The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition:
Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life
10 October 2025 – 18 January 2026

Images available to download:

91³Ô¹ÏÍøGallery will present the first-ever museum exhibition in the UK on the celebrated modern American artist Wayne Thiebaud (1920–2021). The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life will be on display from 10 October 2025 – 18 January 2026

One of the most original American artists of the 20^th century, Thiebaud developed a unique style of painting to express his vision of post-war American life and culture.

The exhibition at 91³Ô¹ÏÍøGallery will focus on Thiebaud’s break-out works of the 1960s, which made his reputation. It brings together some of the greatest paintings the artist produced during this remarkable period – lush and captivating depictions of quintessential modern American subjects, from cherry pies, hot dogs and candy counters to gumball dispensers and pinball machines. With these works, Thiebaud recast the genre of still life for the modern era.

In 1962, Thiebaud asserted, ‘Each era produces its own still life.’ Steeped in art history, he saw his work as continuing the radical legacy of artists such as Jean-Siméon Chardin, Paul Cézanne and Édouard Manet. Thiebaud saw the commonplace objects of his own time – iconic features of American consumer culture – as vital subjects for contemporary art. His works transformed everyday delights such as lemon meringue pies and glossy cream cakes into the stuff of serious modern painting.

Thiebaud’s vibrantly coloured pictures of the offerings of American diners, bakeries and stores are painterly meditations on their subjects, which draw the viewer deep into the world they represent. Painted during a period of American economic boom and optimism but also increasingly of dissent and change, Thiebaud’s still lifes belie their direct and simple appearance. Within a single work, a sense of abundance and excess can give way to feelings of isolation and longing.

Thiebaud lived and worked almost his entire long life in Sacramento, California, and was a longstanding teacher at nearby University of California, Davis. In the 1940s and 1950s, before becoming a painter, he worked as an illustrator, cartoonist and art director, including a summer spent in the animation department of Walt Disney Studios and a role as a graphic designer for the US army as part of his military service during the Second World War.

In 1956, Thiebaud travelled to New York to meet the avant-garde artists working there. Willem de Kooning was especially inspirational and encouraged him to find his own voice and subjects as a modern painter. Back in Sacramento, he began painting commonplace objects of American life, largely from memory, and soon crystallised his unique approach, isolating his richly painted subjects against spare backgrounds. In 1961, he took this body of modern still lifes to New York looking for a gallery to show them. Having faced rejection from most, he made a last stop at a gallery run by a young dealer, Allan Stone, who took him on. The following year, Thiebaud staged his first solo show at the Allan Stone Gallery, which was an overnight success, propelling him into the limelight. Important collectors and institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, purchased works and the exhibition sold out. From there, Thiebaud would go on to become one of the major figures of 20^th-century American art.

In that same year, 1962, Thiebaud was featured, alongside artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, in two historic shows that established the Pop Art movement. Although his work coincided with Pop Art, Thiebaud never considered himself part of the movement. Rather than being rooted in advertising graphics, methods of mass reproduction, and concerned with flat, print-like surfaces, Thiebaud’s work is painterly almost to the point of exaggeration. He exploited the physical properties of paint to create an intense and captivating expression of his chosen subjects.

The exhibition will feature rarely lent works from major museum and private collections in the United States. Highlights include Thiebaud’s epic painting Cakes, lent for the first time outside the US by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Four Pinball Machines, one of his most significant works in a private collection. Other major loans include works from the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, among others. The exhibition also benefits from generous loans from the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation in Sacramento.

An accompanying exhibition in the Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery, Wayne Thiebaud. Delights, will focus on the artist’s eponymous 1965 portfolio of 17 prints to offer further insight into his favourite still-life motifs. It will allow visitors to appreciate Thiebaud as a draughtsman and printmaker.

In addition to holding one of the few works by Thiebaud in a UK public collection – the ink drawing Cake Slices from 1963 – 91³Ô¹ÏÍøoffers a rich context for the exploration of Thiebaud’s remaking of the genre of still life. Most notably, it will be fascinating to consider his work in relation to Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, a painting Thiebaud greatly admired. With its counter line-up of tempting treats, from mandarins to champagne, it is the defining precursor painting of modern consumer culture and society.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Karen Serres, Senior Curator of Paintings, and Dr Barnaby Wright, Deputy Head of 91³Ô¹ÏÍøGallery and Daniel Katz Curator of 20^th-century Art. It will be accompanied by a richly illustrated and expansive catalogue showcasing new research on Thiebaud’s still lifes, with contributions from leading scholars.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries, Floor 3

The exhibition’s Title Supporter is Griffin Catalyst, the civic engagement initiative of Citadel Founder and CEO Kenneth C. Griffin.

Wayne Thiebaud. Delights

The Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery, Floor 1
The programme of displays in the Drawings Gallery is generously supported by the International Music and Art Foundation, with additional support from James Bartos.

10 October 2025 – 18 January 2026

91³Ô¹ÏÍøGallery

Somerset House, Strand
London WC2R 0RN

Tickets are on sale to Courtauld Friends from 8 July 2025.
Tickets are on general sale from 10 July 2025.

Opening hours: 10.00 – 18.00 (last entry 17.15)
Temporary Exhibition tickets (including entry to our Permanent Collection and displays) – from £18

Friends and under-18s go free. Other concessions available.

