Hauser & Wirth, Somerset
Questions of identity and power structures underpin Thomas J Price’s multidisciplinary inaugural show for Hauser & Wirth Somerset. Entitled Thomas J Price Thoughts Unseen, it includes film and towering figurative bronzes (until 3 January 2022). Stay at Number One Bruton, a 12th-century forge on the high street of this creative hub of a Somerset town. The 12-bedroom hotel is peppered with art by local artists, decor is low-key and achingly tasteful, and the leather key fobs are by Bill Amberg.
Rooms from £150, including a farmhouse breakfast in the Michelin-starred Osip, the old ironmonger’s shop, numberonebruton.com
Liverpool
There are rich cultural pickings in Liverpool: choose from Lucian Freud: Real Lives or Louise Bourgeois in Focus at Tate Liverpool, or else Rosa-Johan Uddoh’s exhibition Practice Makes Perfect, which highlights the dearth of Black British history in the curriculum, at the Bluecoat Gallery (all three shows run until January 2022). Stay at Lock & Key, a Grade II-listed townhouse turned trendy boutique hotel on Duke Street, Liverpool.
Rooms, designed with House of Sloane, from £90, lockandkeyhotels.com
Hepworth Wakefield
Hepworth fans are in for a real treat with Barbara Hepworth: Art and Life in West Yorkshire. Marking Hepworth Wakefield’s 10th anniversary, the exhibition traces the sculptor’s life through her work, starting with rare childhood drawings inspired by the West Riding landscape she grew up in. Hepworth’s love of the elemental and of the movement and purity of sculptural form is very much in evidence in this, her first exhibition since her tragic death in 1975. Stay six miles away in Oulton Hall, an 18th-century mansion turned spa hotel set in landscaped gardens and 300 acres of grounds. Take traditional afternoon tea (vegan option available), or pull up a leather stool and enjoy a fortifying glass in the Champagne Bar before dinner in the plush Calvery Grill.
Rooms from £125, oultonhall.co.uk
Museum of Modern Art, Wales
Machynlleth, the ancient market town in Powys, is currently showing at Moma Wales, the Museum of Modern Art, painter Ceri H Pritchard’s Paradoxes, and local artist Ruth Jên Evans’s mixed-media exploration of the rituals of sheep-shearing in Gwlana until 13 November. Stay at Ynyshire Restaurant and Rooms, a Michelin-star gem of a foodie destination run by owner-chef Gareth Ward. Or you could stay at the spectacularly located Tyn Y Cornel Hotel, Tal Y Lyn, Tywyn, Gwyned, which sits, nine miles north of Machynlleth, on a 220-acre glacial ribbon lake at the foot of Snowdonia’s Cadair Idris. Rooms, some with porthole windows and lakeside patios.
From £95 per night, tynycornel.co.uk
Charleston, East Sussex
Combine the delights of Charleston, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s country home, with the debut solo exhibition of New York artist Tunji Adeniyi-Jones. In Astral Reflections he explores how movement and travel have impacted the Black experience over centuries. His work runs alongside a Duncan Grant exhibition, drawing parallels in terms of their vivid colour palette and focus on human forms, running until March 2022. Stay at the Blue Door Barns B&B, Beddingham, Lewes, a rustic motel at the foot of the South Downs with rooms in barns and stables, artfully filled with vintage finds.
Rooms from £115 per night, bluedoorbarns.com
Dundee Contemporary Arts
Enjoy the work of contemporary Japanese artist and filmmaker Chikako Yamashiro, who explores memory and identity, and Belfast-based artist and photographer Mary McIntyre and her new reflections on space and interiors Places We Think We Know (both until 21 November 2021). Stay at Hotel Indigo, a former textile mill on the edge of the city centre where polished cement and exposed bricks and steelwork an industrial-chic aesthetic.
Rooms from £88, ihg.com
Plymouth
Catch the British Art Show 9, a landmark touring exhibition organised every five years by the Hayward Gallery, where you can see 47 artists respond to themes including reparative history and imaginative futures. The Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, of course, and four exhibitions, held in four city venues, look at the post-colonial relationships between Britain and other cultures. If you stay in Plymouth, try Boringdon Hall Hotel & Gaia Spa, an Elizabethan manor house turned five-star retreat on the edge of Dartmoor.
Rooms from £195, boringdonhall.co.uk
Chatsworth House, Derbyshire
Alongside historical art, Chatsworth, Derbyshire’s beloved stately home, embraces the bold and the new. Following the palace’s decade-long renovation, the current Duke and Duchess are celebrating with a book of contemporary photographs by Victoria Hely-Hutchinson, Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now and a new installation by ceramicist Jacob van der Beugel. Stay at the Devonshire Arms, an understated yet stylish country pub on the Chatsworth estate.
Rooms from £197 per night, devonshirehotels.co.uk
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
Feed the senses at the impressive Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, Newcastle, with Argentinian artist Ad Minoliti’s geometric wonderland of an exhibition, Biosfera Peluche/Biosphere Plush (until May 2022). Stay at Malmaison, a turn-of-the-century former Co-operative Society warehouse with a striking art deco entrance, right on the quayside overlooking the Tyne.
Rooms from £91, malmaison.com
Coventry
The 2021 City of Culture and its Biennial 2021 – Hyper-Possible – should definitely be on every art enthusiast’s itinerary: a range of local, national and international artists is exhibiting in seven venues across Coventry and Warwickshire. The group show finishes at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum (until next February). Stay at Coombe Abbey Hotel, Brinley, around six miles from the city centre. Set in 500 acres of parkland, this former Cistercian abbey is now a historical hotel offering four-poster bedrooms, roll-top baths and flock wallpaper a-plenty.
Rooms from £106, coombeabbey.com
