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Presented in partnership with Musée d’Art Classique de Mougins (MACM), The Classical Now is a major new exhibition at King’s College London. Staged across two spaces, the newly renovated Arcade of Bush House, and the Inigo Rooms in Somerset House East Wing, the exhibition features classical, modern and contemporary works. Through the pairing of modern and contemporary art with classical Greek and Roman antiquities The Classical Now explores the ways in which Graeco-Roman art has captured and permeated the modern imagination. 

Yves Klein, Blue Venus (S 41), 1962. Dry pigment and synthetic resin on plaster 69.5 × 30 × 20 cm. © Yves Klein estate, ADAGP Paris / DACS, London, 2018; Image © Musée d’Art Classique de Mougins (MACM) 2018

Alongside ancient Greek and Roman objects in marble, bronze, ceramic and mosaic, The Classical Now exhibits works by Edward Allington, Pablo Bronstein, Léo Caillard, Jean Cocteau, Michael Craig-Martin, André Derain, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Damien Hirst, Alex Israel, Derek Jarman, Yves Klein, Louise Lawler, Christopher Le Brun, Roy Lichtenstein, George Henry Longly, Ursula Mayer, Henry Moore, Bruce Nauman, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Giulio Paolini, Grayson Perry, Frances Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Marc Quinn, Mary Reid Kelley & Patrick Kelley, Sacha Sosno, Mark Wallinger and Rachel Whiteread. Paris-based artist Léo Caillard, known for dressing classical statues in contemporary attire, has also been commissioned to produce a new installation for the exhibition titled To The Friendship Between the Classical and the Contemporary, located on the Aldwych side of Bush House.

The exhibition will also incorporate Liquid Antiquity: Conversations, a video-installation featuring interviews with six contemporary artists: Matthew Barney, Paul Chan, Urs Fischer, Jeff Koons, Asad Raza and Kaari Upson. The work is commissioned by the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art and designed by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro. 

The Classical Now forms part of a larger research project on ' Modern Classicisms' in King’s College London’s Department of Classics led by Michael Squire. The exhibition is curated by Michael Squire (Reader in Classical Art at King's), James Cahill and Ruth Allen (post-doctoral fellows in the Modern Classicisms project) and is timed to coincide with the  Annual Meeting of the Association for Art History in April 2018 – Europe’s largest meeting of art historians, curators and teachers, which is co-hosted by King’s and the Courtauld Institute of Art.

The Classical Now is accompanied by a catalogue, published in February 2018. More information about the exhibition, and the research project from which it derives, can be found here.

Download the Gallery guide.

Download the  Cultural programme.

Download the Student competition brochure.

The Classical Now is presented by the Department of Classics, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and Cultural Programming at King’s College London, in partnership with the Musée d’Art Classique de Mougins (MACM).