COMING SOON: ‘This is Tomorrow’ is the first narrative history to span the whole of 20th-century art in Britain. The title ‘This is Tomorrow’ is borrowed from the groundbreaking 1956 exhibition at Whitechapel Art Gallery, chosen by author Michael Bird to highlight the ways in which artists have a way of tuning into current trends before anyone else, and even anticipating events that have not yet happened. Bird examines how the rhythms of change and adaptation in art became embedded in the collective consciousness of the nation and vividly evokes the personalities who populate and drive this story. From the American James McNeill Whistler’s defence of his new kind of modern art against the British art establishment in the latter half of the 19th century to the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s melting icebergs in London, he traverses the lives of the artists that have recorded, questioned and defined our times. #britishhistory #historyofbritain #arthistory #britishart #CorneliaParker #JamesWhistler #FrancisBacon #WalterSickert #BarbaraHepworth