Great River Race

This Week in London – Totally Thames underway; Open House London; monastic treasures from Kyiv; and, the Baa-Ewe Tapestry…

by exploringlondon
The River Thames winds through London. PICTURE: Sander Crombach/Unsplash

• Totally Thames, London’s month-long celebration of the River Thames, has kicked off with a programme featuring dozens of events along a 42-mile stretch of the river. Highlights include this weekend’s Great River Race, which takes place on Saturday, in which almost 300 crews compete across 21.6 miles from Millwall Slip to Richmond in the city’s largest river marathon. Also returning this weekend is the St Katharine Docks Classic Boat Festival, now in its 17th year, which brings together more than 50 restored historic vessels, including Thames sailing barges, Dunkirk ‘Little Ships’ and steam tugs, as well as live music, talks and family activities. This Saturday also sees Sing for Water celebrate its 25th anniversary by bringing together more than 300 singers from over 40 choirs in support of WaterAid, in the Bargehouse Courtyard behind the OXO Tower. Other events across the month include the Hands on History Mudlarking Programme in which visitors to three sites – the Roman Amphitheatre under Guildhall Art Gallery, St Paul’s Cathedral and London Museum Docklands – can meet experienced mudlarkers, handle archaeological artefacts and see some of the thousands of objects found preserved in the river. There’s also an exhibition, Lost and Found, featuring the work of photographer Henry Reichhold, and the chance to board the historic sailing barge Raybel which has been tranformed into a live cultural venue for the event with a programme of live music, talks and mini performances. For more, check out https://thamesfestivaltrust.org/whats-on/.

People attending Guildhall as part of the Open House Festival. PICTURE: ©Anna-Rose McChesney

• Open House London returns this coming week with a nine day program of events. The 35th edition of the festival, which runs from 12th to 20th September, again gives people the chance to enter hundreds of buildings normally closed to the public. Highlights this year, alongside tours of such regulars as 10 Downing Street, the BT Tower and Broadcasting House, include the Lloyd’s Building, which was designed by Richard Rogers and opened in 1996, recording studio Strongroom which has hosted everyone from Nick Cave and Radiohead to The Chemical Brothers and produced such hits as the Spice Girls’ Wannabee and Little Simz Sometimes I Might Be Introvert and the remains of London’s Roman basilica and forum beneath Leadenhall Market. There’s also the chance to step inside Wapping Hydraulic Power Station and the West Ham Pumping Station as well as a series of ‘festival neighbourhoods’ including in Fitzrovia, Bankside and Piccadilly and Jermyn Street as well as other openings right across London’s boroughs. For the full programme of events, head to programme.openhouse.org.uk.

‘Sacred Treasures from Kyiv’ at V&A South Kensington. PICTURE: © David Parry/V&A

• Monastic treasures from Ukraine go on display at the V&A in South Kensington for the first time from Monday. Sacred Treasures from Kyiv features 18th-century sacred objects on loan from Ukraine’s ‘Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra’ complex and includes seven objects including an Icon and a silver-bound altar Gospel, a diskos used to carry the Eucharist in Orthodox liturgy, and a silver gilded chalice depicting the crucifixion. The display marks the 975th anniversary of the founding of the Lavra monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is being accompanied by a programme of events. The display, which is free to view, can be seen until 17th September next year. For more, see www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/sacred-treasures-from-kyiv.

• A seven metre-long tapestry, inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry and featuring Shaun the Sheep and friends, has been unveiled at the Natural History Museum ahead of the release of the upcoming film Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom on 18th September. The Baa-Ewe Tapestry, which was unveiled by Tom Daley, will be on display at the museum until 1st November. Created by a team of 15 designers and textile specialists, it took more than 180 hours to design and craft and features lovingly stitched scenes inspired by the film. For more, head to https://www.nhm.ac.uk.

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This Week in London – Dr Livingstone’s beetles; the Great River Race; Snowdon at the NPG; and Foundlings at War…

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Beetle• From Dr Livingstone, I presume? A recently unearthed collection of beetles gathered together by Dr David Livingstone during his Zambezi expedition of 1858-64 will go on display in its original box at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington on Friday night. The specimens were found among the museum’s 10 million beetles by beetle curator Max Barclay who stumbled on an unusual box received from a private collector. The collector was later found out to be amateur entomologist Edward Young Western (1837-1924) who apparently bought the specimens from a member of Livingstone’s expedition. The 20 beetles found inside the box are believed to the only surviving specimens known to have been collected by Livingstone. The specimens will be on show as part of Science Uncovered, a free annual after hours event – part of European Researcher’s Night – which will take place at the museum between 3pm and 10.30pm Friday night. Other highlights of the night include the chance to extract DNA from strawberries and bananas, create your own earthquake and chat live with NASA about chasing asteroids. For more, see www.nhm.ac.uk/scienceuncovered. PICTURE: Giant Predatory Ground Beetle, Termophilum alternatum © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London.

