10月に行う素晴らしいアイデア

The 90s: Art and Fashion at Tate Britain, London: 8 October, 2026 – 14 February, 2027

In the UK, the 1990s was a decade of unbridled creativity and rebellion, when the polished sheen of the 1980s gave way to something rawer, grittier and altogether more unruly. This restless energy rippled across creative disciplines, from galleries and catwalks to clubs, screens and magazines. This month, an exhibition at Tate Britain, curated by Edward Enninful, will look back at this extraordinary period, exploring how high art and pop culture “fused into one potent cultural force, signalling an audacious renewal of British spirit”. Expect photographs by Juergen Teller and Corinne Day, work by artists including Steve McQueen, Sarah Lucas and Yinka Shonibare, and era-defining fashion from Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen and more.

Queer Constellations at Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio: 16 October, 2026 – 21 March, 2027

An exciting new exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio will feature more than 150 works from the Columbus-based Aronowitz family’s extensive queer photography collection. Spanning more than a century of image-making, Queer Constellations brings different generations of artists into conversation. Works by George Hoyningen-Huene and George Platt Lynes sit alongside those of Peter Hujar, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Robert Mapplethorpe, while later artists include Nan Goldin, Catherine Opie, Wolfgang Tillmans, Shikeith and Paul Mpagi Sepuya. Hung salon-style and without chronology, the display invites viewers to form their own reading of the pictures, echoing the words of its guest curator, Vince Aletti: “Queer is in the eye of the beholder.”

Sanlé Sory: Colour Years at the Photographers’ Gallery, London: 14 October, 2026 – 21 February, 2027

You may well be familiar with Sanlé Sory’s expressive studio portraits of 1960s and 70s Bobo-Dioulasso, brimming with the energy, aspiration and newfound freedoms of a country emerging from colonial rule. Less well known, however, is the Burkinabé photographer’s captivating colour work, which has recently been restored from negatives in his archive. It will soon go on show at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, offering UK audiences a first look at Sory’s colour studio portraits, as well as snapshots of traders and shopkeepers in the local market. Visitors will also encounter the photographer’s record covers, featuring playful portraits of bands from Bobo-Dioulasso’s post-independence music scene, including the influential Volta Jazz. Made from the mid-1980s onwards, the images paint an evocative picture of a community living through rapid social and cultural change – and doing so in style.

Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola at the Palace of Versailles: Until 24 January, 2027

Twenty years after Sofia Coppola served up her most sumptuous film, Marie Antoinette, the director is returning to its pastel-hued world in the most tangible setting imaginable: Versailles. A new exhibition taking over the Petit Trianon – Marie Antoinette’s private retreat within the palace grounds, where Coppola filmed much of the 2006 movie – takes visitors behind the scenes, with Milena Canonero’s Oscar-winning costumes joined by props, storyboards, annotated scripts, on-set photographs and recreated scenography for our delectation. Not to mention scenes from the film, screened in the very rooms in which they were shot. For devotees of Coppola’s deliciously anachronistic vision – all sherbet-coloured silks, towering cakes and teenage ennui – a pilgrimage is surely in order.

Frida Orupabo: Get Close Enough and You Can’t See at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg: 8 October, 2026 – 9 May, 2027

Norwegian-Nigerian artist Frida Orupabo has a knack for making images that refuse to sit still. Mining everything from colonial archives and vintage films to eBay, she cuts, enlarges and splices found photographs into uncanny new bodies, their limbs and features held together by visible pins like movable paper dolls. This autumn, Orupabo brings her distinctive collages to Denmark for the first time with Get Close Enough and You Can’t See, a site-specific exhibition created for Alvar Aalto’s light-filled Kunsten museum in Aalborg. Confronting histories of race, colonialism, identity and power, her subjects frequently stare straight back at us; as Orupabo told AnOther in 2023, “To look back is to refuse objectification.”

