Tate Modern Turbine Hall displays David Hockney’s opera sets | Tate Modern

Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall will be transformed into an immersive opera house hosting an exhibition featuring David Hockney’s sets for productions of works by Mozart, Wagner and Stravinsky dating back to the 1970s.

Timothée Chalamet may consider the art form archaic, but the Tate will use the collections as the centerpiece of its celebration of Hockney’s 90th birthday in 2027.

Known for his landscapes and portraits, Hockney worked on several opera sets dating back to his time in London before moving to Los Angeles.

After experience designing at the Royal Court for Alfred Jarry’s production of Obu Roy, Hockney went on to design other works, including Richard Strauss’s fantasy opera. Die Frau ohne Schatten – The Woman Without Shadow – which embraced the aesthetic of popular art.

He produced 11 operas over 17 years, starting in 1975.

When asked why he decided to start working on website designs, his answer was distinctly matter-of-fact. “I wanted to design opera because I want to have something to look at,” he said.

The rest of the Tate 2027 program includes a retrospective by Sonia Boyce, who won Britain’s Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2022, and a show by Edvard Munch. Tate Liverpool will reopen with a career-spanning show by Sheela Kumari Singh Burman, a contemporary of Beuys who hung neon lights outside Tate Britain in 2020.

There’s also the first-ever Monet show at Tate Modern, called Painting Time, which focuses on the artist’s “obsession with capturing the moment,” according to the exhibition’s curator, Catherine Wood.

The exhibition charts the lead-up to the artist’s famous Water Lilies cycle, spanning 30 years from the 1890s – when he was suffering from cataracts but was still painting in his garden in Normandy – until his death in 1926, aged 86.

“What comes through is how embodied he is and how immersed he is in planting the garden and then capturing it,” she said. “Even though he became blind, he still tried to draw.”

Created in collaboration with the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris and using loans from individual and institutional collections, the show will be a fitting way to revisit Monet, whose paintings were paired with a piece by Richard Long when the Tate Modern gallery opened in 2000, Wood said.

Other highlights of the season at Tate Britain include the Gainsborough exhibition featuring 120 works to mark the 300th anniversary of the artist’s birth, and the first major show of Tudor art in 30 years.

At Tate Modern there are prominent shows by Baya, the Algerian artist who influenced Picasso, the Indian Nalini Malani, and the American sculptor Linda Benglis, who used latex and Day-Glo dye in her works.

The announcement of the upcoming season comes in the same month that Maria Balshaw leaves Tate after nine years in charge of an institution in transition.

Karen Hindspaugh will be in charge during the appointment of the next director. Balshaw’s permanent successor is expected to be announced this summer, an appointment that requires the Prime Minister’s signature.

“This is an exhibition program that only the Tate can deliver,” said Hindspaugh. “It spans the centuries, from the 16th century to the present day, and covers the globe, from Europe to Asia, Africa and America.”

“More importantly, the program reflects a deep appreciation for the artists themselves. All of these exhibitions showcase the different ways artists think and work, and their unique ability to inspire and move us.”