Millbank

This Week in London – London’s architecture on show; D-Day commemorations at Duxford; and, Frank Bowling at the Tate…

by exploringlondon

• An exhibition charting the changing architecture of London opens at the Guildhall Art Gallery on Friday. Architecture of London features more than 80 works by more than 60 artists and spans the period from the 17th century to the present day. The display is arranged thematically and starts with views of London before exploring the city’s continuous transformation – including its rebuilding after World War II, moving on to portrayals of everyday London and finishing with a focus on architectural details that help form the rich tapestry of the city’s built form. Highlights include a rare Jacobean view of London – Old St Paul’s Diptych (1616), Canaletto’s London Seen Through an Arch of Westminster Bridge (1747), David Ghilchik’s Out of the Ruins at Cripplegate (1962), Richard IB Walker’s London from Cromwell Tower, Barbican (1977), and works by Spencer Gore, Lucian Freud, and Frank Auerbach as well as Brendan Neiland’s Broadgate Reflections (1989) and Simon Ling’s paintings of East London. The exhibition, runs until 1st December, is being accompanied by a series of talks as well as a ‘Late View’ on 27th September. Admission charge applies.

The display forms part of the City of London Corporation’s outdoor public events programme, Fantastic Feats: the building of London, which celebrates London’s long-standing history of architectural and engineering firsts and looks at how these innovations have contributed to improving the lives of Londoners over the centuries. Another of the projects taking place under the Fantastic Feats umbrella is Illuminated River, an unprecedented light artwork by American architect Leo Villarreal and London-based Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands that will be installed on up to 15 of London’s bridges with the first four bridges – London, Cannon, Southwark, and Millennium – to be lit up this summer. Architectural drawings and visualisations of the project will be on show at Guildhall from Friday until 1st September sitting alongside paintings of the Thames from the gallery’s collection which have been selected by Villareal. Admission is free applies. For more on either exhibition and Fantastic Feats, follow this link. PICTURED: One of the panels from the Old St Paul’s Diptych by John Gypkin (1616) –  Society of Antiquaries of London.

• A mass flight display will take place over the historic Duxford airfield in Cambridge next week as part of commemorations surrounding the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings. On 4th and 5th June, IWM Duxford will host the Daks over Duxford event, featuring the greatest number of Douglas C-47 Skytrain aircraft – also known as Dakotas – in one location since World War II as well as mass parachute jumps and flight displays. The event will also feature a mass flight display over Duxford as aircraft head off for Normandy where parachute landings will take place on 6th June in a recreation of the original D-Day landings. Duxford is located less than 50 miles from central London. Admission charges apply. For more see www.iwm.org.uk/daks-over-duxford.

• The first major retrospective of the work of British painter Frank Bowling opens at the Tate Britain on Friday. Frank Bowling will span the artist’s entire six decade career and will feature early works like Cover Girl (1966) – seen for the first time in the UK since it was painted, 10 of his celebrated ‘Map Paintings’ including Who’s Afraid of Barney Newman (1968) and Polish Rebecca (1971), examples of his ‘Poured Paintings’, sculptural works like his Great Thames paintings, and Sacha Jason Guyana Dreams (1989), a work inspired by the artist’s first visit to his birth country of Guyana with his son Sacha. Runs until 26th August. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.tate.org.uk.

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This Week in London – The written word at the British Library; London below ground; and, women artists at Tate Britain…

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• Carved stone inscriptions, medieval manuscripts and early printed works are among items on display in a new exhibition looking at the act of writing and its impact on human civilisation at the British Library. Writing: Making Your Mark spans five millennia and five continents and includes writing examples from more than 30 writing systems including Greek, Chinese and Arabic. Highlights include an 1,800-year-old ancient wax tablet, early 19th century Burmese tattooing instruments, the final diary entry of Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott, James Joyce’s notes for Ulysses, Caxton’s 1476-7 printing of The Canterbury Tales – the first book printed in England, and the personal notebooks of Elizabethan explorer Sir Walter Raleigh (pictured). There’s also a 60,000 signature petition from 1905 protesting the first partition of Bengal, Mozart’s catalogue of his complete works from 1784-1791 featuring his handwriting and musical notation, and Alexander Fleming’s notebook in which he recorded his discovery of penicillin in 1928. A programme of events accompanies the exhibition which runs until 27th August. Admission charge applies. For more see www.bl.uk. PICTURE: © British Library.

• London’s forgotten rivers, tunnels, sewers, deep shelters, and the world’s first subterranean railway are all explored in a new free exhibition at the London Metropolitan Archives in Clerkenwell. Under Ground London in part celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of Victorian engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette – who designed the scheme to overhaul the city’s sewers in the 19th century. As well as Bazalgette’s landmark work, the exhibition explores the legend of a cobbled street buried beneath today’s Oxford Street and tells the story of the Thames Tunnel which, when it opened in 1843, was the world’s first tunnel under a river. There’s also information on London’s ‘ghost stations’, including Strand and King William Street; and the Metropolitan Railway – the world’s first underground railway as well as images of the River Fleet, displayed for the first time. The display can be seen until 31st October. For more, follow this link.

• Women artists working in Britain in the past 60 years are being celebrated in a new display at the Tate Britain in Millbank. Sixty Years features about 60 works spanning painting, photography, sculpture, drawing and film and includes many recent acquisitions. Artists whose works are on show include Mona Hatoum, Sarah Lucas, Bridget Riley, Mary Martin and Anthea Hamilton. Highlights include Gillian Wearing’s film Sacha and Mum (1996), Susan Hiller’s large scale multimedia installation Belshazzar’s Feast, the Writing on Your Wall (1983-84), and two new mixed media works by Monster Chetwynd – Crazy Bat Lady (2018) and Jesus and Barabbas (Odd Man Out 2011) (2018). For more, see www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain.

