When not featuring in our regular free exhibitions at 66 Portland Place and the Victoria and Albert Museum, the RIBA Collections are frequently on loan around the world, for major exhibitions at some of the best-known museums. Here are some of the current and forthcoming exhibitions.
To find out more about how to borrow works from our collections for an exhibition, please consult our how to borrow document (PDF). Our usual notice period is nine months.
Long-term loans
A host of models and drawings from our collections can be seen in the Architecture Gallery at the V&A, curated by the V&A+RIBA architecture partnership. You'll also find a model of Richard Seifert's Natwest Building on long-term loan in the Mathematics Gallery at the Science Museum in London, and a bust of James Wyatt on display at Auckland Castle, County Durham.
Current and upcoming exhibitions:
Tropical Modernism: Architecture and independence
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
2 March to 22 September 2024
This exhibition traces how Tropical Modernism developed in the hot, humid conditions of West Africa in the 1940s. Our collections play a substantial role in the exhibition, with 26 works loaned from our RIBA Collections.
Lost Gardens of London
Garden Museum, London
22 October 2024 to 2 March 2025
Lost Gardens of London explores the secret history of London’s lost gardens from 1600 to today; revealing forgotten green spaces from 17th century palaces to a botanical garden where Waterloo Station now stands.
Among the exhibits is a survey drawing by Robert Smythson of Northampton House from our collections, showing its ground floor plan and gardens.
Recent exhibitions:
Sam Scorer: A Life in 14 Buildings
Lincoln Museum, UK
28 October 2023 to 21 January 2024
Nine drawings from our collections were among those on display in Lincoln, where this exhibition celebrated a local architect of national significance.
For Evermore: cemeteries of the First World War
Flanders Field Museum, Ypres, Belgium
28 April 2023 to 18 February 2024
We loaned Charles Holden's draughtsman's table to this exhibition, which focused on Commonwealth, French, Belgian, German and American WWI cemeteries. Holden worked on a large number of cemeteries for the War Graves Commission, including the experimental war cemetery at Louvencourt.
Pioneers: John Ruskin, William Morris and the Bauhaus
Millenium Gallery, Sheffield, UK
19 October 2023 to 21 January 2024
This exhibition focused on the belief that design and making can improve everyday life. Among the works on display was a design drawing from our collections by Philip Webb, made for Clouds House in Wiltshire in 1884. Webb was one of William Morris' business partners and was instrumental in the birth of the Arts & Crafts movement.
Portraits of Practice: The Life and Work of M.J. Long
the Architectural Association, London, UK
13 October to 9 December 2023
This exhibition explored the work of the architect MJ Long as revealed through a doll’s house she made in the late 1970s for her young daughter, Sal. Several objects from our collections were among those on display. You can find out more about M.J. Long via our curators' blog about the archive of the practice she was a partner in, alongside Colin St John Wilson.
Raffaello: Nato Architetto
Palladio Museum, CISAAP, Vicenza, Italy
6 April to 9 July 2023
This exhibition reconsidered the famous painter, Raphael, highlighting his enormous influence as an architect. Nine drawings from our collections were among those exhibited, including a drawing by Raphael himself thought to have been owned by Andrea Palladio and, later, by Inigo Jones.
Beyond William Morris: British Arts & Crafts 1890-1920
Nanjing Museum
18 May to August 2023
Two drawings by CFA Voysey from our collections were on display in this exhibition introducing the British Arts & Crafts movement: a design for a clock case for his own house, and a design for Sanderson and Sons factory in Chiswick, London.
Norman Foster
Centre de Pompidou, Paris, France
10 May to 7 August 2023
One drawing from our collections featured in this overview of the work of Norman Foster, who has been at the forefront of the 'high tech' movement in architecture.
Architects' Houses
Sir John Soane's Museum, London, UK
7 June to 3 September 2023
Architects' own houses are a source of endless fascination, and Sir John Soane's is perhaps one of the world's most famous. Within this context, this exhibition presented the houses of Charles and Maggie Jencks, Erno Goldfinger, William Morris, Michael and Patty Hopkins and Sarah Wigglesworth and Jeremy Till. Exhibited works from the RIBA Collections included designs for the Red House and photographs and sketches of 2 Willow Road.
