Kerry James Marshall: The Histories at Royal Academy of Arts,London
Main Galleries
20 September 2025 – 18 January 2026
Media Release posted 14 October,2025
Supported by-The Kerry James Marshall Supporters Circle
The Royal Academy of Arts presents the largest survey of celebrated American artist and Honorary Royal Academician Kerry James Marshall ever to be shown in Europe. Marking the artist’s 70th birthday, this major solo exhibition explores Marshall’s expansive career to date.
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories features over 70 works, bringing together primarily paintings, as well as examples of the artist’s prints, drawings and sculpture, from museums and private collections across North America and Europe. The exhibition is the first institutional presentation of the artist’s work in the UK since 2006 and includes a dramatic new series of paintings made especially for the show.
Revered as one of the most influential contemporary history painters working today, Marshall’s powerful, large-scale paintings address themes including the Middle Passage and the legacies of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements; portray individuals such as Olaudah Equiano andHarriet Tubman; and create monumental scenes depicting contemporary Black life, elevating the everyday to the epic. He centres Black figures in paintings built on principles codified in the tradition of Western picture making, which he encountered in books and museums available during his childhood. Marshall’s work is informed by art history, contemporary culture, Afrofuturism, and science fiction. He engages hard questions about the past, celebrates ordinary life, and imagines a more optimistic future.
Kerry James Marshall
De Style, 1993
Marshall works in series and cycles, as reflected in the exhibition’s thematic arrangement, which showcases 11 groups of works made between 1980 and the present. The exhibition opens with works from the 2000s and 2010s, highlighting Marshall’s long interest in the disciplines of art taught in institutions such as the Royal Academy. The centrepiece of the opening room is The Academy,
2012 (Private Collection) in which the male model in a life class strikes the classic Black Power salute pose with raised fist. The second room looks at Marshall’s earliest mature works from the 1980s, including A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self, 1980 (Los Angeles County
Museum of Arts, Los Angeles) and Invisible Man, 1986 (Private Collection). This section establishes Marshall’s concern with depicting Black figures, while also provoking questions about representation in art history and who and what has been excluded.
Kerry James Marshall, Knowledge and Wonder, 1995. Oil on canvas, 294.6 x 698.5 cm. City of Chicago Public Art Program and the Chicago Public Library, Legler Regional Library © Kerry JamesMarshall. Photo: Patrick L. Pyszka, City of Chicago
The two largest galleries are devoted to Marshall’s ambitiously composed, large-format paintings that record scenes of everyday life in Black America. Deeply influenced by artists such as Edouard Manet, Gustave Caillebotte, Georges Seurat and other painters of modern life, and conscious of the absence of large-scale images of daily life in the work of many Black artists before him, Marshall depicts Black families picnicking in the park, lovers dancing, children playing in communal gardens, and friends hanging out in hair salons, for example in School of Beauty, School of Culture, 2012 (Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham (AL)). At the centre of this room hangs the vast Knowledge and Wonder, 1995 (Legler Regional Library, Chicago Public Library, Chicago), Marshall’s largest painting to date, exhibited for the first time outside of Chicago.
The exhibition continues with works addressing the history of the Middle Passage (e.g. Great America, 1994 (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC)) and the Civil Rights movement (e.g. the Souvenir, 1997-8 and Vignette, 2003 – 2014, series). A section bringing together imagined portraits of historically significant Black figures such as Scipio Moorhead and Harriet Tubman, question how historical portraits can be created in the absence of archives and earlier representations of individuals. On display in the final galleries is Wake, 2003 – ongoing (Rennie Collection, Vancouver), an accumulative sculpture which is decorated with new additions each time it is exhibited. The exhibition culminates with a new, never seen before body of work. These eight paintings explore episodes in African history and the transatlantic slave trade, particularly the active role African slave traders played in enslavement.
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories follows in the RA’s tradition of celebrating its Royal Academicians and Honorary Royal Academicians, continuing a strand of programming that has showcased some of the most important living artists including Marina Abramović, William Kentridge, Antony Gormley, Ai Weiwei, Anselm Kiefer and Anish Kapoor. Marshall was elected as an Honorary Royal Academician in 2022.
Kerry James Marshall Hon RA Biography
Organisation
The exhibition is organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London in collaboration with the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris and in close collaboration with the artist. It is curated by Mark Godfrey, independent art historian, critic and curator with Adrian Locke, Chief Curator of the Royal Academy of Arts, and Rose Thompson, Assistant Curator of the Royal Academy of Arts and Nikita Sena Quarshie, Curatorial Researcher.
With additional support from
Rennie Collection
Jake and Hélène Marie Shafran and The Magic Trust
Alireza Abrishamchi
Accompanying Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with texts by the artist, critic and curator Aria Dean; Darby English, Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago; the independent art historian, critic and curator Mark Godfrey; Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Cathérine Hug, Curator of Twentieth-century Art at Kunsthaus Zürich; Nikita Sena Quarshie, Curatorial Researcher; and Rebecca Zorach, Mary Jane Crowe Professor in Art and Art History at Northwestern University, Evanston. The catalogue will also include an interview between Kerry James Marshall and art historian Benjamin H. D. Buchloh.
Dates and Opening Hours
Press view: Dates: Tuesday 16 September 2025, 10am-1pm
Saturday 20 September 2025 – Sunday 18 January 2026
10am – 6pm Tuesday to Sunday
10am – 9pm Friday
Admission
From £23; concessions available; under 16s go free (T&Cs apply); Friends of the RA go free.
25 & Under: 16 to 25 year olds can access a half-price ticket (T&Cs apply).
Tickets
Advance booking with pre-booked timed tickets is recommended for everyone, including Friends of the RA.
Tickets can be booked in advance online (royalacademy.org.uk) or over the phone (0207300 8090).
BNP Paribas AccessArt25
Following on from previous successful programmes around Michael Craig-Martin, Marina Abramović, Making Modernism and Antony Gormley, the BNP Paribas AccessArt25 programme will offer a day of specially curated activities and workshops, as well as free access to the exhibition, for up to 2,000 young people, aged 16 to 25, in the autumn. This programme will allow participants to gain a deeper understanding of Kerry James Marshall’s practice, provide opportunities for discussion, and encourage creative responses to the exhibition.
Kerry James Marshall: Conversations
13 November 2025 10am – 6pm, 14 November 2025 10am – 6pm
The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre | Burlington Gardens
As part of the RA’s public programme of events around the exhibition, internationally renowned artists, academics, art historians, and curators, will convene for two-days of dialogue on the themes,influences and histories that shape Kerry James Marshall’s groundbreaking practice. Delving into subjects such as the history of painting, the significance of film and literature in his work, the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, and the histories of Black nationalism and activism, this series of wide-ranging conversations will serve as a point of entry into Marshall’s art and thought.
This event is organised in partnership with Getty and Black Curatorial
BNP Paribas
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Social Media
Join the discussion about the exhibition online at:
Facebook /royalacademy
Instagram @royalacademyarts
Threads @royalacademyarts
About the Royal Academy of Arts
The Royal Academy of Arts was founded by King George III in 1768. It has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to be a clear, strong voice for art and artists. Its public programme promotes the creation, enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts through exhibitions, education and debate.The Royal Academy is an independent charity. It does not receive revenue funding from the government so is reliant upon the support of its visitors, donors, sponsors, patrons and loyal Friends.
For public information, please print: 020 7300 8090 or
Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD
