"Taking Centre Stage: Female Artists in The Atkinson's Collection" runs at The Atkinson, Southport, from 13 June 2026 until 27 February 2027. The show draws on The Atkinson's own fine art holdings to trace a line from Alice Mary Havers (1850-1890) through Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) to Dame Tracey Emin (b.1963), covering painting, sculpture, ceramics, textiles and more recent photography and digital work. It is also an act of institutional self-examination, acknowledging the gaps in the collection as openly as the strengths. Free entry, Monday to Saturday, 10 AM to 4 PM. A rare chance to see a regional collection interrogate its own history, and a useful one for anyone thinking about how work enters a public collection in the first place.

Catch it before it closes: "Sefton Young Artist of the Year 2026" is at The Atkinson, Southport, until 29 August 2026, having opened on 18 July. The annual exhibition showcases work by young artists from across the borough, and it remains one of the clearest snapshots of what is being made in Sefton schools and colleges right now. Free entry, Monday to Saturday. Worth a look if you teach, run workshops, or simply want to see which names are likely to turn up in the Sefton Open a few years from now. Well timed for a summer holiday visit with younger family members.

"Brian & George Fell: Always Something New" continues at The Atkinson, Southport, until 17 October 2026. The father-and-son team have worked together for over fifteen years making public art in steel, and the show gathers key commissions from the past four decades alongside the pieces they make for themselves. Brian grew up in Seaforth and Thornton, trained at Manchester School of Art with support from Sefton Council, and designed Southport's seafront railings and the seagull, shrimp and pier-performer sculptures. Free entry. A good study in how a working practice sustains itself across a lifetime, and in what public commissioning actually involves.

Closing soon: Scottish artist Rachel Maclean's "They've Got Your Eyes" is at FACT, Liverpool, until 16 August 2026. Co-commissioned by FACT and Sonica Glasgow, the exhibition sets today's AI boom against Victorian invention through new 3D-printed sculptures and the premiere of a multi-channel film made using AI models trained on Maclean's own image and archive. The result runs as a twenty-minute immersive piece across several screens, and you can enter at any point. Free entry, Wednesday to Sunday, 11 AM to 6 PM. Note that it contains flashing images and occasional strong language. Pointed viewing for any artist weighing up what machine learning does to authorship.

The Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead, opens "Leonard McComb: Nature & Humanity" on 14 August 2026, running until 31 October. Billed as the largest exhibition of McComb's work ever staged, it brings together more than sixty pieces spanning painting, watercolour, drawing and sculpture, drawn from the artist's estate with loans from Manchester Art Gallery, the Royal Academy and Oriel Môn. Among them is "Rock and Sea Anglesey", at over ten metres the largest drawing on paper in any UK public collection. Loans are supported by the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund. Free entry. A significant show for a local authority gallery, and essential viewing for anyone working in drawing or watercolour.

"Jalsaghar" (meaning "music room" in Bengali) by artist Debjani Banerjee opened at the Bluecoat on 11 July 2026 and runs until 6 September 2026. Across film, sculpture and installation, Banerjee blends Bengali heritage, her 1980s British upbringing, Hindu iconography and pop culture into a sensory, dreamlike space. Previously shown at CCA Glasgow, KARST Plymouth and Mimosa House London, this is the first time the accompanying film is shown alongside the full installation. Free entry, with free creative activities for families. Worth a visit for artists interested in cross-cultural, mixed-media practice.

Sir John Akomfrah's "Listening All Night To The Rain", his acclaimed multi-channel video installation for the British Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, is showing at the Walker Art Gallery until 31 August 2026. Three of the original eight "cantos" are on display, exploring migration, colonial history and climate change, with imagery projected onto the gallery's neoclassical exterior. Akomfrah has strong Liverpool ties, having made two earlier films about the city. Free entry — a rare chance to see world-class video art locally without travelling to Venice or London.

Catch it before it closes: "Small Wonders: Reimagining British Art" at the Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead, ends 25 July 2026. Brought to Wirral through a partnership with Hayward Gallery Touring, marking 75 years since the Festival of Britain, the show gathers work by around 50 leading British artists who have featured in the British Art Show since 1979. It's a rare chance to see major contemporary names outside London, on the gallery's own doorstep. Free entry. Well worth a look for artists tracking the current state of British contemporary practice.

"May Morris: Crafting a Legacy" continues at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, until 1 November 2026. Developed with the William Morris Society, the exhibition brings together around 50 objects — embroidery, wallpaper, jewellery, sketches and books — by May Morris (1862–1938), daughter of William Morris and a leading Arts and Crafts figure in her own right. Loans come from the William Morris Gallery, the V&A and National Museums Liverpool's own collection. Free entry. A strong reference show for anyone working in textiles, print or decorative design.

North Wales artist Catherine Taylor Parry's "Earth Stories: Plwm/Lead" runs at Chester's Grosvenor Museum until 27 September 2026. The 2D and 3D works respond to lead mining and stone extraction on Halkyn Mountain, Flintshire, using colour and texture to explore how materials are transformed by erosion and time. Taylor Parry, a Chester University Fine Art graduate, was a prize winner in the museum's 2025 Open Art Exhibition. Free entry (donations welcome). A good example of landscape- and material-led practice, worth seeing for artists exploring place and process.