Salman Toor: Someone Like You at The Courtauld Gallery, London: 2 October, 2026 – 10 January, 2027

American Pakistani painter Salman Toor makes masterfully rendered paintings that are decidedly contemporary yet infused with art historical echoes. His works, he explains, “depict queer and immigrant lives that straddle different cultures and inhabit the tension between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement”. Frenetic and vivid, they plunge us into bars, parties and bedrooms populated by languorous young men, moving between moments of friendship and desire, loneliness and unease. Nineteen of Toor’s paintings feature in a newly unveiled exhibition at The Courtauld – an apt setting for an artist steeped in the Old Masters, whose 2019 work The Bar on East 13th reimagines the museum’s own Manet masterpiece, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.

Charlotte Perriand: Free to Rethink the World at Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona: 9 October, 2026 – 28 February, 2027

The Fundació Joan Miró, with its playful assemblage of interlocking white volumes, is a fitting location for Spain’s first museum exhibition dedicated to Charlotte Perriand. Its architect, Josep Lluís Sert, was a lifelong friend and intellectual ally of the pioneering French designer, whom he met in 1928 while both were working in Le Corbusier’s Paris atelier. The show will track Perriand’s formative years, homing in on her pivotal decade at the studio, where many of her now-iconic designs – including the tilting chaise longue – were long attributed to Le Corbusier himself. Situating Perriand within the sprawling creative network that connected Paris, Barcelona, the Mediterranean and beyond, it will offer a window into her extraordinarily expansive vision of design: one shaped as much by politics, travel and the rhythms of everyday life as by aesthetics, and driven by her conviction that our surroundings can shape more humane ways of living.

Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends at the National Portrait Gallery, London: 9 October, 2026 – 7 February, 2027

For decades, Tim Walker has conjured some of fashion photography’s most fantastical worlds, populated by giant dolls, storybook creatures and impossible props. Now, the British image-maker turns his attention to queer icons and trailblazers. Five years in the making, Fairyland: Love and Legends brings 250 new portraits to London’s National Portrait Gallery, celebrating more than half a century of queer creativity, activism and community. Chappell Roan, Ian McKellen and Miriam Margolyes are among those entering Walker’s looking glass, alongside artists, writers, performers and activists from around the globe. The result is a parade of exuberant portraits, fabulous costumes and an abundance of fairy wings and Walker whimsy.

Arcana Borealis – Northern Women and Esotericism at the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki: 23 October, 2026 – 28 February, 2027

Things will soon take a mystical turn at the Ateneum in Helsinki with Arcana Borealis, an exhibition spotlighting women artists from across the Nordic region and Sápmi whose work draws on esotericism, occultism and alternative spiritual practices. Featuring some 50 artists from the late 19th century to today – including Hilma af Klint, Anna Cassel, Ellen Thesleff and Outi Pieski – the show will consider how these figures used their work “to explore and reach beyond everyday experiences and to connect with the universe”. Otherworldly visions, ideas of the afterlife and communion with nature all unfold across painting and textiles, ceramics, stained glass, mosaic and more, in a display that’s sure to cast a compelling spell.

Middlesex Hospital Blues at The Fitzrovia Chapel, London: 16 October – 18 November, 2026

An evocative exhibition is coming to Fitzrovia Chapel, inspired by Derek Jarman’s final film, Blue, made in 1993 – a year before the British artist’s death from an AIDS-related illness. The venue is particularly poignant: the chapel once belonged to the Middlesex Hospital, home to the UK’s first dedicated HIV/AIDS wards. Curated by artists and filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, the exhibition will channel Blue’s meditation on illness, mortality and perception. Tilda Swinton’s voice will drift through a new spatial sound work by Jarman’s longtime collaborator Simon Fisher Turner, while mirrored sculptures by Jenkin van Zyl will embrace beneath saturated blue light. Jarman’s tiny, near-black painting The Spirit of the World (1981) – an intriguing precursor to Blue’s radical monochrome format – will also feature.

Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter at C/O Berlin: Until 3 February, 2027

In Berlin, a new retrospective of Carrie Mae Weems has opened at C/O Berlin, exploring the acclaimed American artist’s powerful interrogation of race, gender, power and memory – and the role images play in shaping who gets remembered or forgotten. Spanning four decades, the show presents more than 100 photographs and video works including the autobiographical Family Pictures and Stories (1978–84), the Kitchen Table Series (1990), in which Weems places herself at the centre of an unfolding domestic drama, and Preach (2024), which examines faith, community and resistance within the Black church. At every turn, Weems uses personal experience to probe larger questions of history, identity and representation – with potent and poetic results.

