As London’s art world gathers in the capital for Frieze season, 45 Park Lane is turning its Mayfair interiors into a celebration of nearly two centuries of female creativity.
Dorchester Collection’s contemporary Park Lane hotel is presenting Great Women Photographers, a new exhibition bringing together work by influential women who have shaped the history of photography across documentary, portraiture, fashion and conceptual art. Running until November 15, 2026, the exhibition has been curated by Ackerman Studios in collaboration with Phaidon and unfolds throughout the hotel lobby and BAR 45.
For visitors descending on London for Frieze, it adds another compelling stop to an already packed cultural itinerary — and one conveniently positioned in the heart of Mayfair.
Great Women Photographers Arrives at 45 Park Lane
The exhibition coincides with the publication of Phaidon’s Great Women Photographers, the fourth instalment in its series dedicated to women in the arts.
Spanning almost 200 years of photographic history, the publication explores the women who have helped define and continually reinvent the medium, moving between documentary photography, portraiture, fashion imagery, conceptual practice and photo collage.
Selected photographs from the book have now moved from page to wall at 45 Park Lane, placing work by internationally recognised artists within the hotel’s sleek public spaces.
Highlights include Nan Goldin’s Valerie in the Taxi, Paris, Tacita Dean’s 66 DEAD 4/5 leafed clovers and Cig Harvey’s Wisteria, alongside work by Marilyn Minter, whose practice has long interrogated ideas surrounding beauty, identity and representation.
Together, the works demonstrate just how broad the language of photography can be — intimate one moment, political or conceptual the next.
Nearly 200 Years of Women Behind the Camera
Photography’s history is often told through a familiar group of names. Great Women Photographers deliberately broadens that narrative.
Rather than treating women photographers as a separate chapter, the project positions their work as integral to the development of the medium itself.
The exhibition moves across generations, disciplines and visual languages, highlighting photographers who documented the world around them as well as those who used the camera to construct entirely new ones.
That breadth feels particularly appropriate during Frieze, when London becomes a meeting point for collectors, galleries, artists and creative communities from across the world.
The works at 45 Park Lane offer an opportunity to consider not simply individual images, but the wider legacy of women whose perspectives have influenced generations of artists that followed.
Phaidon’s Great Women Series Comes to Mayfair
The photography exhibition forms part of a broader celebration of Phaidon’s Great Women publishing series.
Across the hotel’s ground-floor windows, a special installation will showcase limited-edition Artspace works inspired by artists included in Great Women Artists, Great Women Painters and Great Women Sculptors.
The result extends the exhibition beyond photography alone, creating a wider conversation around women’s contribution to modern and contemporary culture.
It is also an unusually democratic way of encountering the work.
Great Women Photographers is open not just to hotel residents, but to the wider public, allowing anyone passing through Mayfair during Frieze season to step inside and experience the exhibition.
A selection of works is also available to purchase.
Art at the Heart of 45 Park Lane
Art has long been central to the identity of 45 Park Lane.
Since 2017, the hotel has worked with Lily Ackerman, founder and director of Ackerman Studios, on a year-round programme of exhibitions that turns its public spaces into an evolving gallery environment.
The setting itself creates an interesting contrast.
Rather than encountering photography against the white walls of a conventional gallery, visitors discover the works within the rhythms of hotel life — arriving for dinner, meeting over drinks at BAR 45 or simply passing through the lobby.
“Art remains central to 45 Park Lane, and Great Women Photographers reflects our ongoing commitment to presenting cultural exhibitions within the hotel that continue to delight our guests,” says Lee Kelly, general manager of 45 Park Lane.
“Bringing together works by influential artists from across Phaidon’s ‘Great Women’ publishing series, the exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to engage with a breadth of creative voices and perspectives that have shaped contemporary culture.”
A Conversation About Women in Photography
The exhibition will also extend beyond the artworks themselves.
Later in its run, Charlotte Flint, editor of Great Women Photographers, will join Fiona Rogers, the inaugural Parasol Foundation Curator of Women in Photography at the V&A, for a discussion at the hotel.
The conversation will explore the photographers featured in the publication as well as the broader role women have played — and continue to play — within the medium.
For an exhibition concerned with legacy, it provides an important additional layer: considering not only the images themselves, but the structures, institutions and histories that determine which artists become part of photography’s established canon.
A Cultural Stop During Frieze London
Mayfair is never short of galleries, but during Frieze season its relationship with the art world becomes even more pronounced.
Against that backdrop, Great Women Photographers feels particularly well placed.
It is accessible, beautifully curated and broad enough to reward both serious photography enthusiasts and visitors who simply find themselves drawn in from Park Lane.
Most importantly, it celebrates creativity across generations without reducing its subjects to a single movement or aesthetic.
From Nan Goldin’s intimate observations of human life to Tacita Dean’s conceptual experimentation and Marilyn Minter’s provocative investigations of beauty, the exhibition captures photography as something endlessly adaptable — and the women behind it as some of the medium’s most important innovators.
Great Women Photographers is on display throughout the lobby and BAR 45 at 45 Park Lane until November 15, 2026. The exhibition is open to hotel guests and members of the public, with selected works available to purchase.
@45parklane | dorchestercollection.com
45 Park Ln, Mayfair, London W1K 1PN
