June’s must-see exhibitions: copycats, queer resistance, and the intersection of art and fashion

Just as the art world winds down from the highs and lows of Frieze New York, it is preparing itself for a summer in Basel with a slew of new museum and gallery exhibitions. Read on for the upcoming June shows that are not to be missed.

Copyists, Musée du Louvre, Paris

14 June-2 February 2026

Contemporary artists have been copying Old Master works as a way of artistic training for centuries. Copyists puts their efforts on show. Redefining what it means to copy, over 100 artists have responded to this exhibition’s brief in their own “diabolical” way: from standard copies like Yan Pei-Ming’s greyscale take on Rembrandt’s Bathsheba at Her Bath, to Théo Casciani’s digital re-make of the Louvre’s own Salle des Caryatides. More

Queer Lens: A History of Photography, the Getty Center, Los Angeles

17 June-20 October

This double-feature of exhibitions on queer culture will be on show at the Getty Center in LA starting this June, coinciding with Pride Month. Queer Lens: A History of Photography will explore how photography’s advent allowed for the proliferation of homosexual and homosocial imagery in American culture. The exhibition features works from the nineteenth and twentieth century, including an 1848 daguerreotype entitled Two Women Embracing, and will “show how queer people have used the camera not just as artists, but as documentarians of their own lives” according to curator Paul Martineau. $3 Bill: Evidence of Queer Lives, a companion show at the Getty Research Institute, will focus on pamphlets, posters, letters and other fragile records of queer resistance and community-building from the Merrill C. Berman Collection. More

Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris

25 June-11 January 2026

“Am I a fool when I dream of putting art into my dresses, a fool when I say dressmaking is an art?” Paul Poiret wrote in his 1931 memoir. Fashion is a Feast explores how the self-proclaimed early 20th century “King of Fashion” introduced fashion to Fauvism. Poiret not only acquired art by contemporaries and friends including Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger, but his collaborations with artists such as Raoul Dufy brought key art world figures into the folds of couture culture. The exhibition highlights the museum’s collection of Poiret from the Belle Époque to the 1920s, and tracks the designer from his beginnings at the House of Worth to his lingering influence on the art and fashion worlds. More

Edward Burra, Tate Britain, London

12 June-19 October

Quasi-surrealist painter Edward Burra will be on display opposite Ithell Colquhoun in a double-exhibition travelling from Cornwall to London this summer. Arranged chronologically, this Tate exhibition presents more than 80 paintings and archival materials spanning the artist’s career from the 1920s to the 1970s. On display for the first time in London will be Burra’s newly discovered letters that promise to unfurl his inner world from his own “Tinkerbell Towne” in East Sussex to Harlem, New York. The paintings are “infused with the rhythmic beat of his music”, says curator Thomas Kennedy, and songs from Burra’s vast record collection will be played in the exhibition. More

Anna-Eva Bergman & Hans Hartung: And We’ll Never Be Parted, Kunsthalle Praha, Prague

5 June-13 October

The youthful infatuation, creative partnership, break-up and Burton-Taylor-esque reunion of Anna-Eva Bergman and Hans Hartung is one of the untold love stories of the 20th-century avant-garde. Exploring the on-and-off artistic and romantic partnership between these two mathematically-inspired artists, this exhibition aims to bring Bergman’s long-overlooked contributions to light. This will be the first major museum show to place these two artists in dialogue, featuring paintings from across their careers, as well as sketches, archival material, and mutual gifts. More