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This Week in London – Van Gogh and Britain; miniature Elizabethan portraits; and, ‘Jews, Money, Myth’…

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At Eternity's Gate• The first exhibition to examine the work of Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh through his relationship with Britain has opened at Tate Britain this week. Van Gogh and Britain includes more than 40 works by the artist including L’Arlésienne (1890), Starry Night on the Rhone (1888), and Sunflowers (1888). The exhibition will also feature later works by Van Gogh including two he painted while in the Saint-Paul asylum – At Eternity’s Gate (1890 – pictured) and Prisoners Exercising (1890). The exhibition shows how Van Gogh, who lived in London between 1873 and 1876 working as a trainee art dealer, responded to works by artists like John Constable and John Everett Millais and his love of British writers like William Shakespeare, Christina Rossetti and, particularly, Charles Dickens (L’Arlésienne features one of Dickens’ favourite books in the foreground). The show runs until 11th August and is being accompanied by a series of talks and other events. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.tate.org.uk. PICTURE: Vincent van Gogh (1853 –1890), ‘Sorrowing old man (‘At Eternity’s Gate’)’ (1890), Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

• On Now – Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver. This exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery – which is focused on the work of Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619) and Isaac Oliver (c1565-1617) – is the first major display of Tudor and Jacobean portrait miniatures to be held in the UK for more than 35 years and includes new discoveries as well as portraits on public display for the first time. A large section of the exhibition is devoted to portraits of Queen Elizabeth I as well as King James I, his wife Anne of Denmark and his three children – Henry, Elizabeth and Charles (later King Charles II). There are also miniatures of famous figures like Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir Francis Drake and a little known portrait of Shakespeare’s patron, the Earl of Southampton. Other highlights include a previously unknown portrait by Hilliard of King Henri III of France. Runs until 19th May. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.npg.org.uk.

• A major exhibition exploring the role of money in Jewish life has opened at the Jewish Museum London in Camden Town. Jews, Money, Myth looks at the “ideas, myths and stereotypes” that link money and Jews over two millennia. It features art works such as Rembrandt’s Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver as well as new commissions by Jeremy Deller and Doug Fishbone along with film, literature and cultural emphemera ranging from board games and cartoons to costumes and figurines. There are a series of related events. For more, see www.jewishmuseum.org.uk.

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This Week in London – Dior at the V&A, and, Don McCullin at the Tate…

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• The UK’s largest ever exhibition focusing on fashion designer Christian Dior and his work opens at the V&A on Saturday. Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams spans his career and legacy from 1947 – the year he hosted his first UK fashion show at the Savoy Hotel in London, to the present day. Based on an exhibition shown at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, it will also include a section on the world renowned designer’s fascination with British culture. The more than 500 objects on show – revealed in 11 sections – include more than 200 rare haute couture garments as well as accessories, photography, film, perfume and make-up, illustrations, magazines and personal possessions. Alongside gowns worn by the likes of Princess Margaret, Margot Fonteyn and Jennifer Lawrence, highlights include the iconic Bar Suit, given to the V&A by the House of Dior in 1960. Runs until 14th July in The Sainsbury Gallery. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.vam.ac.uk. PICTURE: © Adrien Dirand (V&A).

• The work of Sir Don McCullin – regarded as one of Britain’s greatest living photographers and perhaps best known as a photojournalist and war correspondent – is the subject of a new show opening at Tate Britain next Tuesday. Don McCullin features more than 250 photographs dating from the 1950s – when he started documenting the community in his native Finsbury Park – to 2017, when he visited Syria to document the destruction undertaken by the so-called Islamic State. Among the iconic photographs on show are The Guvnors, a portrait of a notorious local gang in Finsbury Park which launched his career as a photojournalist in 1958, Shell-shocked US Marine, The Battle of Hue (1968), Starving Twenty Four Year Old Mother with Child, Biafra (1968), Northern Ireland, The Bogside, Londonderry (1971), and The theatre on the Roman city of Palmyra, partly destroyed by Islamic State fighters (2017). Also on show are photographs depicting the changing social conditions in the UK, landscapes and still lifes as well as the photographer’s magazine spreads, contact sheets, McCullin’s helmet and the Nikon camera which took a bullet for him in Cambodia. Runs until 6th May. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.tate.org.uk.

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This Week in London – Edward Burne-Jones at Tate Britain; Fictional pirates at V&A Museum of Childhood; and, British Museum’s new Islamic gallery…

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• Two celebrated series of paintings by Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones have been brought together for the first time in their entirety in a new exhibition at Tate Britain. The large scale works known as The Briar Rose (c1890) and the unfinished Perseus series (started in 1875) – the artist’s most famous narrative cycles – are at the centre of a new exhibition, Edward Burne-Jones: Pre-Raphaelite Visionary, which opened at the gallery yesterday. The Briar Rose features four canvasses – shown in a museum setting together for the first time – which illustrate the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty while the Perseus cycle, commissioned by then-MP and future PM Arthur Balfour, was intended to be 10 large scale oil paintings retelling the ancient myth of Perseus but was only partly realised (the display includes four finished paintings and six full scale preparatory drawings). The other 150 works on show in this display – the first major Burne-Jones retrospective to be held in London in more than 40 years – include paintings, tapestries and stained glass panels. Among other highlights are the large scale paintings Love among the Ruins (1870-73) and The Wheel of Fortune (1883), the stained glass work, The Good Shepherd (1857-61), and altar piece The Adoration of the Magi (1861), drawings including Desiderium (1873), portraits such as those of Amy Gaskell (1893) and Lady Windsor (1893-95) and embroideries, illustrated books and large scale tapestries including The Arming and Departure of the Knights of the Round Table on the Quest for the Holy Grail (1890-1894) and the Adoration of the Magi (1894). Runs until 24th February. Admission charge applies. The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of talks and events. For more, see www.tate.org.uk. PICTURE: The Briar Wood 1874-84, oil paint on canvas, The Faringdon Collection Trust.

