Things to Go See — Exhibitions for Autumn 26

It’s Frieze week! The time of year when our institutions showcase their best. Here, we share a shortlist of exhibitions that are must-sees, featuring painters Carmen Herrera, Robert Ryman and Issy Wood, among a refreshing return to photography with solo presentations of Roy DeCarava, Sunil Gupta and Nan Goldin.

Roy DeCarava: the sound I saw, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, until 31 October

Roy DeCarava worked with a handheld 35mm camera, which enabled him to move discreetly through everyday life in New York City, tenderly documenting six decades of Black experience: children playing, deliverymen working, portraits of jazz, clubs, and the figures that filled them. Beautifully curated by Ebony L. Haynes, this exhibition brings together more than 130 photographs created between the late 1940s and the 1960s, and is the largest presentation of this body of work since its inaugural exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1983.

Carmen Herrera: Pulse, Pause, Repeat, Lisson Gallery, London, until 7 November

Carmen Herrera said: “Being ignored is a form of freedom. I felt liberated from having to constantly please anyone.” This exhibition includes works made during the last decade of her life, when she achieved widespread recognition. The works presented across four galleries are the culmination of an eighty-year unfettered inquiry into line, form and colour, from architectural student to heroine of hard-edge abstraction.

Martine Syms: Knot Eye, Sadie Coles, London, until 7 November

Martine Syms’s videos and installations are highly technical and great instruments of storytelling. Two new films are presented in this exhibition — RW-LO (2026), a 22-minute docu-fantasy, nostalgically set in the Garden District of New Orleans in the early aughts, that explores what happens when people start being celebrities and stop being real; and EX Voto (2026), an energetically charged encounter between film industry colleagues at a wrap party.

Beverly Buchanan: Weathering, Spike Island, Bristol, until 31 January 2027

The largest European survey of Beverly Buchanan, this exhibition brings together five decades of rarely-seen work that sits somewhere between folk and minimalism. Rooted in the landscapes and histories of the American Southeast, Buchanan developed a practice exploring the enduring legacies of slavery through the histories embedded in architecture, landscape and everyday materials. The documentation of Buchanan’s earthworks are particularly touching: large cast sculptures installed in natural landscapes. Left vulnerable to the elements, these works symbolise the way people and bodies can be worn away by injustice.

Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, until 31 January 2027

Intimate and subversive, Sunil Gupta’s photography has been instrumental in raising awareness of the fight for queer rights internationally, particularly in India and the UK, laying bare the tensions between tradition and modernity. Highlight series include Friends and Lovers (1970s), documenting Gupta’s social life as a young man in Montreal, and Christopher Street (1976), capturing New York’s queer community after the Stonewall riots.

Robert Ryman: The Real Thing, Barbican, London, until 28 February 2027
Robert Ryman noted: “You have to see the real thing… seeing a real painting is the only way to do it.” This is nowhere truer than when confronted with Ryman’s work – which is often monochrome and structured in a grid format. His paintings reward close looking and are impossible to capture in reproductions. It is important to take the time to notice everything: the paint texture, the brushstrokes, how the paintings are displayed on the wall and how they relate to each other and their surroundings.

Issy Wood: Self Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London, until 28 February 2027
Artist Focus is a new initiative at the National Portrait Gallery, created to enhance its commitment to living artists. The inaugural display will see twelve self-portraits by young painter Issy Wood exhibited together for the first time. Begun in 2020, this series forms a particularly intimate aspect of Wood’s practice, cropping and framing her own image.

Nan Goldin: You Never Did Anything Wrong, Hayward, London, 24 November 2026 – 14 March 2027

Nan Goldin describes her oeuvre as “a record of my life that no one can revise.” Goldin’s unflinching images transformed photography by closing the distance between the viewer and the observed — snapshots capturing the intimacies of her own life and the lives of her community. This long-overdue survey highlights four recent films alongside a series of photographic stills and images from the artist’s archive.