It has been a while — too long — since Tate Modern’s exhibition plans have felt as uplifting as they do for 2026. A few loudly belted-out hurrahs are definitely in order.
“The world’s leading gallery of contemporary art” has been in a rut in recent years. The preachy and the dull have recurrently been favoured over the spiky and the exciting. That rebellious spirit of old has seeped out like the sagging of a Christmas balloon. Visitor numbers have fallen. The noisy buzz that used to surround new shows has become a dreary drone. It needed to change. And it looks as if it has.
The events I look forward to most are all by female artists. In truth, distaff shows have become a Tate Modern speciality, but too many of them have felt as if their main ambition was to collect societal brownie points rather than to fire, stir and punch through. No one can say that of the forthcoming clutch.
Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird by Frida Kahlo, 1940
NICKOLAS MURAY COLLECTION OF MEXICAN ART/HARRY RANSOM CENTER
In June we will be treated to Frida: The Making of an Icon, an ambitious look at the career and impact of “La mujer mas peligrosa de Mexico” — the most dangerous woman in Mexico. Frida Kahlo, who died in 1954, will need no introduction to anyone with the tiniest interest in art. With the force of a runaway train, she has transformed herself from a bit player in the story of Mexican art to the most beloved and admired female artist of all.
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You used to see her face here and there. Now’s she’s everywhere, on posters, tote bags, tattoos, a universal symbol of female fieriness who has even shoved Che Guevara off the top of the revolutionary Latin American hero list. In November a painting by Kahlo made almost $55 million at Sotheby’s in New York, becoming the priciest artwork by a woman yet sold at auction.
Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama)
GUY BELL/ALAMY LIVE NEWS
But while all this furious myth-making has been expanding, the understanding of her work as an artist has diminished. The Frida image is so pungent it has overwhelmed her real achievements. On the podcast I do with the art historian Bendor Grosvenor, we voted Salma Hayek’s absurdly flouncy portrayal in the disastrous Frida “the worst biopic about an artist ever made”, quite an achievement for a genre packed with contenders.
These wrongs are due to be righted by Tate Modern’s return to the subject (it did a rousing Kahlo show in 2005). It promises us 130 of her works, including most of her best-known paintings, and probably the little-seen biggie sold by Sotheby’s, although that is not yet certain.
As always with Kahlo, it’s the self-portraiture we look forward to most. In her extraordinary journeys into an imagined self, surrounded by parrots, monkeys and indigenous blossoms, she sought to embed herself spiritually and immovably in the history of her nation. But she ended up rhyming powerfully with a beat that pulses through every woman.
The Kahlo show is excellent news. Yet almost beating it for excitement is the prospect of Tracey Emin’s overdue arrival at Bankside with her own mega-display, due to open in February, in an exhibition entitled A Second Life.
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At some point in the future, art historians sieving through the details of Emin’s groundbreaking career will no doubt be able to discern a plethora of subtle shifts and nuances in her journey. But we are still too close for that, and from our vantage point see only two halves: Emin the delinquent YBA who banged on endlessly about her sex life and her abortions, and Emin the national treasure who returned to painting, survived cancer, opened an art school in Margate and was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2024 birthday honours list. Quite a turnaround.
I followed you to the end by Tracey Emin, 2024
OLLIE HARROP/YALE CENTRE FOR BRITISH ART. © TRACEY EMIN
But as with Kahlo, the pungent societal presence of Emin Mk 2 has tended to obscure her true artistic achievements, and it is here that the Tate show can be revelatory. While her foreground antics have claimed much of our attention, she has also been beavering away in the background, rearranging the DNA of her art, turning herself into an artist who may well be Britain’s greatest figure painter. Certainly she’s up there. I can’t wait to see the proof.
As if that were not enough already on the women’s-shows-to-watch front at Tate Modern, 2026 will also bring us a survey devoted to the pioneering Ana Mendieta, the Cuban artist who, were it not for Kahlo, would surely be ranked the most influential female artist to emerge from the world’s most fiery stretch in the 20th century. With her startling performances and eye-catching body art, Mendieta inspired a generation of female artists to climb out of their clothes and into deeper, more ancient identities.
Imágen de Yágul by Ana Mendieta, 1973
© THE ESTATE OF ANA MENDIETA COLLECTION, LLC. LICENSED BY DACS
Her tragedy was to die wickedly early, aged 36, in controversial circumstances that involved a fall from the 34th-floor apartment she shared with the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre in 1985. The blowback from that awful death has overshadowed her artistic achievements — another wrong to be righted.
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So it’s three women in and one woman out at the Tate, with the news that the uber-director, Maria Balshaw, is to leave in the spring after nine years at the helm of the enormous Tate franchise. At Tate Modern, Balshaw has, alas, presided over a period of decline. Covid was responded to weakly. Visitor numbers declined. Exhibition impact has lessened. Most important, there has been a tangible slump in excitement during her reign.
As the curator of the Emin exhibition she is, at least, going out with a bang. The hunt has already begun for her successor and Mystic Waldy predicts that the chap to keep an eye on is Tim Marlow, the director of the Design Museum in London. He has electrified the exhibition schedule there, knows the contemporary art world inside out and seems tailor-made for the challenge.
Frida: The Making of an Icon, Jun 25-Jan 3, 2027; Tracey Emin: A Second Life, Feb 27-Aug 31; Ana Mendieta, Jul 15-Jan 17, 2027