Exploring Space

This Week in London – Marie Antoinette; ‘Theatre Picasso’, ‘Exploring Space’ at the Science Museum; and Talk Like A Pirate Day…

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Portrait de Marie-Antoinette à la rose, Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun © Château de Versailles, Dist. Grand Palais RMN / Christophe Fouin.

• The UK’s first exhibition to focus on the French Queen, Marie Antionette, opens at the V&A on Saturday. Marie Antoinette Style explores the dress and interiors adopted by the Queen, an early modern “celebrity”, during the final decades of the 18th century. It features some 250 objects including loans from Versailles which have never before been seen outside of France. There are personal items worn by the Queen including fragments of court dress, her silk slippers and jewels from her private collection as well as items from the Queen’s dinner service at the Petit Trianon, accessories and intimate items from her toilette case and even recreated scents from the court and a perfume which was favoured by the Queen. There also contemporary couture pieces by designers such as Moschino, Dior, Chanel, Erdem, Vivienne Westwood and Valentino and costumes, including shoes, made for screen, such as for Sofia Coppola’s Oscar winning film Marie Antoinette. The exhibition can be seen in Galleries 38 and 39 until 22nd March. Admission charge applies. For more, see vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/marie-antoinette.

Pablo Picasso, The Three Dancers (1925) Tate. © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2025.

• Around 50 works by famed artist Pablo Picasso have been brought together for a new exhibition at the Tate Modern to mark the centenary of the artist’s work The Three Dancers (1925). Staged by contemporary artist Wu Tsang and write and curator Enrique Fuenteblanca, Theatre Picasso explores aspects of performance in his works and features the Tate’s entire collection of Picassos which, alongside The Three Dancers, also includes Weeping Woman (1937) and Nude Woman in a Red Armchair (1932). There are also loans from key museums in France as well as prints, drawings, sculptures, textile works and collages. These include the wool and silk tapestry Minotaur (1935) which is being displayed in the UK for the first time. Accompanying the works is Henri-George Clouzot’s 1959 film The Mystery of􏰱Picasso. Admission charge applies. Runs until 12th April. For more, see

• A new free gallery revealing the stories behind space exploration opens at the Science Museum in South Kensington on Saturday. The gallery – Exploring Space – showcases iconic items from the history of space exploration including a chunk of Moon rock nicknamed ‘Great Scott’ which was collected in 1971, the Soyuz TMA-19M descent module that carried astronaut Tim Peake, and the Sokol KV-2 rescue suit worn by Helen Sharman in 1991. There are also new technologies from the space sector including prototype electric propulsion technology from Magdrive and the ‘rolly-polly’ LEV-2 Moon rover, the result of the first collaboration between a space agency (JAXA) and a toy company (Takara Tomy). For more, see www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/space.

British astronaut, Helen Sharman’s Sokol spacesuit made by Zvezda. Sharman wore this rescue suit during the space flight on board the SOYUZ-TM-12 and MIR spacecraft in May 1991. Space suit model number KV-2 No. 167.

• “Ahoy me hearties!” It’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day on Friday and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich is celebrating from Friday across the weekend with talks about everything from Barbary corsairs to sea shanties, character actors and two-for-one discounts on tickets to the Pirates exhibition. Visitors over the weekend who dress like a pirate will be in the chance to win prizes including Cutty Sark rig climb tickets, annual passes to the Old Royal Naval College, and a family tour of The Golden Hinde. And to brush-up on your pirate lingo, “Abbey-Lubber” means a lazy sailor avoiding work, and ‘Jack Ketch’ a hangman or executioner. For more, see rmg.co.uk/whats-on/national-maritime-museum/international-talk-pirate-day.

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This Week in London – ‘Making Egypt’ at the Young V&A; new memorial to humanitarian aid workers; and, Science Museum’s ‘Exploring Space’ gallery to close soon…

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Wooden Funerary Boat approx. 3000 years old. PICTURE: Courtesy of Chiddingstone Castle

• A new exhibition exploring how stories and images from ancient Egypt continue to influence art, design and popular culture today opens at the Young V&A in Bethnal Green on Saturday. Making Egypt is divided into three sections – Storytelling, Communicating and Making – and features more than 200 objects which, as well as ancient artifacts, include contemporary responses from jewellery and fashion designers, graphic novelists and ceramic artists throughout. Highlights include everything from a 4000-year-old small wooden painted model funerary boat and an amulet of Taweret, goddess of childbirth and fertility, dating from between 664 BC to 332 BC to a rare carved wooden scribe’s palette which was used to hold ink and brushes, and Egyptian faience shabtis dating from between 380 BC to 343 BC which represent just a handful of more than 300 small funerary figures discovered in the tomb of Djedhor. Runs until 2nd November. Admission charge applies. For more, see vam.ac.uk/young.

• A new plaque commemorating humanitarian aid workers has been unveiled in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral. Located near the memorial to Florence Nightingale, the plaque “celebrates the bravery of those who dedicate their lives to helping others and remembers those who have been murdered or injured while delivering humanitarian assistance”. Hand-carved by stonemason Martin Gwilliams, the plaque reads: “In celebration of Humanitarian Aid Workers. Helping those in need whoever and wherever they are. And in remembrance of those who have died in the pursuit of their calling.” The plaque is the first in the UK in a public space to honour humanitarian aid workers and their work in conflict zones and disaster-stricken areas around the world. For more, see www.stpauls.co.uk.

• After almost 40 years, the Science Museum’s ‘Exploring Space’ gallery at the South Kensington institution will partially close on 22nd April and fully close in early June as part of preparations for the museum’s new ‘Space’ gallery. Key objects on display include the Soyuz spacecraft that carried astronaut Tim Peake back to Earth, the spacesuit worn by Helen Sharman, the first Briton in space, during a 1991 spaceflight and a three-billion-year-old piece of the Moon. Other items include a British Black Arrow rocket and a United States Scout rocket suspended from the gallery’s ceiling, a RL10 rocket engine and a J-2 rocket engine which powered the Apollo astronauts to the Moon. For more, see www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

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