A Composition at JW Anderson, Pimlico Road, London: 15-21 October, 2026

Jonathan Anderson’s longstanding support of and collaboration with artists and designers has always extended well beyond fashion. This season, he is turning his attention to the creative community around him – an idea that will take physical form during Frieze week with A Composition, an exhibition curated by the designer at JW Anderson’s Pimlico space. With a primary focus on Cerith Wyn Evans, the show will display the Welsh conceptual artist’s beguiling glass work alongside works by other artists and makers from Anderson’s orbit, among them ceramicists Akiko Hirai and Shawanda Corbett and painter Mary Stephenson. A characteristically eclectic and refined gathering – and another reason to venture south of the Frieze-week fray.

There are plenty of brilliant live performances worth leaving the house for this month. For those in Paris for Art Basel, make time for Christine Sun Kim’s Community Sigh at the Bourse de Commerce on 22 and 24 October. In the piece, the Berlin-based American artist transforms the collective sighs of more than 60 Deaf people into a reflection on exhaustion, resistance and renewal.

Meanwhile, Du Yun’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Angel’s Bone makes its London premiere at the Coliseum from 16–31 October. With a rousing score that veers from chamber music to punk and cabaret, it’s a dark, genre-defying tale of two fallen angels exploited by the couple who take them in. Like a painting come to life, Pastoral sees American choreographer Pam Tanowitz reimagine Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, with dancers moving against painter Sarah Crowner’s jewel-toned landscapes to new music by Caroline Shaw. Part ballet, part woodland reverie, the dreamlike production is at the Barbican Theatre from 1–3 October, so don’t snooze.

Also at the Barbican, from 8–11 October, Haruki Murakami’s surreal End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland arrives on stage in an ambitious adaptation directed and choreographed by Philippe Decouflé and starring feted actor Tatsuya Fujiwara. Prepare to enter a dystopian world of shadowy laboratories, strange creatures and parallel realities. At the Adelphi Theatre from 14 October, don’t miss the return of British director Robert Icke, taking on Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar-winning surveillance thriller The Lives of Others. Keira Knightley, Stephen Dillane and Luke Thompson will lead the cast of this gripping story of love, art and state surveillance in 1980s East Berlin. Finally, who better than Richard E Grant to take on Noël Coward’s deliciously self-involved novelist David Bliss? He stars opposite Christine Baranski in a new production of Hay Fever – Coward’s gloriously caustic comedy of manners about an eccentric artistic family and their hapless weekend guests – at Wyndham’s Theatre until 12 December.

October’s best films run the gamut from offbeat comedy to dystopian sci-fi. First up, there’s Case 137, the taut police procedural from French director Dominik Moll. It follows a Paris-based internal-affairs officer whose investigation into the serious injury of a young protester unexpectedly leads her back to her hometown of Saint-Dizier. Boots Riley is back with I Love Boosters, a riotous anti-capitalist comedy about a band of audacious thieves plotting to relieve a ruthless fashion mogul of her wares. Meanwhile, Amanda Kramer’s deliciously eccentric By Design stars Juliette Lewis as a woman who swaps bodies with a chair.

The Portuguese House from Spanish filmmaker Avelina Prat is the enigmatic tale of a grieving geography professor from Barcelona who assumes another man’s identity, becoming a gardener on a remote Portuguese estate. There, an unexpected friendship opens the door to a new beginning. Be sure to catch Cotton Queen, the debut feature from Sudanese director Suzannah Mirghani. Set in a cotton-farming village in Sudan, it follows teenage Nafisa as she finds herself caught between her family’s expectations and ambitious plans for the community’s future – and begins to imagine a life on her own terms. Finally, we’re excited to see Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel Klara and the Sun. Jenna Ortega will play the titular “artificial friend”, who finds herself increasingly entangled in the lives of a troubled human family.