• Fictional pirates in popular culture are the subject of a new exhibition at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. A Pirate’s Life For Me explores the origins and characters of fictional pirates through more than 80 objects including David Munrow’s unpublished play Barnacle Bill, toys designed by Playmobil (exhibition sponsor) and Lego, the first ever painting of Captain Pugwash (pictured), six 18th century Spanish doubloons and the original illustration of the costume design for Captain Hook for the first ever theatrical production of Peter Pan in 1904. Young visitors to the exhibition are invited to take a journey starting at a seaside tavern where they will find a mysterious map which leads on to a pirate boutique, large scale pirate ship and tropical “treasure island”. The exhibition runs until 22nd April. Admission is free. For more, see www.vam.ac.uk/moc/whats-on. PICTURE: Framed painting of Captain Pugwash, painted by John Ryan, 1950, oil on board, © John Ryan Estate.

• The British Museum’s new Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World opened to the public last week with a display featuring a “comprehensive presentation of the Islamic world through art and material culture” including everything from architectural fragments of a Persian port city and courtly treasures of intricate craftsmanship to rich textiles from the Ottoman Empire and contemporary art. Among the objects on show, which cover the period from the 7th century to the present day, are the 14th century illustrated Persian epic, Shahnama (Book of Kings), and the 16th-century Indian Mughal emperor Akbar’s Hamzanama (Adventures of Hamza), elaborate 19th-century mother-of-pearl inlaid wooden Turkish bath clogs, a brightly decorated Uzbek woman’s robe with Russian lining and 21 stones, an installation of 21 paintings by Idris Khan created in response to the new gallery. A series of free public events is being held to mark the opening. Located in Rooms 42-43. The opening follows the reopening late last month of the Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese Galleries showing off some 430 artworks and artefacts from the museum’s Japanese collection. They included several newly acquired objects, such as a Edo period complete set of Samurai armour bearing the crest of the More clan and Time Waterfall – panel #8 (Blue), a contemporary digital artwork by Miyajima Tatsuo which will greet people as they enter. Found in Rooms 92-94. Admission is free. For more, see www.britishmuseum.org.
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This Week in London – WWI impact on art explored; recalling Windrush; ‘Sounds Like London’; and, John Thelwall commemorated…

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• Marking 100 years since the end of World War I, a new exhibition opening at the Tate Britain on Tuesday explores the immediate impact of the war on British, German and French art including an examination of how artists responded to Europe’s new physical and psychological scars. Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One features more than 150 works spanning the period from 1916 to 1932 by artists including George Grosz, Fernand Léger and CRW Nevinson. They range from battlefield landscapes and images of soldiers’ graves – such as William Orpen’s A Grave in a Trench (1917) and Paul Jouve’s Tombe d’un soldat serbe a Kenali (1917) – to sculptural public memorials commemorating the conflict by the likes of Käthe Kollwitz, André Mare and Charles Sargeant Jagger and more personal memorials created using battlefield relics like shrapnel and mortar shells as well as images depicting the wounded and disabled in the post-war world such as George Grosz’s Grey Day (1921) and Otto Dix’s Prostitute and Disabled War Veteran (1923). The display also features works relating to the birth of dada and surrealism – among those featured are Hannah Höch’s data photomontages – and looks at how the rebuilding of post war society inspired artists like Georges Braque, Christian Schad and Winifred Knights to return to classicism and tradition while pushing others, like Léger, Paul Citroen and Nevinson to create visions of a technological future. Opening on 5th June, it runs until 16th September at the Millbank site. For more, see www.tate.org.uk. PICTURE: George Grosz (1893-1959), Grey Day (1921), Oil paint on canvas, 1150 x 800 mm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie. Acquired by the Federal State of Berlin. © Estate of George Grosz, Princeton, N.J. 2018.

• The story of Jamaican feminist poet Una Marson – the first black woman employed by the BBC, Trinidadian JJ Thomas’ scathing rebuttal of English colonialism, and, manuscripts of Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island are among highlights of a new exhibition at the British Library. Windrush: Songs in a Strange Land marks 70 years since the MV Empire Windrush first carried hundreds of migrants to London and explores why they came, what they left behind and how they came to shape Britain. The free exhibition in the library’s Entrance Hall on Euston Road, which opens Friday, also features Benjamin Zephaniah’s poem What Stephen Lawrence Has Taught Us, personal reflections from some of the first Caribbean nurses to join the NHS and sounds of the Caribbean including jazz to calypso music. Runs until 21st October. For more, see www.bl.uk.

• Join in a celebration of London’s ‘grassroots music’ in June. Sounds Like London features more than 200 gigs across the capital including a series of gigs aimed at raising money for the Music Venue Trust’s Emergency Response service which supports grassroots music venues threatened by closure, 11 ‘Airbnb Concerts’ and X-pose, an event showcasing the capital’s leading deaf musicians and DJs. The full programme of events can be found at www.london.gov.uk/sounds-like-london.

• The political orator, writer and elocutionist John Thelwall (1764-1834) has been commemorated with an English Heritage Blue Plaque located on the site of his pioneering institution of elocution. Thelwall, described as one of the most popular and effective orators of his day and known as a champion of free speech and universal suffrage as well as being a fierce critic of the French Revolution, opened his ‘Seminary for the cultivation of the science and practice of elocution, and the cure of impediments of speech’ at 40 Bedford Place in Bloomsbury in 1806. The Grade II-listed property, now in use as a hotel, was newly built at the time. The institution remained at the site for seven years before moving to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. For more, see www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/

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This Week in London – ‘Picturing Forgotten London’; 1968 recalled; and, a posthumous VC newly on display…

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• From coaching inns to horse markets, riverside mansions to gin palaces – the ‘lost’ buildings of London form the focus of a new exhibition which opens at the City of London Corporation’s London Metropolitan Archives in Clerkenwell on Monday. Picturing Forgotten London features drawings, engravings, photographs, maps, films and contemporary recollections displayed under themes including entertainment, food, commerce and trade, and transport. Through the exhibition, visitors will discover frost fairs (pictured), ‘open-shout’ trading floors, pleasure gardens, almshouses, cabmen’s shelters, dockyards, farms and a 1960s supermarket. Among the highlights are a look at the notorious Westminster neighbourhood known as Devil’s Acre and images of such lost landmarks as Euston Arch and Crystal Palace as well as Geoffrey Fletcher’s observational drawings of 60s and 70s London and a large scale reproduction of an 1867 illustrated map of public buildings, theatres, music halls and other landmarks known as The Strangers Guide. Admission is free. Runs until 31st October. For more, follow this link. PICTURE: Courtesy of the City of London Corporation’s London Metropolitan Archives.

