The exhibitions to see in August 2026: Hockney, Björk and the Venice Biennale

August is a bad month to look for something new and a good month to catch the big shows before they close. These seven are the ones worth the trip if you live in music, fashion and internet-era culture: a Venice Biennale tuned like a record, a Björk installation built around a total solar eclipse, the Met's argument that clothes are art, and the closing weeks of David Hockney's first Serpentine show. We picked from what is open now or closing soon, favored exhibitions with a musician, a dress code or a crowd attached, and spread them across London, New York, Venice, Reykjavík and Los Angeles. Every entry gives the city and the dates.

David Hockney, A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, London

Hockney's first show at the Serpentine runs at Serpentine North in London through Aug. 23, and it now carries more weight than anyone planned. The 88-year-old died in June, partway through its run, after being named an officer of France's Légion d'Honneur earlier this year. The new work is five still lifes and five portraits of his close circle, including family and carers, each set on a gingham tablecloth. Opposite them hangs the panoramic A Year in Normandie frieze, inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, here in London for the first time. Serpentine will open until 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays in the final weeks (Aug. 7–8, 14–15 and 21–22). The market felt the moment too, with Hockney works selling at Art Basel days after his death. Art historian Richard Morris summed up the career in a post on X: “His huge achievement was to make serious painting look effortless.”

Björk, Echolalia, Reykjavík

At the National Gallery of Iceland, Björk's Echolalia is three large audiovisual installations: “Ancestress” and “Sorrowful Soil” from Fossora, both composed in memory of her mother, and a demo of the unreleased “Nerve Bloom,” a preview of her next album. Visitors borrow headphones, and the show runs through Sept. 20, with a separate James Merry exhibition, Metamorphlings, running to Sept. 19. The wrinkle is the sky. On Wednesday, Aug. 12, Björk hosts a one-day Echolalia rave in Hafnarfjörður to coincide with the solar eclipse, with Arca, Sideproject and Ronja Jóhannsdóttir, and the site gets just over a minute of totality. She was careful to separate the ideas: “Echolalia is not the title of my next album.” That record, she confirmed, arrives in 2027. An art-world rave may sound familiar after June, when Thomas Bangalter turned Art Basel into a rave.

Costume Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The exhibition behind this year's Met Gala is still up, and it is the best argument in town that fashion belongs in the art museum. Costume Art runs through Jan. 10, 2027 in the new Condé M. Nast Galleries beside the Great Hall, its first exhibition in the space. Curator Andrew Bolton pairs garments from the Costume Institute with paintings and sculpture from across the Met, sorted by body type, from the “Naked Body” to the “Classical Body,” and also aging, pregnant and anatomical ones. Mannequins, some with mirrored heads, stand on six-foot pedestals. Bolton told Vogue the idea came from noticing that “Even the nude is never naked.” Go once for the dresses and once to see which gallery they have wandered into.

In Minor Keys, Venice Biennale, Venice

The 61st Biennale runs from May 9 to Nov. 22 and was built to be listened to. Curator Koyo Kouoh died before it opened, and her team carried out her plan: 111 artists across the Giardini and Arsenale, including Nick Cave, Alfredo Jaar and Laurie Anderson, plus “oases” that evoke artists past, among them Marcel Duchamp's final studio and recreations of dance floors and itinerant rock parties. Domus calls it part magical realism, part musical spirituality, and Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco suggests experiencing it with “Soul Sacrifice” in your headphones. The Central Pavilion design draws on One Hundred Years of Solitude and Beloved. Kouoh's own brief was an invitation “To shift to a slower gear and tune in to the frequencies of the minor keys.” It is the opposite of a fast scroll.

Tracey Emin, A Second Life, Tate Modern, London

Last call: Tate Modern's largest-ever Emin show closes on Aug. 31. A Second Life covers 40 years and more than 90 works across the Eyal Ofer Galleries, from Tracey Emin CV (1995) and My Bed (1998) to recent paintings and bronzes, some shown for the first time. The route moves from her first life to a second one after illness and surgery, and it ends on a core of large recent paintings. Emin calls it “A moment in my life where I look back and look forward.” Tate Modern's 2026 program is built around three women artists, so the other two are open this month as well: Frida: The Making of an Icon (June 25 to Jan. 4, 2027) and the Ana Mendieta exhibition (July 9 to Jan. 10, 2027).

The Music Is Black: A British Story, V&A East, London

The V&A's new museum in Stratford opened in April with a 125-year story of Black music-making in Britain, and it is the most on-brand show of the summer. More than 200 objects run through four acts, from origins to the British-born sounds of lovers rock, 2 Tone, jungle, trip hop, garage and grime. The fashion carries a lot of the argument: Janet Kay's black dress for lovers rock, Pauline Black's tailored suit and Fred Perry shirt for 2 Tone, and the Banksy-made stab vest Stormzy wore in 2019, the first time a Black British performer topped the Pyramid Stage line-up at Glastonbury. Joan Armatrading's childhood guitar is in there too. Curator Jacqueline Springer says: “Music is the soundtrack to our lives, and one of the most powerful tools of unification.” It runs until Jan. 3, 2027.

Arthur Jafa, The White Album, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

The Hammer's show is one film, and it ends Aug. 30. The 30-minute The White Album (2018) follows Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death with a collage of found and produced footage that examines how visual media can carry the “power, beauty, and alienation” of Black music in American culture. Erin Christovale organized it with Azul Silverio. It is a compact show in a city full of big ones, and it works as a primer before Jafa's much larger I Am Tony survey at the New Museum this fall.

Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.