This Week in London – London’s transport posters on show; a musical exploration at the Science Museum; and, ‘Petrichor’ at Kew…

London Transport Museum in Covent Garden. PICTURE: Marcus Meissner (licensed under CC BY 2.0)

The first permanent gallery dedicated to the history of poster art and design at the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden opens tomorrow. The new Global Poster Gallery, sponsored by Global, the Media & Entertainment Group, showcases the museum’s collection of 20th century graphic art and design – one of the world’s largest. The new gallery, which is set over two floors, launches with the exhibition, How to Make a Poster, and an accompanying programme of events. The exhibition visually explores the process of creating posters from the pre-digital age from 1900 and features more than 110 poster artworks and posters including the Underground’s very first pictorial poster titled No need to ask a p’liceman by John Hassall, dating from 1908. Admission charge applies. The exhibition runs until 2025. For more, see www.ltmuseum.co.uk.

A new interactive exhibition exploring the mysterious hold music can have over us opens at the Science Museum today. Turn It Up: The power of music features historic music players, inventions and unusual instruments. Among the inventions on show are the MiMU gloves invented by Imogen Heap and used by Ariana Grande and Kris Halpin which use gestures to control electronic music-making software, and a virtual instrument called Headspace, created by professional trumpeter Clarence Adoo and inventor Rolf Gelhar after Adoo was paralysed from the shoulders down in a car accident while among the unusual instruments are the pyrophone organ powered by flames to the Anarchestra satellite dish which can be played in multiple new ways to make music. The exhibition can be seen until 6th May at the South Kensington premises. Admission charges apply. For more, see www.sciencemuseum.org.uk.

The work of acclaimed contemporary artist Mat Collishaw goes on show tomorrow at Kew Garden’s Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art on Saturday. Highlights of the exhibition – Petrichor – include the UK premieres of Alluvion, a series of six new AI artworks inspired by Dutch Old Masters, and the large-scale projected work Even to the End. Other works include Heterosis – a collection of dynamic NFT’s which combine genetic algorithms with blockchain technology to facilitate the hybridisation of mutable digital flowers, The Centrifugal Soul – a zoetrope which creates a stunning illusion of motion, and Albion – a large-scale piece in the form of an intricate 19th-century ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ illusion which depicts the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest. Runs until 7th April. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.kew.org.

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