It will be the works of Andy Warhol but not as they have been seen before, with his subjects – from soup cans to Superman – displayed in the 18th-century tradition by one of the UK's oldest public art galleries.
The 200-year-old Dulwich Picture Galleryin south London announced its plans for next year, which will include a summer exhibition of more than 80 works from Warhol's portfolio series hanging in a way that the gallery's founding fathers would have approved of – densely.
The gallery's director, Ian Dejardin, said people were used to seeing Warhol in big white rooms but this was just not possible at Dulwich. The works would be hung in a more crowded way.
"We have to," he said. "Our exhibition spaces are converted from old almshouses and they are gold – to have spaces that have a very domestic feel to them and a particular scale focuses the mind. My idea of hell would have to be one of these great white box exhibition spaces that you can do anything in – because the temptation is to then do anything in."
He said he expected the Warhol prints to fit in brilliantly, "they are so fabulously decorative". When Dejardin he saw them in the US, he thought immediately of the sugar-coated 18th-century French artist François Boucher.
Warhol's portfolio prints come in groups of 10 and cover themes such as Myths (including Superman) and Endangered Species (a bald eagle, for example) and Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century (including Golda Meir).
The prints are all from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch collection and while they have toured the US, this will be the first time the show has been in the UK.
The show will be on during the Olympics and Dejardin said Warhol ticked all his boxes. "It makes sense to have the biggest possible name that appeals to the broadest possible audience, because who knows who this audience is? There will be a huge influx of tourists coming to London because it is suddenly in the news."
Dulwich Picture Gallery, which receives no public subsidy and relies on its commercial enterprises and philanthropy, is celebrating its 200th anniversary and while Dejardin said it had been a "remarkable year" he regarded it as a "stepping stone, a way forward, the beginning of our next 200 years".
Other highlights in 2012 include the first show exploring a less well known period in the life of Van Dyck, when he was stranded in Palermo, Sicily, in 1624-25, when most of the island's population was killed by the plague. That show will open in February.
• This article was amended on 1 December 2011. The original said the prints are all from the Bank of America Lynch collection. This has been corrected.