On the documentary front, book now for Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie by Alex Gibney. Revisiting the 2022 attack that very nearly killed the author, the film uses intimate footage shot by Rushdie’s wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, to chart his gruelling physical and emotional recovery. For another dose of Sofia Coppola’s French queen, there’s Making Marie Antoinette, directed by Coppola’s late mother, Eleanor Coppola. Cut from almost 80 hours of footage shot on set, it captures everything from the film’s lavish craftsmanship to a 34-year-old Sofia at the helm of one of her most ambitious productions to date. NAZA, by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is an urgent investigation into Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. Drawing on testimony from anonymous Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers, the film examines the systems and calculations behind air strikes that have resulted in an unthinkable number of civilian deaths.

October’s culinary openings and events are sure to work up an appetite. For a soupçon of Paris in Covent Garden, head to Cassette, the newly opened French bistrot from the team behind Peckham favourite Levan. Head chef Essa Fakhry puts a contemporary spin on classic dishes such as raw beef croustade with comté, coq au vin jaune pie or stuffed pig’s trotter, with îles flottantes or black fig clafoutis among the puddings. Drinks have a distinctly Gallic bent too: alongside an ever-changing wine list, there’s a particular fondness for calvados, served with tonic, slipped into cocktails or simply poured neat to complement your espresso.

Or for a splash of the Côte d’Azur at Hyde Park Corner, head to Le Café LPM, a new year-long residency at The Lanesborough from the team behind La Petite Maison. Set in the hotel’s glass pavilion, the café channels the Riviera in terracotta, sage green and soft coral tones, with plenty of marble and brass. The all-day menu follows suit, from tuna carpaccio and crispy squid to a decadent croque monsieur with comté and honey butter. Save room for Le Soleil de Menton – a sunny confection of lemon mousse, hazelnut sponge and citrus curd – best enjoyed with a Fig Leaf Negroni or La Pêche Fizz on the terrace.

Sushi lovers, take note: third-generation sushi master Endo Kazutoshi is opening an intimate new restaurant in a Chelsea townhouse this month. At Endo, just 10 guests will gather around a 200-year-old hinoki-wood counter for an omakase menu, pairing centuries-old Japanese traditions with the finest wild-caught British seafood. Upstairs, things take a more freewheeling turn at Moga, Endo’s new bar inspired by early 20th-century Tokyo. Tea-based cocktails come courtesy of Postcard Teas, while snacks span handmade soba, Cocido Madrileño and the welcome return of Endo’s much-loved Red Mullet Sandwich.

On 8 October, Mambow’s Abby Lee is swapping her Clapton kitchen for The Dusty Knuckle in Dalston for a one-off celebration of the home-style Nyonya cooking she grew up with. Naturally, the bakery is getting involved: Lee’s Assam Pedas oxtail curry comes wrapped in The Dusty Knuckle’s own pastry, followed by prawn, pineapple and coconut curry, braised pork belly with fermented soybean and soy caramel, and kuih dadar with kopi ice cream. Buy your tickets here.

After meeting in Berlin, Ruhi Parmar Amin and Simar Deol launched Firangi, their itinerant Indian bistro exploring the regional Punjabi and Gujarati cooking of their youth. This autumn, the duo are settling in for a three-month residency at Top Cuvée in Highbury, serving nine sharing plates that sidestep preconceived notions of Indian dining – there’s not a grain of rice in sight. Instead, tuck into jowar and lamb tartare with betel leaf and chicken skewers with corn kees and turnip achar, before rounding things off with almond financier, chai custard and torched jaggery banana.

Last but not least, former Casa Fofo duo Giuseppe “Pino” Pepe and Federico Giannuzzi are striking out on their own with Da Pino, taking over the former Bianca’s site in Stoke Newington. Pepe previously headed up the kitchen at Casa Fofo, but the pair’s shared roots lie in Puglia, and their new restaurant riffs on the generous family meals of their childhoods with a decidedly experimental spin. Think: raw scallops with peanut milk and green tomatoes, grilled rice with mussels and potatoes, and sourdough bread miso ice cream with apple and pumpkin seeds. Mangiamo!