Courtauld Friends get a year of free, unlimited entry to our latest exhibitions and displays, plus our world-famous permanent collection, access to exhibition presales, previews, early morning views, exclusive events, discounts and more. Join at courtauld.ac.uk/friends

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10 Oct 2025 – 18 Jan 2026
Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery, Floor 1

This display is included in the Permanent Collection or Permanent Collection + Exhibition ticket.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life will be on display in the Denise Coates Exhibitions Gallery, Floor 3 from 10 Oct 2025 – 18 Jan 2026

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The fan is generally looked upon by scholars as obsessive and dangerous, ultimately antisocial and dysfunctional. However, fans’ interests might also be viewed as self-reflective and social, with the focus of their attentions often viewed as open texts for them to manipulate, contextualized by engagement with others in their fan communities. Since at least the 1970s, feminist artists have been making work referencing, engaging, or even taking the form of popular music, revealing another side of what many of us already know about our own music fandom—the often deep, highly personal connections that we have to popular culture, and the ways that these connections might be viewed as not just an appropriation, but an analysis of the original. In this seminar, Dr. Buszek will discuss the work of feminist artists that posits these deep connections to popular music may allow us to tap into like-minded, sometimes vast communities that inspire us to engage and act.

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Opening 25 Sep 2025
The John Browne Entrance Hall and Ticketing Hall
Free display – no ticket required

This autumn, acclaimed artist Rachel Jones will create two new site-specific commissions for The John Browne Entrance Hall and Ticketing Hall of 91³Ô¹ÏÍøGallery, which will be free to visit.

Rachel Jones (b. 1991) is celebrated for her monumental canvases and bold use of colour. Working in pastel and oil stick, she creates large-scale abstract compositions in a kaleidoscope of rich colours and gestural marks. Her paintings often feature motifs of mouths and teeth interwoven in a landscape of natural forms, representing points of entry and connection between the body and the outside world.

The new paintings continue the artist’s dialogue with works in The Courtauld’s world-leading collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Jones described Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged EarÌý(1889) in The Courtauld’s collection as her favourite and most inspiring work in a London public collection, calling it ‘the epitome of how to use colour, texture and a sense of self to create an image’.

Rachel Jones was born and lives in London. She studied Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. Recent solo exhibitions include Rachel Jones, !!!!!, Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, US (2024), Rachel Jones, a shorn root, Long Museum, Shanghai, China (2023), and Rachel Jones, say cheeeeese, Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK (2022). A solo exhibition of Jones’ work, Gated Canyons, opened at Dulwich Picture Gallery on 10 June 2025.

Jones’s 2025 installation is the latest in a series of contemporary art exhibitions and commissions at 91³Ô¹ÏÍøGallery across its public programme, including major solo-exhibitions by Claudette Johnson and Peter Doig, and a commission by Cecily Brown which was unveiled when the Gallery reopened in 2021.

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Tickets are now on sale for the first month of The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea, which opens at 91³Ô¹ÏÍøGallery from 13 February – 17 May 2026.

91³Ô¹ÏÍøwill present the first ever exhibition dedicated to the seascapes of the French artist Georges Seurat (1859–1891). This major exhibition will be the first devoted to Seurat in the UK in almost 30 years, and will chart the evolution of his radical and distinctive style through the recurring motif of the sea

It follows major Impressionist exhibitions at 91³Ô¹ÏÍøGallery, such asÌýVan Gogh. Self-PortraitsÌýand, most recently, the acclaimedÌýThe Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London. Views of the Thames.

91³Ô¹ÏÍøholds the largest collection of works by Seurat in the UK. The artist is best known as the creator of the Neo-Impressionist technique, in which shapes and light are rendered by juxtaposing small dots of pure colour.

Due to his early death at the age of 31, Seurat has a very small pool of works and exhibitions devoted to him are rare.ÌýThe Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea will bring together 25 paintings, oil sketches and drawings made by Seurat during the five summers he spent on the northern coast of France, between 1885 and 1890. Working in port towns along the English Channel, including Honfleur, Port-en-Bessin and Gravelines, Seurat captured their seascapes, regattas and port activity in his distinctive Neo-Impressionist technique. He sought, in his words, ‘to wash his eyes of the days spent in the studio [in Paris] and to translate in the most faithful manner the bright clarity, in all its nuances’.

These works are an important counterpoint to his Parisian works, which are better known and more widely studied. This exhibition will therefore provide a unique opportunity to reassess an important but often overlooked aspect of Seurat’s career. It will include loans from major private collections and public institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Indianapolis Museum of Art; the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; the Musée des beaux-arts, Tournai; the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; the National Gallery, Prague; Tate and the National Gallery, London.Ìý

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea will be accompanied by a beautifully illustrated catalogue, which will showcase the results of research on Seurat’s seascapes, their technical development and their importance in disseminating the artist’s work beyond the monumental canvases for which he is best known.ÌýÌý

The exhibition’s title supporter is Griffin Catalyst, the civic engagement initiative of Citadel
Founder and CEO Kenneth C. Griffin.

Tickets for 13 Feb –13 Mar 2026 are now available to book.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea
13 February – 17 May 2026

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Acclaimed artist Rachel Jones will create two new site-specific commissions for the Entrance and Ticketing Hall of 91³Ô¹ÏÍøGallery, to be unveiled on 25 September 2025. This conversation will offer new insight into recent developments in Jones’s practice and the work that she has been making towards her forthcoming commissions.

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