• Marking 50 years since a series of significant protests took place around the world, a new display at Tate Britain in Millbank shows how artists responded to what it calls a “watershed moment in political and social history”. London: 1968 features a series of iconic agin-prop posters by the Camden Poster Workshop who moved their studio into the London School of Economics during the student occupation in October. They provide a visual record of some of the key issues of the time including industrial strikes, the Vietnam War, and civil rights movements in Ireland, America and South Africa. There’s also a Patricia Holland film looking at the occupation of the Hornsey School of Art and work by radical artists such as Barry Flanagan, Richard Long, Joseph Beuys and Mario Merz who all participated in a landmark exhibition at London’s ICA in 1969. The display, which is free to see, coincides with another free display at Tate Modern – 1968: Protest and the Photobook – which brings together politically engaged photobooks made during this period. London: 1968 runs until 31st October. For more, see www.tate.org.uk.

• A posthumous Victoria Cross awarded to Corporal Bryan Budd for bravery in Afghanistan has gone on display at the Imperial War Museum London in Lambeth. Corporal Budd, who served in the 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, was awarded the VC on 14th December, 2006, for two separate acts of gallantry in Helmand Province – the first in an incident on 27th July that year when he initiated a daring attack on the enemy in order to evacuate a wounded comrade, and the second, on 20th August, when he led a surprise attack on a Taliban position, killing several enemy but sustaining wounds from which he died. The VC, which was purchased by Lord Ashcroft, is the most recent now in his collection – prior to its acquisition the most recent he had was awarded to Sergeant Ian McKay in October, 1982, for gallantry during the Falklands War. For more, see www.iwm.org.uk.

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What’s in a name?…Horseferry Road…

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There’s no prizes for guessing that this Westminster road, which runs from Greycoat Place to Millbank and Lambeth Bridge, in pre-bridge days led down to a horse ferry across the Thames.

The ferry was, in fact, the only licensed horse ferry along the river and did quite a trade in conveying horses and their riders as well as carriages across the river. Mentions of the ferry date back to medieval times but it’s suggested there may have been a ford here back as far as the Roman era.

The income from the ferry went to the Archbishop of Canterbury (his official London residence lay across the river at Lambeth). So lucrative were the ferry rights that when Westminster Bridge was built in the mid 18th-century, the archbishop was paid £3,000 in compensation.

There are a number of famous figures associated with the ferry – Princess Augusta, later the mother of King George III, reportedly used it on the way to her wedding in 1736, and almost 50 years before that, the ferry pier is said to have been the starting point for King James II’s flight from England in 1689.

There are also a couple of high profile disasters associated with the horse ferry – Archbishop Laud’s belongings apparently sank to the bottom when the ferry overturned in 1633 and  Oliver Cromwell’s coach was apparently lost during a similar incident in 1656 – both events were apparently seen as bad omens (not to mention expensive).

Horseferry Road, meanwhile, is these days home to government buildings including Horseferry House and the City of Westminster Magistrate’s Court, as well as the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and, since the mid 1990s, Channel 4’s HQ.

Horseferry Road was also the location of the Australian Imperial Force’s administrative HQ during World War I and it was in this thoroughfare that Phyllis Pearsall was living when she conceived the London A to Z.

PICTURE: Top – Lambeth Bridge, site of the horse ferry which gives Horseferry Road its name/Right – Horseferry Road (Tagishsimon, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

 

10 of London’s modern icons…6. Millbank Tower…

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The first building in London to exceed the height of St Paul’s Cathedral, the 118 metre (387 foot) high Millbank Tower opened in 1963.

Said to have been inspired by the works of Modernist German-American architect Mies van der , the 32 storey building, located on the river just south of Westminster, was designed by Ronald Ward and Partners.

It was originally built as the headquarters of the engineering firm, the Vickers Group (hence its original moniker of Vickers Tower) and the Legal and General Assurance Society.

The glass walled building, which features a 31 storey tower atop a two storey podium, only held the title of London’s tallest building briefly – in 1965 it was overtaken by the Post Office Tower.

Now Grade II-listed, it was famously the headquarters of the Labour Party between the mid-Nineties and early Noughties – it was from here that it ran its 1997 general election campaign which saw the election of Tony Blair to the office of Prime Minister.

The Conservative Party has also been a tenant (although in this case of the complex to which the building is attached) as has the United Nations and numerous government agencies. The bulding has also appeared in episodes of Dr Who.

The building was recently the subject of an application for it to be redeveloped into a hotel and luxury apartments.

PICTURES: Top – David Curran (licensed under CC BY 2.0); Right – Łukasz Czyżykowski (licensed under CC BY 2.0)

A Moment in London’s History – The great flood of 1928…

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It was 90 years ago this month – 6th and 7th January, 1928 – that the River Thames flooded disastrously in what was the last major flood in central London.

Fourteen people are reported to have died and some 4,000 made homeless when the river burst its banks and spilled over the top of the Thames Embankment. Part of the Chelsea Embankment collapsed.

The flood – which was blamed on a range of factors including a sudden thaw upstream, heavy rain, a tidal surge and the impact of dredging – peaked at about 1.30am on 7th January at a height of 18 foot, three inches (5.56 metres) above ordnance datum.

The city saw extensive flooding on the City of London itself as well as in Southwark and as far upriver as Putney and Hammersmith and downriver in Greenwich and Woolwich as well as beyond.

