exhibitions

National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC: Open now
“Just 11 per cent of all acquisitions at prominent American museums over the past decade were of work by women artists,” reads the website of the newly renovated National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC – something it seeks to counterbalance through its very existence. Its collections feature more than 5,500 works, from the 16th century to the present day, by more than one thousand international women and non-binary artists, while its programming centres around a rotating series of special exhibitions platforming both historic and contemporary artwork. Next time you’re in Washington, make sure you pay a visit to experience pieces by the likes of Faith Ringgold, Zanele Muholi, Frida Kahlo, Niki de Saint Phalle and many, many more.

Elliott Erwitt: Personal Bests at SOL LDN, London: November 14-18, 2023
Photography aficionados, don’t miss the chance to see some of Elliott Erwitt’s best-loved work at SOL LDN gallery in London this month. From humorous street scenes featuring woolly-jumpered chihuahuas and humorously positioned bulldogs to some of his most important assignment-based work – including “the kitchen cabinet debate” between Nixon and Khrushchev in 1959 and his shots of Che Guevara in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution in 1964 – the show will feature highlights from across the lauded US photographer’s six-decade career.

Conversations: Kerry James Marshall and John Singleton Copley at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC: November 18, 2023 – January 31, 2025
At Washington’s National Gallery, keep your eyes peeled for the second iteration of the museum’s ongoing series Conversations, for which it brings artworks from its permanent collection, made in different periods, into dialogue with one another. This time around, three “landmark paintings of American art”, Watson and the Shark (1778) by John Singleton Copley and Great America (1994) and Voyager (1992) both by Kerry James Marshall, will be hung alongside one another to illuminate “how both artists – centuries apart – reimagined the practice of large-scale, multi-figure history painting in their own time.”

Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines at the Brooklyn Museum, New York: November 17, 2023 – March 31, 2024
New Yorkers, be sure to check out the Brooklyn Museum’s upcoming show Copy Machine Manifestos, a full-blown celebration of North American artists’ zines – those DIY amalgamations of text and image, most often made with a photocopier – spanning the 1970s through to the present day. Featuring almost a thousand publications by nearly 100 artists, the show will consider the ways in which zines have given “a voice and visibility” to those operating outside of mainstream culture. It will also spotlight their relationship to, and importance among, a number of subcultures and avant-garde practices, from punk and street culture to queer and feminist art.

An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers/Giữa hai giòng sông/Entre deux rivières at MoMA, New York: November 5, 2023 – March 9, 2024
Also in New York, a three-decade-spanning survey of work by An-My Lê will soon arrive at MoMA, showcasing the Vietnamese-American artist’s renowned photographs alongside her lesser-known forays into film, video, textiles and sculpture. Lê arrived in the US in 1975, seeking political refuge after the fall of Saigon. The show’s title – a reference to the Mekong and Mississippi river deltas – nods to this personal history, which likewise echoes throughout her artworks: powerful and poetic meditations on conflict that investigate “the meaning of perpetual violence, war’s environmental impact, and the significance of diaspora”.

Women In Revolt! at Tate Britain, London: November 8, 2023 – April 7, 2024
A major exhibition of feminist art from 1970–1990 is set to open at Tate Britain next week. Spanning painting, drawing, sculpture, textiles, print-making, photography, film and performance by more than 100 women artists working in the UK, the show aims to reveal how “networks of women used radical ideas and rebellious methods to make an invaluable contribution to British culture”. Expect to see work by Lubaina Himid, Penny Slinger, Sutapa Biswas, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Linder and many others who used their creative practices to help forge women’s liberation “against the backdrop of extreme social, economic and political change”, often with woefully little recognition.

Jimmy DeSana at Meyer Riegger, Berlin: November 4 – December 22, 2023
Queer photographer Jimmy DeSana was a prolific and pioneering cultural figure in 1970s New York, contributing to multiple scenes, including no wave music, club culture, performance art, the Pictures Generation and mail art, alongside his image-making career. Yet, following his untimely death from an AIDS-related illness in 1990, his work became much overlooked. Happily, a show at the Brooklyn Museum last year returned him to the spotlight, and now an exhibition at Berlin’s Meyer Riegger gallery will present 53 works from across DeSana’s career, demonstrating his “aesthetically captivating negotiation of the subversive power of the queer body between the poles of freedom and restriction, life and death”.

