Six must-see summer art installations

Art in the open in Dulwich

The ambitious Open Art project at Dulwich Picture Gallery has been years in the making – and the fundraising. This summer sees them hit 80 per cent of their £5mn target, accompanied by some major forward motion in the form of site specific works by Yinka Shonibare and Li Li Ren, which join existing works by Peter Randall-Page and Rob and Nick Carter.

The concept for Shonibare’s Material (SG) IV draws on his earlier Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, a work commissioned in 2009 by the Greater London Authority that was displayed on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth (it now lives at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich). Its sails inspired the dynamism of the four-metre sculpture, extravagantly covered with the African (or “Dutch”) wax batik motifs for which the British-Nigerian artist is known. Ren’s To Find a Way Home is a more interactive work, consisting of five patinated bronze and glass pieces evoking corals and the sea life that thrives among them. Both are part of Open Art’s goal to turn the Gallery’s three acres of outdoor space into one of London’s most dynamic and appealing public sculpture gardens.

Stay: The NoMad is in the heart of Covent Garden, in the old Bow Street Magistrates Court – which puts it in striking distance of just about everywher’e else you’ll want to be, from theatres to galleries to shopping. The Library, for drinks and small plates, is cosiness made manifest, and open only to hotel guests and their visitors. thenomadhotel.com, from £395

Bourgeois and Doig take Rome

Louise Bourgeois first visited Rome in 1967, and fell hard. Now the city is showing her the love back: in its first-ever exhibition dedicated to a female contemporary artist, the Galleria Borghese last month inaugurated Unconscious Memories, which puts 20 of her works into conversation with its own permanent collection, some of which is more than four centuries old. The curation has created striking, sometimes restive encounters between the outsized surrealist rawness of her work and the glossy, staid formality of Canova, Bernini, Nicolas Cordier and far older Roman sculpture.

Across town, deep in the Santa Cecilia section of Trastevere, Gavin Brown’s Sant’Andrea de Scaphis art space, housed in the tiny 8th-century church of the same name, is currently showing a single work on canvas by Peter Doig. A lot is happening in this lone painting, which strangely chimes seamlessly with the pitted walls, dim amber light and general crumbling splendour of the church’s interior. It’s much smaller than the Bourgeois show, but the theme and the effect – old and new, contrasting but coexisting – are the same.

Stay: the Hotel De’ Ricci has much to recommend it: a mint location off the Via Giulia that’s an easy walk to Trastevere; just eight suites, for whose decoration the owners enlisted Andrea Ferolla and Daria Reina, local creative directors (and owners of cult-favourite concept store, Chez Dede); a neat velvet-lined pocket bar, Charade; and a wine cellar boasting 10,000 bottles. hoteldericci.com, from €454

Exploring time, tides and history on Leros in Greece

“All Things Become Islands Before My Senses”: it’s a well-known line from Passion for Solitude, by the Italian poet Cesare Pavese. It’s also the name of an intriguing group exhibition that has been installed across six historic locations on the Dodecanese island of Leros this summer by the Istanbul-based Perasma art collective. The show juxtaposes the tensions and questions of time passing with Leros’s occasionally turbulent history – namely the early-20th-century Italian occupation that shaped in part its built environment, from art deco façades to rationalist architecture and hilltop fortresses. There are new and existing works on display by 17 artists, and among them some very recognisable names, including William Kentridge and Enzo Cucchi. It’s a great excuse to book a last-minute escape; alternatively it’s an easy half-day excursion, via ferry, from any number of neighbouring islands (including Patmos, less than 25km away) or Bodrum on the Turkish mainland.

Stay: Villa Clara’s Lebanese-American owner, Marie-Hélène Moawad, brought her gorgeous Beirut maison d’hôtes concept to Leros’s Agia Marina port in 2018. Its seven rooms are colourful, sweetly simple and very chic, with high ceilings and tall French doors, and worth a trip for their charms. villaclara.fr, from €500

Yinka Ilori lights it up in Chicago

Art on the Mart is a Chicago pride and joy, one of the largest permanent digital art installations in the world, mapping original works across the entire two-and-a-half acres of the façade of The Mart – itself the largest privately held commercial building in the US, on the city’s iconic Riverwalk. Summer usually sees a rotating series of special commissions, and 2024 is the turn of British artist-designer (and 2024 HTSI guest editor) Yinka Ilori MBE. His AotM work is called Omi Okun – Yoruba for “ocean water”, in homage to his Nigerian roots – and recounts in dreamlike, colourful light displays his own experience of travelling from London to Margate as part of a Pentecostal ritual. It’s up every night from 9-9.30pm, alternating with another work that’s a collaboration between artist Cory Arcangel and experimental musician Hampus Lindwall – a very cool homage to Earth, Wind & Fire, a hometown Chicago band.

Stay: yes, Chicago has its own Soho House, and yes, it’s a good go-to hotel like it is in other cities: the rooms punch above their price size-wise, there are great drinking and grazing spaces as well as that all-important rooftop bar and pool. It’s only about a mile from The Mart. sohohouse.com, from $300

Italics stages an artistic Panorama in Piedmont

Now in its fourth year, Panorama is a roving annual pop-up art exhibition created by Italics, Italy’s 70-strong gallery consortium. Its remit is to put art into provocative dialogue with lesser-visited places in the country; past editions have taken over historic sites both secular and ecclesiastical in the Puglian town of Monopoli and the island of Procida.

This year, its founders are ranging wider, across four medieval towns in Piedmont’s Monferrato region – a metaphor, according to curator Carlo Falciani, for the contemporary visitor’s “path of meditation”. The narrative route, mapped for visitors to follow, brings together ancient, modern and contemporary art in historic locations; each town – Camagna, Vignale, Montemagno and Castagnole, all within a couple of miles of each other – has its own theme. Falciani and his team have commandeered churches, private palaces and gardens for the five-day event. Artists who will be shown along with, and in some cases alongside, sculptures from antiquity and works by Old Masters include Theaster Gates, Alex Katz and Salvatore Scarpitta. It’s like nothing else in Italy, and well worth a detour if anywhere in the country’s north factors into your travels toward summer’s end.

Stay: Relais Sant’Uffizio is a 16th-century former monastery 30 minutes’ drive from Casale Monferrato, with frescos on the ceilings, a pretty parterre garden and a large wellness centre with sauna, Turkish bath and indoor-outdoor pools. ldchotelsitaly.com, from €180