Most of the deaths occurred when the embankment gave way near Lambeth Bridge and a wall of water swept through the slums on the Westminster side of the bridge with 10 people losing their lives.

Among the buildings flooded were the Tate Gallery at Millbank – where many works including some by JMW Turner were damaged, parts of the Houses of Parliament including Westminster Hall and the House of Commons, numerous Underground stations and Blackwall and Rotherhithe tunnels. The moat of the Tower of London, dry for 80 years, was filled.

While the flood waters receded by the end of the day, the damage took years to repair with many buildings in Millbank, the worst affected area, demolished. Embankments were raised in the wake of the flooding but it wasn’t until after the North Sea flood of 1953 that authorities took action to build the Thames Barrier (it was eventually completed in 1982).

Above – A marker recording the height of the flood outside Trinity Hospital in Greenwich (the plaque below right records the details).

This Week in London – Skating on Ice; Christmas trees worth seeing; and, Westminster Abbey’s new galleries…

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ice-skating-in-the-tower-moat• London’s obsession with ice-skating is the subject of an exhibition which opened at the Museum of London earlier this month. Skating on Ice looks at the history of the popular pastime, from the 12th century – when locals are described strapping animals bones to their feet to skate on ice at Moorfields – across the centuries (and the developments that went with them) to today. Among the artefacts on show is an 1839 oil painting by J Baber depicting skaters on the Serpentine in Hyde Park, sketches from the London Illustrated News showing a rescue operation to recover the 40 of some 40 skaters who plunged beneath the ice in Regent’s Park on 15th January, 1867, a navy blue gabardine skirt suit from Fortnum & Mason dating from the 1930s and a series of skates, ranging from some made of animal bones through to a pair of Victorian racing skates known as Fen Runners and a pair of ice skates used from the late 1930s by Londoner Christina Greenberry at Streatham Ice Arena. Runs until 8th February. Entry is free. See www.museumoflondon.org.uk for more. (Pictured – ice-skating in the Tower of London moat).

• Christmas is looming and so, if you haven’t been out and about already, here’s five Christmas trees worth seeing over the coming few days (excluding the obvious one in Trafalgar Square):

  • Covent Garden. Always a glittering treat (this year complete with virtual prizes!).
  • St Pancras International. A rather odd design this year, this 100 foot tall tree is inspired by the Cirque du Soleil show Amaluna and lights up every time a donation is made to Oxfam.
  • Granary Square, Kings Cross. Looking like a Christmas tree frozen inside an ice-cube, this seven metre high installation – Fighting fire with ice cream – by British artist Alex Chinneck features some 1,200 lights.
  • Tate Britain, Millbank. An upside down tree, designed by Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshiary.
  • Connaught Hotel, Mount Street, Mayfair. Designed by British sculptor Antony Gormley, this 57 foot tall tree features a trunk transformed into a pillar of light.

• Prince Charles last week unveiled the foundation stone for a tower that will take visitors to Westminster Abbey into the institution’s new museum and galleries. The tower is being built outside Poet’s Corner – between the 13th century Chapter House and 16th-century Henry VII’s Lady Chapel – and will be the principal entrance to the medieval triforium, which has never before been opened to the public and which house the proposed The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries. The tower and galleries, costing almost £23 million, will be the most significant addition to the abbey since Nicholas Hawksmoor’s west towers were completed in 1745. The galleries, which will be located 70 feet above the abbey’s floor, are due to open in summer 2018, and will display treasures from the abbey’s history as well as offering magnificent views of Parliament Square and the Palace of Westminster. To help meet the cost of the new galleries, the abbey has launched a #makehistory campaign asking for public donations to the project. For more, see www.westminster-abbey-galleries.org/Content/Filler.

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This Week in London – Turner back at the Tate; another Great Fire exhibition; and, Heroes and Villains…

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• Some of painter JMW Turner’s greatest works have returned to the Tate Britain – home of the largest collection of the artist’s works – where they have been put into a new free display. The works, which include Norham castle – Sunrise (c1845), Peace – Burial at Sea (exhibit 1842) and The Dogani, San Giorgio (exhibit 1842), have travelled more than 12,000 miles and been seen by more than 750,000 people in the UK, US and Canada as part of The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free. They now form part of a new display of more than 100 works spread over eight rooms of the Tate Britain’s Clore Gallery. The three central spaces of the gallery present an overview of the major paintings Turner exhibited during his lifetime – his Self-Portrait (c1799), which will feature on the Bank of England’s new £20 note, is among works shown here – while four smaller galleries located to the sides will show themed groups of work. One brings together scenes from the artist’s British travels and another those from his European jaunts while the final two show the artist’s works on paper and a group of “radical late works” found in his studio after his death. For more, see www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain

• A new exhibition exploring the Great Fire of London to mark its 350th anniversary opens at the Guildhall Library in the City of London on Monday. That Dreadful Fire: The Hand of God, a Great Wind and a Very Dry Season explores the story through the collections of the Guildhall Library, including English and foreign accounts, sermons and public records. Runs until 30th November. For more and walks and talks, see www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/guildhall-library/events-exhibitions/Pages/the-dreadful-fire.aspx.

• On Now: Heroes and Villains. This exhibition at the Cartoon Museum in Bloomsbury features art “depicting real life, the cartoon and comic world that highlights those we love and those we love to hate”. Featuring political cartoons, cartoon and comic strips, and caricatures, including some selected by celebrities and members of the public, it runs until 30th October. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.cartoonmuseum.org.

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This Week in London – Photography and art at the Tate; punk’s 40th birthday; and, Sunday dome openings at St Paul’s…

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proserpine• The “dynamic dialogue” between British painters and photographers is the subject of a new exhibition which opened at Tate Britain in Millbank this week. Painting with Light: Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Modern Age features almost 200 works, revealing their common influences and showing how photography adapted many of the “Old Master traditions” to create new works. Among those whose works are featured in the exhibition are everyone from David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson to JMW Turner, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rosetti and photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Highlights include examples of three-dimensional photography which used models and props to recreate popular works of the time, including a previously unseen private album in which the Royal Family re-enact famous paintings. Runs until 25th September in the Linbury Galleries. For more, see www.tate.org.uk. PICTURE: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882),  Proserpine 1874. Tate.

