Part of the museum’s centenary celebrations, the exhibition unpacks heritage, memory, and identity through collage, photography, and assemblage.

London’s Leighton House has long been a place where cultures collide, from its ornate Arab Hall to the eclectic layers of its Victorian interiors. Now, the Holland Park landmark is turning its gaze to the present with The View From Here: Contemporary Art from the Middle East and North Africa, a group show that shifts the conversation towards diaspora, identity, and how artists carry home with them, wherever they live and work.

Presented in collaboration with the Oriental Museum at Durham University, the exhibition runs until 1 March 2026 and is included with a standard admission ticket. Visitors can catch it in The Verey Exhibition Gallery, with Leighton House open Wednesday to Monday from 10am to 5:30pm, with last entry at 4:30pm.

At its core, The View From Here is built on a project that began in 2020, when Durham University’s Oriental Museum set out to form a new collection of digitally born and digitally manipulated artworks by artists from the Middle East and North Africa diaspora. The initiative resulted in the acquisition of around 60 works, and this exhibition brings together highlights from that evolving collection.

Expect pieces that move between time periods and visual languages. Artists such as Adnan Samman and Rabee Baghshani use digital collage to layer historic and contemporary imagery, building new meaning from fragments. Elsewhere, Maliheh Zafarnezhad and Hani Amra use photography in unexpected ways, challenging how we read images and what we assume they are trying to say. Across the show, the common thread is clear: identity and tradition are not fixed, and the act of making work outside its place of origin can shift both the message and the way it is received.

The exhibition also lands as part of 100 Years of Leighton House, marking a century since the building first opened as a public museum. As Senior Curator Daniel Robbins puts it: “With a focus on contemporary voices whilst celebrating the historic richness of the interiors and collections, the centenary programme brings together every aspect of Leighton House that makes it distinctive, significant and still relevant 100 years later.”

GO: Visit www.rbkc.gov.uk for more information.