The 90s: Art and Fashion at Tate Britain, London: 8 October, 2026 – 14 February, 2027

In the UK, the 1990s was a decade of unbridled creativity and rebellion, when the polished sheen of the 1980s gave way to something rawer, grittier and altogether more unruly. This restless energy rippled across creative disciplines, from galleries and catwalks to clubs, screens and magazines. This month, an exhibition at Tate Britain, curated by Edward Enninful, will look back at this extraordinary period, exploring how high art and pop culture “fused into one potent cultural force, signalling an audacious renewal of British spirit”. Expect photographs by Juergen Teller and Corinne Day, work by artists including Steve McQueen, Sarah Lucas and Yinka Shonibare, and era-defining fashion from Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen and more.

Queer Constellations at Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio: 16 October, 2026 – 21 March, 2027

An exciting new exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio will feature more than 150 works from the Columbus-based Aronowitz family’s extensive queer photography collection. Spanning more than a century of image-making, Queer Constellations brings different generations of artists into conversation. Works by George Hoyningen-Huene and George Platt Lynes sit alongside those of Peter Hujar, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Robert Mapplethorpe, while later artists include Nan Goldin, Catherine Opie, Wolfgang Tillmans, Shikeith and Paul Mpagi Sepuya. Hung salon-style and without chronology, the display invites viewers to form their own reading of the pictures, echoing the words of its guest curator, Vince Aletti: “Queer is in the eye of the beholder.”

Sanlé Sory: Colour Years at the Photographers’ Gallery, London: 14 October, 2026 – 21 February, 2027

You may well be familiar with Sanlé Sory’s expressive studio portraits of 1960s and 70s Bobo-Dioulasso, brimming with the energy, aspiration and newfound freedoms of a country emerging from colonial rule. Less well known, however, is the Burkinabé photographer’s captivating colour work, which has recently been restored from negatives in his archive. It will soon go on show at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, offering UK audiences a first look at Sory’s colour studio portraits, as well as snapshots of traders and shopkeepers in the local market. Visitors will also encounter the photographer’s record covers, featuring playful portraits of bands from Bobo-Dioulasso’s post-independence music scene, including the influential Volta Jazz. Made from the mid-1980s onwards, the images paint an evocative picture of a community living through rapid social and cultural change – and doing so in style.

Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola at the Palace of Versailles: Until 24 January, 2027

Twenty years after Sofia Coppola served up her most sumptuous film, Marie Antoinette, the director is returning to its pastel-hued world in the most tangible setting imaginable: Versailles. A new exhibition taking over the Petit Trianon – Marie Antoinette’s private retreat within the palace grounds, where Coppola filmed much of the 2006 movie – takes visitors behind the scenes, with Milena Canonero’s Oscar-winning costumes joined by props, storyboards, annotated scripts, on-set photographs and recreated scenography for our delectation. Not to mention scenes from the film, screened in the very rooms in which they were shot. For devotees of Coppola’s deliciously anachronistic vision – all sherbet-coloured silks, towering cakes and teenage ennui – a pilgrimage is surely in order.

Frida Orupabo: Get Close Enough and You Can’t See at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg: 8 October, 2026 – 9 May, 2027

Norwegian-Nigerian artist Frida Orupabo has a knack for making images that refuse to sit still. Mining everything from colonial archives and vintage films to eBay, she cuts, enlarges and splices found photographs into uncanny new bodies, their limbs and features held together by visible pins like movable paper dolls. This autumn, Orupabo brings her distinctive collages to Denmark for the first time with Get Close Enough and You Can’t See, a site-specific exhibition created for Alvar Aalto’s light-filled Kunsten museum in Aalborg. Confronting histories of race, colonialism, identity and power, her subjects frequently stare straight back at us; as Orupabo told AnOther in 2023, “To look back is to refuse objectification.”

