Jack White's first solo visual-art exhibition opens May 29, 2026 at Damien Hirst's Newport Street Gallery in Lambeth, London, and runs through September 13. Titled These Thoughts May Disappear, the show brings together sculpture, interactive installations, furniture, and found-material assemblage — what White himself has been calling "Hardware Store Art." Admission is free.
How it came together
White and Hirst first met in 2021, when White was opening a London outpost of his Third Man Records store in Soho across the street from Hirst's studio. White showed Hirst photos of pieces he had been making in his Detroit and Nashville studios. Hirst, who has been quietly using Newport Street Gallery to mount artist-friend shows for a decade — Rachel Howard, Sarah Lucas, John Hoyland — told White he should do a proper exhibition. Five years later, here it is.
It is the latest in a now-familiar arc of musicians taking visual-art practice seriously enough to put it in a real gallery: Bob Dylan at Halcyon, Patti Smith at Robert Miller, David Bowie's posthumous shows. White's twist is that his work is unapologetically functional — the pieces are made from carpentry tools, upholstery, salvaged hardware, and reclaimed wood. They are sometimes literal furniture you could sit on.
What the work actually looks like
White's reference points are specific. The Detroit Cass Corridor artists, mid-century modern furniture, Dada, De Stijl. The "Hardware Store Art" label is a useful reframing — instead of treating found objects as the punchline (Duchamp) or the materials of irony (Koons), White treats them as the building blocks of straightforward, well-made objects. A clock made from circular saw blades. A chair built from upholstery tools. Sculptures that look like assembled instrument cases.
That craftsman framing is consistent with how White has talked about everything else he does — the analog-only Third Man Records pressing plant, the insistence on live-to-tape recording, the careful preservation of the De Stijl color palette across White Stripes album covers. The art is the same project in different materials.
Why it's worth the trip
For Americans this summer, the show is one of the more interesting cultural reasons to spend a London week. Newport Street Gallery sits a 10-minute walk from Vauxhall Tube and is open Tuesday-Sunday, 10 AM to 6 PM. The cultural-celebrity-pivots-to-fine-art genre is mostly noise; this one has the advantage of being mounted by an actual artist's gallery, in actual gallery space, with no admission fee gating who gets to see it. Whether White becomes a serious visual artist or this is a single career chapter, These Thoughts May Disappear is built like he believes the work belongs there.
For context on what other late-career legacy artists are doing with second acts this year, Stephen Colbert's late-night exit on May 21 is the closest comparison — an established creative dropping a long-running format and trying something genuinely new. White is doing the same move in a quieter room.
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