Kim Lim: Space, Rhythm & Light at The Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire: November 25, 2023 – June 2, 2024
Another figure finally being given her dues, Singaporean-British artist Kim Lim made an important and unique contribution to 20th-century British sculpture and printmaking, but up until a 2020 retrospective at Tate Britain had largely been written out of art history. This month, Hepworth Wakefield will host an exhibition focussed on Lim’s “engagement with abstraction across a wide range of media”. Titled Space, Rhythm & Light – three of the artist’s key preoccupations – the display will feature Lim’s shapely wood and metal sculptures from the 1950s through to the 70s, her minimalist stone carvings of the 80s and 90s, and a selection of her elegant prints and cutouts, all inspired by “forms found in the natural world, as well as those in global cultures”.

Henry Taylor: From Sugar to Shit at Hauser & Wirth, Paris: Until January 7, 2024
In Paris, make sure to catch the inaugural exhibition at Hauser & Wirth’s new gallery: a display of paintings, sculptures and works on paper by the US artist Henry Taylor. There are plenty of fantastic figurative works on show – the genre for which Taylor is best known – some created during a two-month residency in Paris earlier this year, where he drew inspiration from the city’s historic art collections. One highlight, titled Forest Fever Ain’t Nothing Like, “Jungle Fever”, reimagines Manet’s famous nude picnic scene Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, replacing the white picnickers with a group of Black figures relaxing in a verdant setting, while Taylor’s sculptures “which recode the forms and symbolisms of found materials to comment on enduring art historical tropes” prove just as compelling as his paintings.

Read AnOther’s feature on the exhibition here.

Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage at Photo Elysée, Lausanne: November 3, 2023 – February 25, 2024
People now have the opportunity to see the American fashion photographer Deborah Turbeville’s wonderfully experimental collages in Europe thanks to an upcoming exhibition at Photo Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. Set to “offer a new appreciation of Turbeville’s contribution to the history of photography”, the institution will bring together an array of photomontages, made over four decades and featuring both fashion imagery and Turbeville’s own, far more personal work, which boast narrative intrigue and “a certain timelessness melancholy” that is both haunting and beautiful.

Read AnOther’s feature on the exhibition here.

Blue Collar at SIZED Studio, Los Angeles: Until November 4, 2023
In the apt setting of SIZED Studio in LA’s Garment District, UK artist duo Clarke & Reilly are hosting the latest incarnation of their experiments with “lengths of journeyed indigo fabric”, here presented as 60 hand-crafted ‘T-shirts’ symbolising America and the working class. The garments have been compiled from panels of material spanning three centuries and sourced by the artists from England and France. Prior to cutting, Clarke & Reilly left the panels “untended and exposed to the elements” at various stages in their journey from the UK to California, allowing “each piece [to amass] the resilient marks of survival – a journey not unlike that forged by the immigrants of the Garment District”.

Alberto Giacometti: The Nose at the Institut Giacometti, Paris: Until January 7, 2024
At the Institut Giacometti in Paris, a small but engaging exhibition unites every iteration of one of the Swiss artist’s most enigmatic sculptural forms, La Nez, which he revisited frequently between 1947 and 1964. (Only one version, too delicate to transport, is missing and shown instead as a hologram.) The suspended head, inspired by tribal masks, is paradoxical in its fragile and imposing nature, with its spindly dimensions and ultra-long nose, poking from its frame into the viewer’s space. Alongside the different Noses, sculptures, drawings and archive materials highlight its many facets and interpretations, while responses to La Nez by four contemporary artists – Annette Messager, Rui Chafes, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Ange Leccia – spark a lively dialogue between past and present.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, at the Hayward Gallery, London: October 11, 2023 – January 7, 2024
This October, London’s Hayward Gallery will present the largest survey of Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work to date. From his uncanny black-and-white portraits of well-known figures like Princess Diana and Salvador Dalí – albeit, their wax models from Madame Tussauds – to his awe-inspiring photographs of natural history dioramas, the new exhibition proves Sugimoto’s status as a “brilliant visual poet of paradox, a polymath postmodern who embraces meticulous old school craftsmanship to produce exquisite, uncanny pictures that reference science and maths as well as abstract art and Renaissance portraits,” says the Hayward’s director Ralph Rugoff. 