• The 40th anniversary of punk is being commemorated in a new exhibition which opens at the British Library tomorrow. Punk 1976-78 traces the impact of punk from its roots in the French Situationist movement and New York City art-rock scene through to the rise and fall of the Sex Pistols and looks at the impact punk had on music, fashion and design in the mid-Seventies. Located in the library’s Entrance Hall Gallery, the free display – which includes materials from the UK’s biggest punk-related archive held at Liverpool John Moores University – features a rare copy of the Sex Pistol’s God Save the Queen single, fanzines such as the first punk fanzine Sniffin’ Glue, flyers, posters and gig tickets from venues including the Roxy Club, Covent Garden and Eric’s Club, audio recordings, and original record sleeves such as John Peel’s personal copy of the Undertones’ single Teenage Kicks. There’s a full calendar of events to accompany the exhibition including John Lydon’s only live interview of the year. Runs until 2nd October. For more, see www.bl.uk/events/punk-1976-78.

• Climb St Paul Cathedral’s dome on special Sunday openings during May. And in order not to disturb Sunday services, visitors who wish to climb to the dome’s Stone Gallery and Golden Gallery will see parts of the cathedral not normally open to the public as they enter through a not-normally used side door and climb 22 extra steps. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.stpauls.co.uk.

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This Week in London – Seminal moments in Shakespearean performance; Maria Merian’s Butterflies; and, British conceptual art…

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ShakespearesFirstFolio1623BritishLibraryPhotobyClareKendall• It’s the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death (in case you missed that), and among the many events marking the occasion comes a major exhibition at the British Library focusing on 10 key performances that it says have made the Bard the “cultural icon” he is today. Shakespeare in Ten Acts, which opens on Friday, focuses on performances which may not be the most famous but which represent key moments in shaping his legacy. They span the period the first performance of Hamlet at the Globe theatre in around 1600 to a radical interpretation of the same play from US theatre company The Wooster Group in 2013. Among the exhibition highlights are a human skull which was given to the actress Sarah Bernhardt by writer Victor Hugo (and which she used as Yorik’s skull when she played Hamlet in 1899), a dress worn by Vivien Leigh playing Lady Macbeth in the 1955 production of Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the only surviving play script written in the Bard’s own hand and rare printed editions including Shakespeare’s First Folio and the earliest printed edition of Hamlet from 1603 (one of only two copies in the world). The exhibition, which runs until 6th September, is accompanied by a season of events. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.bl.uk. PICTURE: Shakespeare’s First Folio 1623 British Library Photo by Clare Kendall.

• Still talking exhibitions commemorating Shakespeare’s death and a manuscript of William Boyce’s Ode to the Memory of Shakespeare will be on display at The Foundling Museum’s Handel Gallery from tomorrow. The work, which was composed in 1756, was performed annually at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. The manuscript, the first page of which was thought to be lost until it was acquired in 2006, formerly belonged to Samuel Arnold, who compiled the first complete edition of Handel’s works. Runs at the Bloomsbury-based museum until 30th May. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk.

• Exquisite watercolours depicting the natural world go on show in The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace from tomorrow. Maria Merian’s Butterflies features 50 works produced by the eighteenth century German artist and entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian. The works – many of which record the flora and fauna of the then Dutch colony of Suriname in South America, were published in the 1706 work Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname) and partially printed, partially hand-painted versions of the plates were purchased by King George III for his library at Buckingham House (later Buckingham Palace). As well as insects, the works – which were based on a visit Merian made to the colony in 1699, depict lizards, crocodiles and snakes as well as tropical plants such as the pineapple. The exhibition runs until 9th October. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.royalcollection.org.uk/visit/the-queens-gallery-buckingham-palace.

• The evolution of conceptual art in Britain is the subject of a new exhibition at Tate Britain in Milbank  Conceptual Art in Britain 1964-1979 features 70 works by 21 artists and positions conceptual art “not as a style but rather a game-changing shift in the way we think about art, how it is made and what it is for”. Highlights include Michael Craig-Martin’s An Oak Tree (1973) and Roelof Louw’s Soul City (Pyramid of Oranges) (1987) as well as Victor Burgin’s Possession (1976), Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document (1974-78) and Conrad Atkinson’s Northern Ireland 1968 – May Day 1975 (1975-76). Admission charge applies. Runs until 29th August. For more, see www.tate.org.uk.

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Treasures of London – ‘Locking Piece’…

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Locking-Piece

A Henry Moore original, Locking Piece was created in 1963-64 and first located on its current site on Riverwalk Gardens at Millbank, site of the former Millbank Penitentiary, four years later. The bronze sculpture consists of, as the name suggests, two interlocking pieces. There’s a couple of conflicting stories about where the idea for the work came from – in one, Moore said he was visiting a gravel pit near his home at Perry Green in Hertfordshire where he was playing with two pebbles which suddenly locked together (and hence came the idea of a sculpture of two interlocking pieces); and in another, Moore said the idea came from a bone fragment featuring a socket and joint found in his garden. Originally loaned to Westminster City Council, in 1978 the sculpture was given to the Tate Gallery which subsequently decided to leave the piece in situ. It’s one of numerous Moore works in London. For more on Henry Moore’s London works, see www.henry-moore.org/works-in-public/world/uk/london.