Salman Toor: Someone Like You at The Courtauld Gallery, London: 2 October, 2026 – 10 January, 2027

American Pakistani painter Salman Toor makes masterfully rendered paintings that are decidedly contemporary yet infused with art historical echoes. His works, he explains, “depict queer and immigrant lives that straddle different cultures and inhabit the tension between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement”. Frenetic and vivid, they plunge us into bars, parties and bedrooms populated by languorous young men, moving between moments of friendship and desire, loneliness and unease. Nineteen of Toor’s paintings feature in a newly unveiled exhibition at The Courtauld – an apt setting for an artist steeped in the Old Masters, whose 2019 work The Bar on East 13th reimagines the museum’s own Manet masterpiece, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.

Charlotte Perriand: Free to Rethink the World at Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona: 9 October, 2026 – 28 February, 2027

The Fundació Joan Miró, with its playful assemblage of interlocking white volumes, is a fitting location for Spain’s first museum exhibition dedicated to Charlotte Perriand. Its architect, Josep Lluís Sert, was a lifelong friend and intellectual ally of the pioneering French designer, whom he met in 1928 while both were working in Le Corbusier’s Paris atelier. The show will track Perriand’s formative years, homing in on her pivotal decade at the studio, where many of her now-iconic designs – including the tilting chaise longue – were long attributed to Le Corbusier himself. Situating Perriand within the sprawling creative network that connected Paris, Barcelona, the Mediterranean and beyond, it will offer a window into her extraordinarily expansive vision of design: one shaped as much by politics, travel and the rhythms of everyday life as by aesthetics, and driven by her conviction that our surroundings can shape more humane ways of living.

Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends at the National Portrait Gallery, London: 9 October, 2026 – 7 February, 2027

For decades, Tim Walker has conjured some of fashion photography’s most fantastical worlds, populated by giant dolls, storybook creatures and impossible props. Now, the British image-maker turns his attention to queer icons and trailblazers. Five years in the making, Fairyland: Love and Legends brings 250 new portraits to London’s National Portrait Gallery, celebrating more than half a century of queer creativity, activism and community. Chappell Roan, Ian McKellen and Miriam Margolyes are among those entering Walker’s looking glass, alongside artists, writers, performers and activists from around the globe. The result is a parade of exuberant portraits, fabulous costumes and an abundance of fairy wings and Walker whimsy.

Arcana Borealis – Northern Women and Esotericism at the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki: 23 October, 2026 – 28 February, 2027

Things will soon take a mystical turn at the Ateneum in Helsinki with Arcana Borealis, an exhibition spotlighting women artists from across the Nordic region and Sápmi whose work draws on esotericism, occultism and alternative spiritual practices. Featuring some 50 artists from the late 19th century to today – including Hilma af Klint, Anna Cassel, Ellen Thesleff and Outi Pieski – the show will consider how these figures used their work “to explore and reach beyond everyday experiences and to connect with the universe”. Otherworldly visions, ideas of the afterlife and communion with nature all unfold across painting and textiles, ceramics, stained glass, mosaic and more, in a display that’s sure to cast a compelling spell.

Middlesex Hospital Blues at The Fitzrovia Chapel, London: 16 October – 18 November, 2026

An evocative exhibition is coming to Fitzrovia Chapel, inspired by Derek Jarman’s final film, Blue, made in 1993 – a year before the British artist’s death from an AIDS-related illness. The venue is particularly poignant: the chapel once belonged to the Middlesex Hospital, home to the UK’s first dedicated HIV/AIDS wards. Curated by artists and filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, the exhibition will channel Blue’s meditation on illness, mortality and perception. Tilda Swinton’s voice will drift through a new spatial sound work by Jarman’s longtime collaborator Simon Fisher Turner, while mirrored sculptures by Jenkin van Zyl will embrace beneath saturated blue light. Jarman’s tiny, near-black painting The Spirit of the World (1981) – an intriguing precursor to Blue’s radical monochrome format – will also feature.

Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter at C/O Berlin: Until 3 February, 2027

In Berlin, a new retrospective of Carrie Mae Weems has opened at C/O Berlin, exploring the acclaimed American artist’s powerful interrogation of race, gender, power and memory – and the role images play in shaping who gets remembered or forgotten. Spanning four decades, the show presents more than 100 photographs and video works including the autobiographical Family Pictures and Stories (1978–84), the Kitchen Table Series (1990), in which Weems places herself at the centre of an unfolding domestic drama, and Preach (2024), which examines faith, community and resistance within the Black church. At every turn, Weems uses personal experience to probe larger questions of history, identity and representation – with potent and poetic results.

