This groundbreaking exhibition, curated by writer Marina Warner with Oli McCall and Roger Malbert and designed by Simon Costin, explores the art of storytelling. It examines its close relationship with the sense of home and belonging, as well as its vital role in times of upheaval and displacement.

Bringing together historic objects and images, alongside works by leading contemporary artists, the exhibition will introduce visitors to a different approach to storytelling, and ask, through a range of artefacts in different media, why do we tell stories and what do they achieve?

The Shelter of Stories will unfold in distinct sections, with each one focusing on a different aspect of storytelling.

The first will transport visitors to the sites where storytelling has traditionally taken place, from tales told by the hearth side and the campfire to puppet shows in the bustling city street. Works by South Korean artist Do Ho Suh (b.1962) and Lebanese artist Mounira al Solh (b.1978) will embody the title of the show, highlighting how stories can provide shelter, where fears can be faced, difficult subjects addressed, knowledge passed on, and hope kindled. An array of objects including puppets, masks, dioramas, instruments, and board games will display creative methods storytellers around the globe have used to breathe life into their subjects and reveal some of the many ways stories travel and enter our consciousness.

Subsequent rooms look at the function’s stories fulfil, socially and personally. These include confronting and overcoming dangers and monsters, imagining and entering other worlds, sharing wisdom and knowledge, coexisting with animals and natural phenomena and building collective solidarity and hope in times of difficulty. Works by artists including Paula Rego (1935-2022), Ana Maria Pacheco (b.1943) are among the highlights.

The role of story-making, in terms of fostering a feeling of belonging, forms the central theme of the show’s final section. Envisaged as a space for communion and creative expression, this part will consider the importance of building culture together, between locals and incomers, nationals and strangers. The exhibition draws on the Stories in Transit project – which began in 2016 in Palermo, Sicily, where many of those fleeing wars and famine arrive from different parts of the world.

19 February 2026, Book launch: Dr Soody Gholami, ‘Unhomely England in Post-Imperial British Novels’, 6-8pm, Birkbeck Central

Marina will be introducing the book launch of Soody’s book, Unhomely England in Post-Imperial British Novels. The book investigates the nature of ‘home’ and nation in post-imperial British novels, which deal with the loss of Empire and its uncanny presence ‘at home’. It delves into histories of British colonialism, the ‘end’ of the Empire, decolonisation, post-Second World War nation-building, and devolution; all of which resurface in four selected novels of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: Marina Warner’s Indigo (1992), Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood (1997), Julian Barnes’s Arthur & George (2005), and Zadie Smith’s NW (2012).

Gholami’s Unhomely England investigates the novels’ engagement with postwar government policies, specifically in the areas of social housing, the British Welfare State and the National Curriculum. Exploring the writers’ different depictions of home interiors, architectural features and British local landscapes, this book argues that post-imperial British novels continue to highlight racial, gendered and class inequalities that undergird domestic perceptions of belonging and national identity in post-imperial Britain.

Sign up to attend here.

(SOLD OUT) 21 February 2026, Faversham Literary Festival, The Old Brewery Store, 3-4pm

Marina will be in conversation with Daniel Hahn for the Faversham Literary Festival on Saturday 21 February, discussing Sanctuary: Ways of Telling, Ways of Dwelling. Tickets and more information available here.

3 March 2026, The Palestine Lectures: On Rage, Keynes Hall, King’s College Cambridge, 5.30pm 

23 March 2026, Anna Jameson Lecture, National Gallery, 6 – 8 pm, doors open at 5.45 pm

Marina will be giving the 2026 Anna Jameson Lecture, titled ‘Rachel Weeping for Her Children’: Memories of Massacre, Flight, and Refuge. The lecture will explore the Massacre of the Innocents, the Flight into Egypt, and the representation of mothers in the search for safety. It will be fifty years since Marina published her study of the Madonna (Alone of All Her Sex: the Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, 1976); she will revisit the representation of the mater dolorosa, drawing on Anna Jameson’s work, paintings in the National Gallery, and contemporary women artists (Paula Rego, Kiki Smith, Marcelle Hanselaar).

Book your in-person tickets here. If you would like to attend online, tickets are available here.

5-7 June 2026, JLF London at the British Library

More to be announced soon! See here for more about Jaipur Literature Festival

26 June 2026, Stories in Transit at Essex Literary Festival event – more tbc!