Events & Performances

Exciting live productions abound this month. First up, there’s 7 Deaths Of Maria Callas, AnOther Magazine cover star Marina Abramović’s celebratory opera project dedicated to the titular 20th-century prima donna, which will make its UK debut at the ENO. Taking place between November 3-11, the show will see Abramović and co-performer (another former cover star) Willem Dafoe “die seven times in seven films”, while seven singers perform well-known arias by Bellini, Bizet, Donizetti, Puccini and Verdi and will feature the Serbian performance artist herself.

At the National Theatre from November 22, don’t miss acclaimed American playwright Annie Baker’s latest offering Infinite Life, a co-production with Atlantic Theater Company. Anticipate a “surprisingly funny inquiry into the complexity of suffering, and what it means to desire in a body that’s failing you”. A “bold, spare” production of Harold Pinter’s masterful play The Homecoming will open at the Young Vic on November 27, telling the story of an east London family of butchers and boxers who find their lives disrupted by the return of their son and his new wife from America.

For anyone in New York, there’s the chance to see Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott take to the stage in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, John Patrick Shanley’s breakthrough play at storied Off-Broadway playhouse The Lucille Lortel Theatre. Dubbed “a searing portrayal of the imperceptible space between joy and pain”, the show opened earlier this week and runs for just ten weeks. Also in New York, Performa, the celebrated performance art biannual, is back from November 1-19 at a variety of spaces across the city. Highlights are set to include a monologue by Croatian artist Nora Turato exploring “the anxieties surrounding contemporary wellness culture and self-help practices”, and Korean artist Haegue Yang’s sixth iteration of Marguerite Duras’s novella The Malady of Death, this time reconfigured as a live reading by a single performer at the Guggenheim’s Peter B. Lewis Theater.

Dance fans, be sure to book your tickets to Zona Franca at the Southbank Centre from November 2-4. Conceived by Brazilian dance company Cia Suave and choreographer Alice Ripoll, the show performance promises a “vibrantly political and poetic experience” that brings together eclectic Brazilian dance styles to rousing effect. While celebrated British ballet company Cassa Pancho’s Ballet Black  returns to the Royal Opera House for Pioneers, a “thrilling and innovative” selection of works showing at the Linbury Theatre from November 16-18.

Film

This month brings with it a plethora of great new films. Our top picks include intriguing sci-fi romance Fingernails from Greek director Christos Nikou, in which an uncertain woman puts her relationship to the test using new scientific technology – with darkly funny results. Then there’s How To Have Sex, the buzzed-about debut feature from UK filmmaker Molly Manning Walker, following three British teens on a rites-of-passage summer holiday, where high highs and unsettling lows ensue. Shiva Baby director Emma Seligman is back with Bottoms, a wonderfully weird, deliciously satirical drama about two friends desperate to rise up the social ranks at their high school.

More anticipated returns abound. Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell brings us Saltburn, a compelling thriller in which a young man new to Oxford University finds himself “drawn into the world of [a] charming and aristocratic” fellow student. Todd Haynes offers up another brilliant thriller, May December, described by the BFI as “pitch-perfect melodrama” centred on an actor researching for her upcoming film about a real-life relationship with a significant age gap. Meanwhile British filmmaker Joanna Hogg’s latest film, The Eternal Daughter, sees an artist and her mother return to their former family home, now a hotel, where long-buried secrets are soon revealed.