A Composition at JW Anderson, Pimlico Road, London: 15-21 October, 2026

Jonathan Anderson’s longstanding support of and collaboration with artists and designers has always extended well beyond fashion. This season, he is turning his attention to the creative community around him – an idea that will take physical form during Frieze week with A Composition, an exhibition curated by the designer at JW Anderson’s Pimlico space. With a primary focus on Cerith Wyn Evans, the show will display the Welsh conceptual artist’s beguiling glass work alongside works by other artists and makers from Anderson’s orbit, among them ceramicists Akiko Hirai and Shawanda Corbett and painter Mary Stephenson. A characteristically eclectic and refined gathering – and another reason to venture south of the Frieze-week fray.

There are plenty of brilliant live performances worth leaving the house for this month. For those in Paris for Art Basel, make time for Christine Sun Kim’s Community Sigh at the Bourse de Commerce on 22 and 24 October. In the piece, the Berlin-based American artist transforms the collective sighs of more than 60 Deaf people into a reflection on exhaustion, resistance and renewal.

Meanwhile, Du Yun’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Angel’s Bone makes its London premiere at the Coliseum from 16–31 October. With a rousing score that veers from chamber music to punk and cabaret, it’s a dark, genre-defying tale of two fallen angels exploited by the couple who take them in. Like a painting come to life, Pastoral sees American choreographer Pam Tanowitz reimagine Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, with dancers moving against painter Sarah Crowner’s jewel-toned landscapes to new music by Caroline Shaw. Part ballet, part woodland reverie, the dreamlike production is at the Barbican Theatre from 1–3 October, so don’t snooze.

Also at the Barbican, from 8–11 October, Haruki Murakami’s surreal End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland arrives on stage in an ambitious adaptation directed and choreographed by Philippe Decouflé and starring feted actor Tatsuya Fujiwara. Prepare to enter a dystopian world of shadowy laboratories, strange creatures and parallel realities. At the Adelphi Theatre from 14 October, don’t miss the return of British director Robert Icke, taking on Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar-winning surveillance thriller The Lives of Others. Keira Knightley, Stephen Dillane and Luke Thompson will lead the cast of this gripping story of love, art and state surveillance in 1980s East Berlin. Finally, who better than Richard E Grant to take on Noël Coward’s deliciously self-involved novelist David Bliss? He stars opposite Christine Baranski in a new production of Hay Fever – Coward’s gloriously caustic comedy of manners about an eccentric artistic family and their hapless weekend guests – at Wyndham’s Theatre until 12 December.

October’s best films run the gamut from offbeat comedy to dystopian sci-fi. First up, there’s Case 137, the taut police procedural from French director Dominik Moll. It follows a Paris-based internal-affairs officer whose investigation into the serious injury of a young protester unexpectedly leads her back to her hometown of Saint-Dizier. Boots Riley is back with I Love Boosters, a riotous anti-capitalist comedy about a band of audacious thieves plotting to relieve a ruthless fashion mogul of her wares. Meanwhile, Amanda Kramer’s deliciously eccentric By Design stars Juliette Lewis as a woman who swaps bodies with a chair.

The Portuguese House from Spanish filmmaker Avelina Prat is the enigmatic tale of a grieving geography professor from Barcelona who assumes another man’s identity, becoming a gardener on a remote Portuguese estate. There, an unexpected friendship opens the door to a new beginning. Be sure to catch Cotton Queen, the debut feature from Sudanese director Suzannah Mirghani. Set in a cotton-farming village in Sudan, it follows teenage Nafisa as she finds herself caught between her family’s expectations and ambitious plans for the community’s future – and begins to imagine a life on her own terms. Finally, we’re excited to see Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel Klara and the Sun. Jenna Ortega will play the titular “artificial friend”, who finds herself increasingly entangled in the lives of a troubled human family.

