Arcadia brings John Akomfrah’s vision of humanity and nature to the Natural History Museum
Sir John Akomfrah’s acclaimed multi-screen film Arcadia will make its London debut at the Natural History Museum from 6 November, bringing a sweeping meditation on migration, colonialism, trade and the changing natural world to South Kensington.
Free to visit and running until May 2027, the installation takes the Columbian Exchange as its starting point. From the 1400s onwards, the movement of people, plants, animals, commodities, and diseases between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia transformed societies and ecosystems on an unprecedented scale.
Akomfrah explores those changes across five screens, bringing together landscapes, historical imagery, and a powerful soundscape. Deserts, ice fields, mountains, forests, seas, and coral reefs appear alongside cargo, ships, trade, and images associated with disease, creating connections between environmental change and the movements that have shaped human history.
Rather than presenting the Columbian Exchange as a distant historical episode, Arcadia considers the consequences that continue to shape the world today. Migration, empire, and colonialism become part of a wider story about humanity’s relationship with nature and the ecological changes that have followed.
The installation arrives at the Natural History Museum after Akomfrah represented Great Britain at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Its London presentation also places contemporary art alongside one of the world’s major collections documenting life on Earth, much of which has been assembled over more than three centuries.
Arcadia is the fourth exhibition presented through the Museum’s Jerwood Contemporary Arts Programme, which brings artists and audiences into conversation with the natural world. It forms part of the Museum’s wider Fixing Our Broken Planet initiative.
Visitors can continue that exploration in the Fixing Our Broken Planet gallery next to the installation, while the Museum’s Nature and Us display offers another perspective through 50 objects tracing changing ideas about humanity and the natural world.
The film lasts just under an hour and will run on a continuous loop in the Jerwood Gallery. Entry is free, although visitors are advised to book Museum admission in advance for guaranteed entry.
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