Hockney Opera Sets Headline Tate's 2027 Lineup
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- David Hockney's 11 opera sets, designed between 1975 and 1992 for productions of Mozart, Wagner and Stravinsky, will transform Tate Modern's Turbine Hall into an immersive opera house to mark his 90th birthday in 2027
- Tate Modern's season includes its first-ever Monet show, 'Painting Time,' charting the lead-up to the Water Lilies cycle and created in collaboration with the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris
- Tate Liverpool reopens with a career-spanning show by Chila Kumari Singh Burman, who hung neons outside Tate Britain in 2020 and is a contemporary of Sonia Boyce
- Tate Britain mounts a 120-work Gainsborough exhibition marking the artist's 300th birthday and the first major Tudor art presentation in 30 years
- Tate Modern's additional landmark shows feature Baya (the Algerian artist who influenced Picasso), India's Nalini Malani, and US sculptor Lynda Benglis (latex and Day-Glo pigment), plus a Sonia Boyce retrospective — she won the Golden Lion for Britain at the 2022 Venice Biennale — and an Edvard Munch exhibition
- The season is announced as Maria Balshaw departs Tate after nine years as director; Karin Hindsbo is interim, with a permanent successor expected this summer pending prime ministerial sign-off
Why it matters: The Turbine Hall's transformation into an opera house is unprecedented, and the season lands during a leadership vacuum — Balshaw's nine-year tenure ends as a PM-approved permanent successor is still pending this summer. The programme also delivers Tate Modern's first-ever Monet retrospective and marks Tate Liverpool's long-awaited reopening with a Burman career survey.