Meanwhile, for documentary fans, we highly recommend On The Adamant, French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert’s engaging exploration of the unique daycare centre L’Adamant, a floating structure, located on the Seine that offers care to adults with mental disorders. The Eternal Memory by Chilean director Maite Alberdi is the moving story of a husband and wife learning to live with the former’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Paul Sng’s Tish, meanwhile, is a poignant investigation into the life and work of Tish Murtha, a photographer who devoted herself to documenting the lives of working-class communities in north-east England.

Food & Drink

For the best new culinary experiences this month, look no further. NEST, that Hackney favourite delivering the very best of British seasonal produce from small-scale farmers and trusted suppliers, has moved to a new Shoreditch location that’s bigger but no less cosy or chic. Its new seasonal menu is dedicated to game, with highlights including fried Partridge with XO sauce, dusted in chilli powder, while pescatarian and veggie plates include a warming foraged-mushroom broth, seaweed and kale baked Rockefeller oysters and a mouth-watering mushroom gnocchi.

Meanwhile, in Broadway Market, the new neighbourhood eatery Sune is set to open in late November, serving up lunch and dinner and weekend brunch. The menu will champion the very best British produce, ingredients and wild foods, featuring dishes like smoked eel Caesar salad, homemade linguine vongole with fried garlic and bottarga, and za’atar spiced lamb ribs, with honey, harissa and salted yoghurt. A wine menu selected by sommelier and co-founder Honey Spencer will no doubt make for sumptuous sipping too.

Jackson Boxer – the visionary chef and restaurateur behind Notting Hill seafood joint Orasay, Vauxhaull’s Brunswick House, and Soho’s buzziest bar, Below Stone Nest – has now taken up an autumn residency at Selfridge’s The Corner. In a light-filled restaurant on the department store’s second floor, expect mouthwatering variations on Boxer’s well-established culinary language; there’s meaty diver scallops, fluffy ricotta and courgettes, potato cake with cod’s roe, juicy fried chicken sandwiches in brioche, and langoustines served up on beds of ice. “The older I get, the more interested I become in simplicity and purity – saying the greatest amount with the fewest gestures possible,“ he says. 

Soho brasserie Bob Bob Ricard, home of the “press for champagne” button, has just opened a bijou iteration Bébé Bob, “born out of a love for rotisserie chicken, fine wine and champagne”. And it’s true to its word. The menu is based entirely around Vendée chicken from Pays de la Loire and Landais chicken from Gascony, cooked to order, serving two apiece. An array of side dishes range from chicken-fat roasted potatoes with thyme, rosemary and garlic, to truffled cauliflower cheese and sauteed kale in confit garlic.

On London Fields, James Dye, co-owner of Franks in Peckham and The Camberwell Arms, has launched a new music-led wine bar and restaurant Bambi, serving dinner and drinks in the early evening – expect cauliflower cheese arancini, chicken parm ciabatta with vodka marinara, pickles and aioli, and Dedham vale rump with lemon and confit garlic – before handing over to a series of resident DJs after dinner.

If you love Italian fare, head down to Soho hotspot Bocca di Lupo stat. In celebration of its 15th birthday, the beloved trattoria is serving some of the classic dishes and wines that featured on its opening menu – and costing the original price – throughout November. Snag a plate of ricotta tortellini tossed with a burnt walnut pesto for just £5, a classic caponata of aubergines, tomatoes, raisins, capers and pine nuts (£5) and dogfish ‘alla Palermitana’ (wherein the mild white fish is rubbed with sautéed garlic and anchovies and topped with a handful of breadcrumbs) for £7.

Otherwise, make your way to Bar Lina, the new aperitivo bar located beneath Lina Stores’ much-loved delicatessen on Brewer Street, where you can sample such tantalising aperitivi as the Bloody Martini with Sicilian tomato water, BVB vermouth and vodka, or a Basilico Cocktail with gin, Rinomato Bianco vermouth, citrus, salt, basil and milk. Plus a variety of Italian bar snacks, including Bresaola Tramezzino and fried parmesan polenta with truffle and mushroom, among others. Buon appetito!