• Totally Thames – the month long celebration of the great river – is going out with a bang this weekend with more than 300 crews expected to take part in the Great River Race. Running from Millwall to Ham in Surrey, the 21.6 mile long event attracts entries from across the globe. The first boats leave Millwall at 12.40pm. Head to the riverbank between Richmond and Ham at approximately 3.40pm to see the winners cross the line to a cannon broadside. For more on the Great River Race, see www.greatriverrace.co.uk. Other events on as part of Totally Thames this weekend include historic riverside walks – one focused on Brunel and another on London’s ports before the Great Fire of 1666 as well as exhibitions including Richmond’s River at Orleans Gallery House in Twickenham and your last chance to see Florentijn Hofman’s HippopoThames. For more on Totally Thames, see www.totallythames.org.

• Some of Snowdon’s most iconic images will be on show as part of a new exhibition opening at the National Portrait Gallery near Trafalgar Square on Friday. Snowdon: A Life in View will feature studio portraits spanning a period from the 1950s to the 1990s alongside images from Private View, Snowdon’s 1965 examination of the British art world, created in collaboration with art critic John Russell and then director of Whitechapel Gallery, Bryan Robertson. More than 40 black-and-white portraits are included in the display including some works acquired by the gallery last year. To be held in Room 37 and 37a of the ground floor Lerner Contemporary Galleries until 21st June. Admission is free. For more, see www.npg.org.uk.

• On Now: Foundlings at War: World War I. This display at the Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury reveals for the first time the stories of foundlings who fought as well as those of the mothers forced to leave their children at the hospital as a result of bereavement or abandonment of those serving abroad. A free digital ibook, The Foundlings at War: World War I, containing expanded background information was published to coincide with the opening of the display earlier this month and can be downloaded from iTunes. The exhibition is part of a major research project, Foundlings at War, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and is the first of several displays examining the institution’s historic links with the military. For more, see www.foundlingmuseum.co.uk.

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This Week in London – Prepare to celebrate the Thames; Auerback on show at the Tate; and, Jan van Huysum at Dulwich…

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• London’s month long celebration of the River Thames kicks off on Monday with a 30 day programme of events ranging from regattas and river races to foreshore archaeology, arts, music and community festivals and environmental and educational activities. Highlights of Totally Thames include the Mayor’s Thames Festival, which runs all month and includes new art, films and performances on the riverside as well as beach combing, bonfires, walks, talks and cruises, the Royal Greenwich Tall Ships Festival, which runs from 5th to 9th September and features the largest fleet of tall ships to visit London in 25 years, the Great River Race on 27th September which has attracted more than 300 crews from across the globe, Handel’s Fireworks Music and Illuminations taking place at Hampton Court Palace on 14th September and, taking place this weekend, The Big Thames Tidy, which sees water charity Thames21 hosting one of the biggest clean-ups the river has ever seen. We’ll be mentioning events in more details as the month unfolds. To see the full programme of events, head to www.totallythames.org.

• The most significant private collection of the paintings and drawings of Frank Auerbach – described as one of Britain’s “greatest living artists” – has gone on show at Tate Britain on Millbank. The works, which span the period from Auerbach’s student days in the late 1940s until 2007, were collected by the late artist Lucian Freud and hung in his London house until his death in 2011. They include portraits of Auerbach’s friends and relatives and landscapes of London. BP Spotlight – Frank Auerbach: Painting and Drawings from the Lucian Freud Estate is on display until 9th November. For more, see www.tate.org.uk.

• Now On: An Impossible Bouquet, Four Masterpieces by Jan van Huysum. This exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery features works by the 18th century Dutch artist taken from private collections as well as the Dulwich’s own painting and is aimed at showcasing the “artist’s ingenuity and astonishing ability to paint flowers, fruit and insects with minute attention to detail”. The exhibition only has a month to go – it closes on 28th September. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk.

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