Discover what’s coming to Compton Verney in 2027
From world-famous photography and colourful abstract art to surprising sculpture and hidden histories, we’re delighted to reveal our 2027 exhibition programme.
There’s plenty to look forward to at Compton Verney next year. We’ll be celebrating pioneering women artists, exploring the imaginative world of Joan Miró and uncovering the secrets behind two of our best-loved paintings by Canaletto.
Beyond the galleries, our parkland will welcome an exciting collection of new sculptures, while an immersive digital installation will invite you to explore our relationship with nature, time and the future.
Here’s a first look at what’s coming in 2027.
Carla Accardi: Abstraction and Activism
Saturday 23 January – Sunday 13 June 2027
The first institutional presentation in the UK dedicated to the work of Carla Accardi will take place across Compton Verney, Warwickshire, and the Estorick Collection, London. This unprecedented collaboration between the two institutions will spotlight one of Italy’s most influential postwar artists.
Accardi was a radical figure, whose legacy is central to the narrative of 20th-century Italian art. Bringing together significant loans and archival material, the show will present key works from throughout Accardi’s career, offering a comprehensive introduction to Accardi’s practice, as well as tracing her innovations across painting and spatial installations. They explore her distinctive approach to formalism and three-dimensional space, as well as her pioneering use of industrial materials to challenge artistic conventions.
Eve Arnold: The World Through Her Lens
Saturday 13 March – Sunday 5 September 2027
The World Through Her Lens will celebrate the work of Eve Arnold, one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. Organised in association with Magnum Photos, Arnold was the first female photographer to join the agency in 1957, the exhibition will showcase her interest in authentically capturing life’s struggles and joys.
Arnold’s most famous portraits show the lives of celebrated actors away from the silver screen, including Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Peter O’Toole, Jimmy Stewart, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. In The World Through Her Lens these glamorous images will be shown alongside Arnold’s striking reportage photography taken across Afghanistan, China, India, Haiti and America. Over 100 photographs will be on loan from Magnum Photos during the organisation’s 80th anniversary year.
The Mystical World of Joan Miró
Saturday 3 July 2027 – Sunday 9 January 2028
The Mystical World of Joan Miró will bring together a carefully curated selection of works, exploring the central themes of Miró’s creative universe. Drawing on his fascination with nature, landscape and mysticism, the exhibition will showcase the artist’s unique process of giving visual form to the hidden nature of things. Symbols such as the eye, the stars, the bird, and the ladder create a distinctive cosmology in which earth and sky remain in constant dialogue.
The exhibition will also feature an audio-visual presentation and a group of photographs which provide an insight into his artistic processes and reveal a more intimate portrait of his life.
Canaletto’s Pleasure Gardens: Polite Society, Hidden Scandal
Saturday 25 September 2027 – Sunday 20 February 2028
Canaletto’s Pleasure Gardens: Polite Society, Hidden Scandal will explore the significance and context of two of Compton Verney’s best loved paintings: Canaletto’s The Grand Walk, Vauxhall Gardens, c. 1751 and The Interior of the Rotunda, Ranelagh Gardens, c. 1751.
For the first time, this exhibition will place the idea of pleasure front and centre in the examination of Canaletto’s paintings. It will look at the artist’s role in shaping and responding to conceptions of polite and worldly pleasure in 18th century England – when gardens provided the setting for the refined delights of music and art but also illicit activities, concealed by shadowed walks and secluded corners.
From May 2027
In May, a major new group of works will be welcomed to Sculpture in the Park. At their heart will be a new commission by artist Jonathan Baldock, inspired by the lost medieval settlement of Compton Murdak, once located within the grounds.
Drawing on the agricultural, archaeological and ecological histories of Compton Verney, Baldock’s series of large-scale, anthropomorphic flower forms double as a fountain.
Anthony Caro’s Double Tent will make a striking intervention. By the lake, Abigail Reynolds’ Songbird will invite visitors to experience the parkland from a bird’s-eye perspective. Meanwhile, Marcia Farquhar’s Onwards points in five different directions, subverting the familiar function of a signpost.
Returning Currents: A Ritual for Many Futures
Wednesday 13 January – Sunday 28 February 2027
Returning Currents is an immersive interactive installation created by artists Pell Ensemble and Simon East. It will imagine a new folk practice of divination, where ritual is not used to predict the future but rather to deepen our attention to the present.
Inspired by four horn beakers in Compton Verney’s Folk Art Collection, and co-commissioned with Scala Worcestershire, Returning Currents connects both institutions’ landscapes through water as a carrier of memory across ancestral, ecological, digital and human time. Through interactive projection, spatial sound and 360° VR, take part in a shared ritual that invites reflection on uncertainty, community, ecology and the choices that ripple into worlds to come.