On the documentary front, book now for Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie by Alex Gibney. Revisiting the 2022 attack that very nearly killed the author, the film uses intimate footage shot by Rushdie’s wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, to chart his gruelling physical and emotional recovery. For another dose of Sofia Coppola’s French queen, there’s Making Marie Antoinette, directed by Coppola’s late mother, Eleanor Coppola. Cut from almost 80 hours of footage shot on set, it captures everything from the film’s lavish craftsmanship to a 34-year-old Sofia at the helm of one of her most ambitious productions to date. NAZA, by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is an urgent investigation into Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. Drawing on testimony from anonymous Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers, the film examines the systems and calculations behind air strikes that have resulted in an unthinkable number of civilian deaths.

October’s culinary openings and events are sure to work up an appetite. For a soupçon of Paris in Covent Garden, head to Cassette, the newly opened French bistrot from the team behind Peckham favourite Levan. Head chef Essa Fakhry puts a contemporary spin on classic dishes such as raw beef croustade with comté, coq au vin jaune pie or stuffed pig’s trotter, with îles flottantes or black fig clafoutis among the puddings. Drinks have a distinctly Gallic bent too: alongside an ever-changing wine list, there’s a particular fondness for calvados, served with tonic, slipped into cocktails or simply poured neat to complement your espresso.

Or for a splash of the Côte d’Azur at Hyde Park Corner, head to Le Café LPM, a new year-long residency at The Lanesborough from the team behind La Petite Maison. Set in the hotel’s glass pavilion, the café channels the Riviera in terracotta, sage green and soft coral tones, with plenty of marble and brass. The all-day menu follows suit, from tuna carpaccio and crispy squid to a decadent croque monsieur with comté and honey butter. Save room for Le Soleil de Menton – a sunny confection of lemon mousse, hazelnut sponge and citrus curd – best enjoyed with a Fig Leaf Negroni or La Pêche Fizz on the terrace.

Sushi lovers, take note: third-generation sushi master Endo Kazutoshi is opening an intimate new restaurant in a Chelsea townhouse this month. At Endo, just 10 guests will gather around a 200-year-old hinoki-wood counter for an omakase menu, pairing centuries-old Japanese traditions with the finest wild-caught British seafood. Upstairs, things take a more freewheeling turn at Moga, Endo’s new bar inspired by early 20th-century Tokyo. Tea-based cocktails come courtesy of Postcard Teas, while snacks span handmade soba, Cocido Madrileño and the welcome return of Endo’s much-loved Red Mullet Sandwich.

On 8 October, Mambow’s Abby Lee is swapping her Clapton kitchen for The Dusty Knuckle in Dalston for a one-off celebration of the home-style Nyonya cooking she grew up with. Naturally, the bakery is getting involved: Lee’s Assam Pedas oxtail curry comes wrapped in The Dusty Knuckle’s own pastry, followed by prawn, pineapple and coconut curry, braised pork belly with fermented soybean and soy caramel, and kuih dadar with kopi ice cream. Buy your tickets here.

After meeting in Berlin, Ruhi Parmar Amin and Simar Deol launched Firangi, their itinerant Indian bistro exploring the regional Punjabi and Gujarati cooking of their youth. This autumn, the duo are settling in for a three-month residency at Top Cuvée in Highbury, serving nine sharing plates that sidestep preconceived notions of Indian dining – there’s not a grain of rice in sight. Instead, tuck into jowar and lamb tartare with betel leaf and chicken skewers with corn kees and turnip achar, before rounding things off with almond financier, chai custard and torched jaggery banana.

Last but not least, former Casa Fofo duo Giuseppe “Pino” Pepe and Federico Giannuzzi are striking out on their own with Da Pino, taking over the former Bianca’s site in Stoke Newington. Pepe previously headed up the kitchen at Casa Fofo, but the pair’s shared roots lie in Puglia, and their new restaurant riffs on the generous family meals of their childhoods with a decidedly experimental spin. Think: raw scallops with peanut milk and green tomatoes, grilled rice with mussels and potatoes, and sourdough bread miso ice cream with apple and pumpkin seeds. Mangiamo!