In March this year, to celebrate his 65^th birthday, Grayson Perry – he only uses the knighthood he was awarded for services to the arts when signing off messages to close friends as “Sir G” – is having a major exhibition at the Wallace Collection. Perry has always worked with traditional media and Delusions of Grandeur will include the artist’s ceramics, tapestries and works on paper displayed alongside a selection of masterpieces from the Wallace Collection which have inspired him. 

Delusions of Grandeur will be the largest contemporary exhibition ever held at the museum. As such, it’s a bold collaboration by a museum famed for its collection of fine and decorative arts collated by five generations of an aristocratic family. Perry is famously from a working-class background, didn’t visit a gallery till he was 16 and believes art should be for everyone, not the elite few. At the same time, Perry has often looked to the past for inspiration: in 2012, he created The Vanity of Small Differences, a series of six tapestries inspired not only by William Hogarth’s series of eight 18^th-century paintings, A Rake’s Progress, but also by his interest in class mobility in the modern age. 

He is, above all, a storyteller, using centuries-old art to explore modern issues. The principal inspiration for Delusions of Grandeur is François Boucher’s 1759 Portrait of Madame de Pompadour. As a mistress of Louis XV, Pompadour held an unusually influential position in the French court and continued giving political advice after her relationship with the king ended – Perry is seeking to examine the theme of gender roles in his exhibition. He is also considering “outsider art”, with the help of Shirley Smith, a fictional persona who came to life while he was curating the exhibition. 

As ever, Perry cannot resist being a little playful. On the one hand he is part of the establishment: he was elected a Royal Academician in 2011, appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2013 and, a decade later, accepted the knighthood. Yet, on the other, he has never lost his wonderful sense of humour. A 2017 show at the Serpentine Gallery was called The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! as a reflection of his “art is for everyone” stance and, among the 40 new works by Perry at the Wallace Collection, some will contrast handcrafted objects with works made instantly via digital technology. He seems to be asking if the value of art determined by the time spent on it, which is as good a question as any with the onslaught of AI. 

As you might expect, Perry is honest about his collaboration with the Wallace Collection, saying that it has ‘offered both excitement and a unique challenge: I was captivated by the craftsmanship seen in the collection, but I struggled with the opulent aesthetic, which I found cloying at times.’ Fortunately, he added, he found a way of developing a new perspective. Delusions of Grandeur promises, then, to both celebrate and question Britain’s art heritage, which means that there will something in the exhibition for everyone. 

Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur is at the Wallace Collection from 28 March to 26 October 2025; wallacecollection.org