This summer, the Whitworth presents one of its most expansive programmes in recent memory, pairing major international exhibitions with free family activities, artist talks and atmospheric late-night openings.
From Japanese woodblock prints and contemporary painting to historic textiles and hands-on workshops, the Whitworth’s holiday schedule spans centuries, continents and traditions with characteristic, all-embracing artistic vision.
This summer also sees the return of the Whitworth’s free PLAYTIME sessions, transforming the gallery and its surrounding green spaces into an imaginative playground inspired by Hyundai Translocal Series: Entangled and Woven.
Running every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 1-4pm until Fri 28 Aug, the workshops invite children and grown-ups alike to experiment with weaving, embroidery and making through playful drop-in activities.
See the full schedule below.
The Whitworth’s first exhibition devoted to Japanese prints in more than a century, Beneath the Great Wave offers a rare opportunity to experience masterpieces by Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige up close.
Moving beyond the instantly recognisable Great Wave itself, the exhibition examines the ways in which ukiyo-e printmaking transformed visual culture through scenes of travel, landscape and everyday life.
Beautifully paced and revelatory in its exploration of nature, history and innovation, the ongoing exhibition provides insight into an inimitable artistic technique that renders Japan’s ‘floating world’ with breathtaking atmosphere, and continues to inform art methods today.
One of Britain’s most compelling contemporary artists, Michaela Yearwood-Dean, presents her first UK institutional museum exhibition with The Practice of Liberation, an immersive installation that brings together fourteen monumental paintings, an assortment of ceramics and an original score by composer Alex Gruz.
Through vivid abstraction and fragments of personal writing alongside the symbolism and aesthetics of the Catholic church, Yearwood-Dan explores spirituality, memory and liberation, reflecting on the intersections of colonial history, institutional religion and lived experience.
Entirely composed of newly commissioned work, the exhibition transforms the gallery into a richly layered environment where the personal and political continually overlap.
On Thu 10 Sep, exhibiting artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan returns to the Whitworth for a special evening celebrating her first monograph.
Joining Royal Academy curator Tarini Malik in conversation, she’ll discuss the ideas, influences and creative process behind The Practice of Liberation, offering fresh insight into one of the gallery’s highlight exhibitions.
The event is free, although advance booking is essential.
Developed in partnership with Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, The Labour of Care amplifies the voices of midwives and maternity healthcare professionals, exploring care, emotional resilience, humanity and the realities of working on the frontline of maternal health.
Born from Still Care, a pioneering artist-led workshop programme that began at the Whitworth in 2023, the exhibition gives maternity staff space to pause, reflect and reconnect beyond the clinical environment. New works created by healthcare professionals sit alongside works from the Whitworth collection, bringing their experiences into dialogue with artists including Marina Abramović and L.S. Lowry.
Find out more below.
Designed as a space to contemplate rather than pass through, Reflections: Sangat and the Self invites visitors to consider personal and collective wellbeing through contemporary art. Developed with the collective without SHAPE without FORM, it pairs recent works by Jasmir Creed and Roo Dhissou with pieces from the Whitworth collection to explore kinship, spirituality and healing through shared experience.
A year-long programme of workshops, gatherings and wellbeing events accompanies the exhibition, extending its themes beyond the gallery walls and encouraging conversation as much as reflection.
Elsewhere, the museum turns its attention to one of nature’s most enduring protagonists with Performing Trees, a new exhibition exploring the changing role of trees in art.
Featurying more than 50 works from the gallery’s collection, spanning from the late 16th century to the present day, the sprawling installation reveals how artists have used trees as storytellers, witnesses and symbols of the human experience.
From paintings and sculptures to textiles and wallpapers, each work contemplates trees as symbols of vitality and abundance, companions in grief, shelters for communities and sacred presences tied to myth and spirituality. Works by Agostino Carracci, Paul Cézanne, Alexander Cozens, Simryn Gill, John Nash and Graham Sutherland feature alongside a large-scale drawing by George Shaw, while Performing Trees also considers the Tree of Life and the transformations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Running until next April, the exhibition offers a timely examination of our enduring relationship with nature at a moment when the climate crisis is prompting us to reconsider humanity’s role and responsibility within the environment.
The Whitworth keeps its doors open until 9pm every Thursday, offering a chance to explore the gallery after work and experience its exhibitions at a more leisurely pace.
Grab a bite at the café in the trees overlooking Whitworth Park, browse the latest exhibition-inspired wares in the Whitworth Shop, or settle in for one of the gallery’s evening events.
Free entry makes Thursday Lates an ideal opportunity to extend an afternoon at the Whitworth into the evening, with plenty of time to wander the galleries, meet friends and enjoy the thrillingly eclectic assortment of artwork in a serene, intimate atmosphere.
The Whitworth, Oxford Rd, Manchester M15 6ER
whitworth.manchester.ac.uk
- Words:
- Wolf McFarlane
- Published on:
- Fri 7 Aug 2020
Bringing together newly commissioned works by artists and collectives from Korea and India with historic textiles from the Whitworth’s own collection, Hyundai Translocal Series: Entangled and Woven explores the stories stitched into the fabrics that shape everyday life. Through weaving, embroidery, dyeing and hand-spun fibre, the exhibition uncovers fascinating links between craft, migration, labour and memory, while tracing remarkable unexpected connections with Manchester’s industrial past.
Historic Korean and Indian textiles dating back more than four centuries sit alongside ambitious contemporary installations, creating conversations across generations while treating the materials as active, shifting phenomena rather than stagnant relics.
Find out more below.