This Week in London – Alice in Wonderland’s 150th; Remembering Julia Margaret Cameron; and, Imperial Britain’s artistic influence…

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John-Tennial-illustration• A new exhibition has opened at the British Library in Kings Cross to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The free exhibition explores the story of how the tale came to be written and features Lewis Carroll’s handwritten manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (complete with 37 illustrations by Carroll) as well as an entry from Carroll’s diary in which he relates how he first came to tell the story to Alice Liddell and her sisters on the “golden afternoon” of 4th July, 1862. Other highlights include two first editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with illustrations by Sir John Tenniel (including the suppressed first edition; suppressed because Carroll and Tenniel were unhappy with the quality of the illustrations), the first movie adaption of the story – a 1903 silent film, early Alice memorabilia, and three new computer game concepts. The exhibition, which runs until 17th April, is accompanied by a series of events and a pop-up shop. For more, see www.bl.uk/events/alice-in-wonderland-exhibition. PICTURE: Sir John Tenniel’s illustration of Alice and the Cheshire Cat from the 1866 edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll © The British Library Board.

• An exhibition featuring more than 100 photographs by celebrated 19th century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron opens at the V&A on Saturday to mark the bicentenary of her birth. The display at the South Kensington museum offers a retrospective of her work and looks at her relationship with the V&A’s founding director Sir Henry Cole who presented the only exhibition of her work during her lifetime in 1865. Her relationship with the museum goes back to the very start of her work – within two years of being given a camera by her daughter she was selling and giving photographs to what was then the South Kensington Museum while, in 1868 she was granted the use of two rooms at the institution to use as a portrait studio, becoming the museum’s first artist-in-residence. The exhibition features original prints acquired from Cameron as well as a selection of her letters to Cole, his 1865 diary, the first photograph identified as being of her studio and a variety of her portraits in which family, friends and servants posed as characters from Biblical, historical and allegorical stories. The free exhibition runs until 21st February. For more, see www.vam.ac.uk/juliamargaretcameron.

• The influence of the British Empire on art over the past 400 years is the subject of a new exhibition which opened in Tate Britain’s Linbury Galleries yesterday. Artist and Empire will showcase art from across the empire – including the British Isles, North America, the Caribbean, the Pacific, Asia and Africa – and features some 200 paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures and artefacts. These include paintings by the likes of George Stubbs and Anthony Van Dyck through to Indian miniatures, Maori objects, and the works of contemporary artists such as Sonia Boyce and Judy Watson. Runs until 10th April at the Milbank gallery. The exhibition is free. For more, see www.tate.org.uk.

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This Week in London – Tall ships at Greenwich; immersive art at Tate Britain; and, ‘Nature’s Bounty’ at Kew…

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• It’s all about big masted ships at Greenwich this Bank Holiday weekend as up to 15 ships drop anchor at the Royal Greenwich Tall Ships Festival. Two tall ships, the Dar Mlodziezy and Santa Maria Manuela, will be moored on Tall Ships Island in the river at Maritime Greenwich (accessed via MBNA Thames Clippers) while an additional 13 ships will be taking people on cruises from their base at Royal Arsenal Woolwich (tickets can be booked via Sail Royal Greenwich). On Saturday, a free family festival will be held in Woolwich Town Centre and at Royal Arsenal Riverside with music, roving entertainers, food and other activities including a fireworks display on the river at 10pm (fireworks can also be seen on Thursday, Friday and Sunday nights on the river at Maritime Greenwich at around 9.15pm). For more information – including how and where to book tickets, see www.royalgreenwich.gov.uk/tallships2015.

• An immersive art project allowing visitors to engage with paintings in a multi sensory experience opened at Tate Britain on Milbank yesterday. Tate Sensorium has won this year’s annual IK Prize, presented by the Tate and supported by the Porter Foundation, awarded for a project which uses innovative technology to enable the public to explore the gallery’s collection in new ways. The display features four works by celebrated figures in 20th century painting: Francis Bacon’s Figure in a Landscape (1945), David Bomberg’s In the Hold (c 1913-1914), Richard Hamilton’s Interior II (1964) and John Latham’s Full Stop (1961). As part of the experience, which has been produced by creative studio Flying Object in conjunction with a cross-disciplinary team, visitors are offered the chance to wear biometric measurement wristbands to record the emotional impact of the experience. Admission to exhibition in gallery 34 is free but tickets are limited. Runs until 20th September. For more, see www.tate.org.uk/sensorium.

• A series of detailed paintings of fruit, vegetables and edible plants from all over the world goes on show at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens on Saturday. Nature’s Bounty features works from the Shirley Sherwood and Kew collections including works from the 19th century text, Fleurs, Fruits et Feuillages Chosis de la Flore et de la Pomona de L’ile de Java drawn by botanical artist Berthe Hoola Van Nooten as well as works from the Shirley Sherwood and Kew collections. The exhibition runs until 31st January. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.kew.org.

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This Week in London – Audrey Hepburn, Barbara Hepworth and Joseph Cornell…

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It’s all galleries this week- not a bad way to escape the heat!

NPG_959_1400_AudreyHepburnb• Thirty-five photographs of late actor Audrey Hepburn from the personal collection of her sons form the centrepiece of a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon, which opens today and is the first UK exhibition to be organised with the Audrey Hepburn Estate, explores the life and career of the celebrated film star. Among the images lent by her sons Sean Hepburn Ferrer and Luca Dotti are a portrait of the actor performing a dance recital at the age of 13 in 1942, a photograph of her taken while filming The Nun’s Story in Africa in 1958, and a behind-the-scenes photograph of Hepburn during a costume fitting for the 1954 film Sabrina. Other images in the display include those taken during the shooting of numerous films ranging from 1955’s War and Peace to 1967’s Two for the Road as well as vintage magazine covers. Runs until 18th October. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.npg.org.uk/hepburn. PICTURE: Audrey Hepburn by Philippe Halsman for LIFE magazine, 1954. © Philipe Halsman/Magnum Photos.

• The works of Barbara Hepworth, one of the UK’s greatest artists, are on show at the Tate Britain on Millbank. Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World features more than 100 works, from major carvings and bronzes to less familiar pieces. Juxtaposed with works of other great artists – including paintings, prints and drawings of her second husband Ben Nicholson, they include her earliest surviving carvings, her more purely abstract works of the late 1930s, wooden sculptures made while Hepworth lived in Cornwall in the mid-1940s and four large carvings made in the mid-1950s in African hardwood guarea which, reunited for this exhibition, arguably represent the highpoint of her carving career. There are also bronzes from her 1965 retrospective at the Kroller-Muller Museum. Runs until 25th October. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.tate.org.uk.

