Sir John Soane’s Museum announces its 2024 exhibition and events programme. This will include a solo exhibition by celebrated contemporary artist Lina Iris Viktor, as well as an exhibition on the small figures and animals in architectural drawing, from the late seventeenth century Britain to their present-day incarnations, Fanciful Figures.
The winners and shortlisted entries of The Architecture Drawing Prize will be exhibited at the Museum from late January. Later in the year, the recipient of the seventh Soane Medal will be revealed, an annual prize celebrating the impact of a leading voice in contemporary architecture. Recent winners include Lacaton and Vassal, Peter Barber and Marina Tabassum.
In January 2024, Will Gompertz will take up his position as Director of the Soane Museum. Announced in August 2023, Will succeeds Dr Bruce Boucher, the Deborah Loeb Brice Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum, who retires at the end of 2023 after nearly eight years leading the Museum through a period of great success.
The Soane Museum’s current exhibition, Georgian Illuminations, will remain open until 7 January 2024. This includes the light installation by Nayan Kulkarni, A Drawing for John Soane, which illuminates the façade of the Soane Museum each evening from dusk.
The Architecture Drawing Prize
31 January – 3 March
Gall-E.jpg
Tom Chan, Gall-E: Interpolating Art, Space and Display in the Age of AI, 2023
Currently in its 7th year, The Architecture Drawing Prize continues to celebrate the art of drawing in three categories: hand-drawn, digital and hybrid. Sponsored by Iris Ceramica Group, the Prize has attracted a record number of entries with nearly 250 drawings from around the world. As in previous years, the majority of these are in the hand-drawn category.
The winning drawings were displayed at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore (29 November – 1 December, 2023), and both the winning and shortlisted drawings will be exhibited at Sir John Soane’s Museum from 31 January to 3 March, 2024. The Overall Winner of The Architecture Drawing Prize will be announced ahead of the exhibition as part of a webinar hosted by Sir John Soane’s Museum on January 29th at 5pm GMT.
Fanciful Figures
20 March – 2 June
Pitzhanger.jpg
J.M Gandy and B.A. van Assen, Design for the exterior of Pitzhanger Manor, 1801 © Sir John Soane’s Museum, London
Fanciful Figures turns visitors’ attention to ‘staffage’, the small human and animal figures in architectural drawings, which first appeared in the late seventeenth century in Britain. They lend a sense of scale, depth, animation and embellishment to the composition. Often holding an object, or accompanied by an animal, staffage figures provide a playful, sometimes whimsical window into contemporary life. They are typically strategically arranged, perhaps to indicate the central feature of a composition, or to offer a pleasing note of contrasting colour. The exhibition will explore their historical significance, as well showcasing work by architectural practices leading the field in the area of staffage today.
Lina Iris Viktor: Mythic Time / Tens of Thousands of Rememberings
10 July 2024 – 19 January 2025
Constellations VII.jpg
Lina Iris Viktor, Constellations VII, 2018-19, courtesy of the artist, Salon 94 and Pilar Corrias
Sir John Soane’s Museum is delighted to announce Mythic Time / Tens of Thousands of Rememberings, a collaborative exhibition between artist Lina Iris Viktor and the Museum, which will be on view for the second half of 2024. Lina Iris Viktor is a Liberian-British multimedia artist whose practice interweaves disparate techniques, including sculpture, painting, photography and water-gilding, typically using materials such as gold, marble, and volcanic rock. Viktor’s new group of sculptures, made in response to the Museum, will be viewed across its spaces in dialogue with Soane’s own collections of ancient and modern sculpture. Paintings and works on paper will reveal the ways in which Viktor, like Soane, brings together fragments from multiple periods and cultures, from ancient Egypt to medieval illumination and indigenous Australian art. Works from Viktor’s Constellations series featuring intricate golden ‘labyrinths’ will form a contemporary counterpoint to Soane’s own labyrinthine spaces and his trademark use of symbolic golden light.
Georgian Illuminations (Ongoing)
Until 7 January 2024
Concord.jpg
Unknown Artist, A View of the Temple of Concord, created in the Green Park, to celebrate the glorious Peace of 1814, hand-coloured etching, 1814, Collection of Melanie Doderer-Winkler
Georgian Illuminations explores the spectacular light shows of the Georgian era through surviving designs, drawings and prints. At the height of the Georgian period, these complex light displays, created using glass lamps, temporary architecture, fireworks and transparencies, were an important form of popular entertainment. This exhibition examines Sir John Soane’s involvement in designing these installations and how they were experienced by people from across society. As part of this exhibition, a new contemporary commission by artist Nayan Kulkarni, inspired by Soane’s architecture and skilful use of light, illuminates the front of the Museum on Lincoln’s Inn Fields each evening.