Fantasy to Fabrication: 19th century Design Exhibition at Mount Stuart
Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, Scotland
25 May to 30 October 2022
This exhibition celebrated the imagination, eclecticism, and creative process of acclaimed 19th century designers William Burges, Horatio Walter Lonsdale, Robert Weir Schultz, Sir Robert Lorimer and William Morris. Among spectacular examples of jewellery, furniture, watercolours, books, stained glass, silver and other metalwork was a sketchbook compiled by William Burges from the RIBA Collections.
Raphael
National Gallery, London, UK
8 April to 31 July 2022
One of the real treasures of the RIBA Collections featured in this exhibition: a drawing by the Italian High Renaissance legend Raphael, from c.1510. This drawing of the Pantheon is said to have been bought by the architect Inigo Jones while on his travels in Italy between 1613 and 1614 and has been in our collections since 1894.
The Project of Independence: Architectures of decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985
MoMA, New York, USA
20 February to 2 July 2022
In the decades that followed the Partition of 1947, newly independent India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka turned to modern architecture as a means of proclaiming autonomy, articulating national identities, and enacting social progress. Focusing on work conceived and realised by local architects, designers, and planners, this exhibition included eight drawings and an architectural model from our collections by Charles Correa.
La Fabbrica del Rinascimento
Basilica Palladiana, Vicenza, Italy
11 December 2021 to 8 May 2022
This exhibition focused on the artists' workshops of 16th century Vicenza, where painters, sculptors and architects plied their craft. Among them was Andrea Palladio, three of whose drawings from the RIBA Collections featured in the exhibition, including elevation drawings for Palazzo Portoa, Vicenza, and Church of the Redentore, Venice.
GOTH: Designing Darkness
Design Museum Den Bosch, Netherlands
16 October 2021 to 18 April 2022
Three drawings from the RIBA Collections featured in this exhibition about "the world's biggest subculture". Among them was an 1845 drawing by Charles Barry for one of the UK's best-known buildings, the Houses of Parliament, as well as two unpublished 1791 illustrations from Horace Walpole's 'The Castle of Otranto'.
Shaping Space: Architectural Models Revealed
The Building Centre, London, UK
24 September 2021 to 28 January 2022
Shaping Space presented the world in miniature; a collection of historical and contemporary models that reveal the evolution of architecture. Among them was a 1961 model for Eveline Lowe Primary School, Southwark, London, from the RIBA Collections.
Hidden Horizontal: Cornices in Art and Architecture
ETH Zürich, Switzerland
25 August to 14 November 2021
This exhibition on the cornice, one of the most ubiquitous but under-discussed architectural features, included a 1796 drawing by Joseph Michael Gandy of an entablature at the Temple of Jupiter Tonans, Rome, from the RIBA Collections.
British Baroque: Power and Illusion
Tate Britain, London, UK
February to April 2020
If you were lucky enough to catch this exhibition before it closed early due to the pandemic, you'll have glimpsed two works from the RIBA Collections among pieces by the leading artists of the day. This Tate Britain show explored the magnificence of art and architecture as an expression of status and influence during the later 17th century. From our collections, a 1600s sketch by James Thornhill for an Italian style staircase decorative scheme is on display alongside arguably the most important surviving 17th century English architectural model for a country house: Nicholas Hawksmoor's Easton Neston in Northamptonshire.
Art Deco by the Sea
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, UK
October 2020 to February 2021
Art Deco by the Sea explored how the Art Deco style shaped the modern seaside during the 1920s and 30s. Among the show's 130 exhibits were original photographs from the RIBA Collections by John Maltby, Sydney W. Newbury and Arthur George, showing iconic seafront buildings like Iles Leathart & Granger's 'Dreamland' amusement park in Margate. There was also the chance to see original drawings from the RIBA Collections for Oliver Cox's seafront hotel designs and Dalgleish & Pullen's Marine Court, St Leonards-on-Sea. The show was originally at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, before touring to Newcastle.
Curating an exhibition? Search our online catalogue to find RIBA Collections material for your show, or get in touch for information about loans.