• American artist Joseph Cornell’s art is the subject of an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly which opens on Saturday. Joseph Cornell: Wanderlust, organised in conjunction with Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna, features about 80 of the artist’s box constructions, assemblages, collages and films including rarely seen masterpieces lent from public and private collections in the US, Europe and Japan. Arranged in four sections, the display features works from his major series including Museums, Aviaries, Soap Bubble Sets, Palaces, Medici Slot Machines, Hotels and Dovecotes. Runs until 27th September. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.royalacademy.org.uk.

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This Week in London – The Waddesdon Bequest has a new home; history painted at the Tate; and, early release NYE tickets…

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Holy-Thorn-Reliquary• The Waddesdon Bequest, a collection of medieval and Renaissance treasures left to the British Museum by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild in 1898, has a new home. Redisplayed in a new gallery which opened at the museum last week, the collection features the Christian relic known as Holy Thorn Reliquary (pictured) – a concocotion of gold, enamel and gems set around a thorn supposedly taken from Christ’s Crown of Thorns, the Lyte Jewel – a diamond-studded locket made in London in 1610-11 to hold a miniature of King James I and presented by the king to Thomas Lyte as thanks for a genealogy he created representing the king as a descendant of the Trojan Brutus, and the Cellini Bell – cast from silver in Nuremberg around 1600 and later displayed by Horace Walpole at his west London villa in Strawberry Hill. The bequest collection, which must always be displayed in a room of its own under its original terms, was first displayed at Baron Ferdinand’s country home of Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire (now a National Trust property) and moved to the museum after his death. The redisplay reconnects the collection with its past at the manor and the history of the museum – the room where it is now displayed, Room 2a, was the museum’s original Reading Room and part of a neo-classical suite of rooms designed by Robert Smirke in 1820. It has been given the “most ambitious digital treatment” of any permanent gallery in the institution. Admission is free. For more, see www.britishmuseum.org.

• The “enduring significance and emotional power” of British history painting is under examination in a new exhibition which opened at Tate Britain on Millbank last week. Fighting History features everything from the large scale works of 18th century painters John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West through to 20th century and contemporary works by Richard Hamilton and Jeremy Deller and looks at how they reacted, captured and interpreted key historical events. Works on show include Singleton Copley’s 1778 work The Collapse of the Earl of Chatham in the House of Lords, 7 July, William Frederick Yeames’ 1877 work Amy Robsart, John Minton’s 1952 work The Death of Nelson and Deller’s 2001 work The Battle of Orgreave, a re-enactment of 1984 protest in South Yorkshire. The exhibition also compares traditional and contemporary renderings of events from scripture, literature and the classical world and features a room dedicated to interpretations of the great Biblical flood of Noah. Runs until 13th September. Admission charges apply. For more, see www.tate.org.uk.

• A limited number of early release tickets to London’s New Year’s Eve celebrations will go on sale from noon tomorrow (Friday, 19th June). The tickets, the bulk of which will be released in September, cost £10 a person with the proceeds being used to cover costs including printing and infrastructure. As was the case last year, people without tickets will not be able to access the event. To get hold of tickets, head to www.london.gov.uk/nye.

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This Week in London – Duke of Wellington on show; wartime City bank recreated in Warwickshire; and early photographs at the Tate…

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ArthurWellesley• The Duke of Wellington’s political and military career as well as his personal life is being explored in an exhibition running at the National Portrait Gallery off Trafalgar Square until August. Wellington: Triumphs, Politics and Passions features 59 portraits and other works including a rarely seen portrait of the Iron Duke painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence and commissioned by Sarah, Countess of Jersey, a year after Wellington had become Prime Minister. The portrait (pictured) remains unfinished – the state it was in when Lawrence died in 1830 – and, held in a private collection, hasn’t been shown in public for any significant period until now. The exhibition also includes a John Hoppner portrait of the duke as a young soldier, a daguerreotype taken by Antoine Claudet on Wellington’s 75th birthday in 1844 and drawings by Lawrence of Wellington’s wife, Kitty. The exhibition – which is part of the commemorations marking 200 years since the Battle of Waterloo, runs until 7th June. Admission is free. For more see www.npg.org.uk. PICTURE: Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1829), © On loan to National Portrait Gallery by kind permission of Mr. & Mrs. Timothy Clode.

• Upton House is Warwickshire has turned the clock back to 1939 with a display dedicated to the time when the Bearstead family moved their City-based bank, M Samuel & Co, to their historic family mansion to escape the Blitz in London. Twenty-two bank staff took over the house, sleeping in shared dormitories and taking meals of rook pie in the home’s Long Gallery while secretaries typed surrounded by works of art. The National Trust has returned 12 rooms to their wartime look based on research conducted by 80 of the volunteers at the house. They’re filled with thousands of objects, from ration-book toothpaste to wartime toilet rolls, to recreate a wartime experience at the home. Outside an Anderson Shelter stands in the garden where heritage vegetables are being grown in an allotment. Visitors will also find out how 40 of the most precious works in the home were sent to a special storage facility in a Welsh slate mine to protect them. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.nationaltrust.org.uk/upton-house/

• On Now – Salt and Silver: Early Photography 1840-1860. This exhibition at Tate Britain in Millbank is the first major exhibition in Britain dedicated to salt prints, the earliest form of paper photography, and features 90 images including some of the best and rarest early photographs. The salt print technique was invented in Britain in the 1840s and 1850s and spread across the world, hence as well as portraits, still lifes and scenes from ‘modern life’, the images on show include from William Fox Talbot’s images of a Paris street to Nelson’s Column under construction, Linnaeus Tripe’s views of Puthu Mundapam in India and Auguste Salzmann’s studies of statues in Greece. Runs in the Linbury Galleries until 7th June. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.tate.org.uk.

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