Tate travels into future, comes back with 2020 exhibition line-ups featuring Andy Warhol and Steve McQueen

What’d you do if you were gifted with a time machine? Like, one morning you got out of bed and there in the kitchen, next to last night’s greasy roasting tin and that stack of Sainsbury’s Magazines you’re yet to cook anything from, there was a time machine just sat there.

An ashy picnic in Pompeii before Mount Vesuvius blew a gasket, perhaps? Maybe you’d fling yourself so far into the future that Brexit was nothing more than the answer to a question in a pub quiz taking place at the apocalypse? There’s always the fact that you could, probably, use the machine to constantly rewind back to the first bite of the best pizza you’ve ever had, meaning you’d exist in an endless pizza-eating loop. That’d be good.

The art lovers at the Tate have decided to head into the near future — 2020 to be precise — only to come back to dreary old 2019 with nothing but a list of incredibly exciting exhibitions that’ll be staged at their numerous galleries next year.

And boy, oh boy, what a year we’ve got ahead of us. Andy Warhol will finally get a chance to shine with a career-spanning retrospective early in the year at the Tate Modern that’s likely to shift a serious amount of tickets. Andy will be joined by another film buff, with Widows director Steve McQueen also taking up residency in the Bankside gallery. It’ll be the Goldsmiths graduate’s first major UK exhibition in 20 years.

Tate Britain is kicking 2020 off with a deep dive into the past with a pair of shows that take us from 1660 up to 1890. Baroque in Britain will do what it says on the tin, and there will be a 200-piece strong celebration of the “sinuous black and white drawings” of Aubrey Beardsley.

Down in St.Ives, Naum Gabo’s constructivist sculptures, paintings, drawings and designs will be taking pride of place, while Scousers — and non-native visitors to Liverpool – will get to witness African-American artist Theaster Gates’ first ever UK museum show.

Looking further ahead, the summer season sees “all four Tate galleries present solo exhibitions of modern and contemporary artists.” Candice Breitz will take residency in Liverpool, the Tate Modern becomes photographer Zanele Muholi’s domain for a few months, sunseekers in St. Ives can bathe in the glow of Haegue Yang, and Tate’s flagship Millbank gallery will feature an extensive survey of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, described by Tate as “one of the most important painters of her generation.”

They’ll be rounding off the year with shows dedicated to everyone from Bruce Nauman to J.M.W. Turner, hoping to cement their places in the most-visited museum and galleries list for another year.