New Year’s Eve

This Week in London – The Krio people of Sierra Leone; photographer Tim Walker; blue plaques for Angela Carter and Martha Gellhorn; and, last chance to get NYE tickets…

by exploringlondon

• The history and culture of the Krio people of Sierra Leone are the subject of a new display opening at the Museum of London Docklands tomorrow. The Krios of Sierra Leone explores the dress, architecture, language, lifestyle, traditions and history of the Krio community with contemporary objects from Krio Londoners on show as well as items related to the history of British colonial rule of Sierra Leone from the museum’s collections. Highlights include a large carved wooden printing block dating from around 1800, known as a ’tillet block’, that bears the crest of the Sierra Leone Company, a silver entrée dish which was presented to Thomas Cole, acting colonial secretary of Sierra Leone and assistant superintendent of Liberated Africans, who was responsible for assisting people freed from slave ships when they arrived in the colony, and, a typical Krio dress ensemble wore by Krio women. The free exhibition can be seen until 27th September next year. For more, see www.museumoflondon.org.uk/krios.

• Portraits of everyone from Sir David Attenborough to actor Tilda Swinton are on show as part of the largest ever exhibition of the work of photographer Tim Walker at the V&A. The display, Tim Walker: Wonderful Things (pictured above), features more than 150 new works inspired by the V&A’s collections and boasts more than 300 objects, encompassing photographs and the objects that inspired them as well as images of some of the biggest names in fashion – Lily Cole, Lindsey Wixson, Stella Tennant and Alexander McQueen among them – and portraits of such luminaries as Margaret Atwood, David Hockney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Claire Foy, Saoirse Ronan, Kate Moss, and artist Grayson Perry. Runs until 8th March. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.vam.ac.uk.

• Writers Angela Carter and Martha Gellhorn were both commemorated with English Heritage Blue Plaques earlier this month. Carter, an award-winning novelist, spent the last 16 years of her life at the property at 107, The Chase, in Clapham, and it was there she often tutored her then-student Kazuo Ishiguro and received fellow writers like JG Ballard, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie. Meanwhile, Gellhorn, a war correspondent who reported on conflicts ranging from the Spanish Civil War to the Vietnam War, was commemorated with a blue plaque on her former top floor flat in Cadogan Square where she spent the last 28 years of her life. For more, see www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/.

• The final release of tickets for this year’s New Year’s Eve fireworks go on sale from midday on Friday. Those who wish to attend the fireworks in central London must purchase a ticket priced at £10. To sign up for ticket updates and more information go to www.london.gov.uk/nye

Send all items for inclusion to exploringlondon@gmail.com.

Happy New Year! (and the conclusion to our most popular (new) posts countdown for 2018)…

by exploringlondon

2019 is upon us so we at Exploring London would like to take the opportunity to wish all our readers a very Happy New Year! We look forward to bringing you fascinating new stories about London’s history and culture in the year to come.

Meanwhile, here are the two most popular (new) posts of 2018…

2. Treasures of London – The Great Hall at Eltham Palace…

1. A Moment in London’s History – The execution of the George, Duke of Clarence…

PICTURE: © ENGLAND’S HISTORIC CITIES (New Year’s Eve fireworks from 2014).

This Week in London – Oceanic art and British watercolours at the RA; a celebration of immigrant nurses from Barbados; and NYE tickets on sale…

by exploringlondon

• The first ever major survey of Oceanic art to be held in the UK opens at the Royal Academy in Piccadilly on Saturday. The exhibition – Oceania – brings together around 200 works created in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia and includes pieces from public and private collections spanning a period of more than 500 years. It’s being held to mark the 250th anniversary of the RA which was founded in 1768, the same year Captain James Cook set sail on the Endeavour on his first expedition to the Pacific. Highlights of the display, which is organised around three major themes – ‘Voyaging’, ‘Place-making’ and ‘Encounter’, include a 14th century wooden Kaitata carving, excavated in 1920, which is one of the oldest known objects to have been found in New Zealand as well as two Maori hoe (canoe paddles) collected during Cook’s first voyage, and a 19th century feather god image from the Hawaiian Islands likely to be have been collected on Cook’s third voyage. There’s also an 18th century mourning costume known as a Heva tupapau which was obtained in Tahiti in 1791, a rare Fijian late 18th or 19th century double-headed whale ivory hook, and Maori sculptor Tene Waitere’s Ta Moko panel (1896-99 – pictured) depicting male and female tattoos as well as a 19th century Nguzunguzu (prow ornament for a war canoe) featuring a pigeon and a never-before-exhibited ceremonial feast bowl measuring almost seven metres in length, both from the Solomon Islands. Runs in the Main Galleries until 10th December. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.royalacademy.org.uk. PICTURE: Tene Waitere, Ta Moko panel, 1896-99. Te Papa (ME004211) © Image courtesy of The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

• Meanwhile, in another exhibition at the Royal Academy, 25 British watercolours and drawings – including works from BNY Mellon’s corporate art collection – have gone on show in the Tennant Gallery. British Watercolours: From the Collection of BNY Mellon features the work of prominent Royal Academicians including Thomas Gainsborough, JMW Turner, John Constable and Sir David Wilkie. Highlights include an 1833 view of Hampstead Heath by Constable, Italian landscapes painted in the 1770s by Thomas Jones and John Robert Cozens, John Frederick Lewis’ unfinished Study of a Bedouin Arab (1840s) and an expressive depiction of Venice by John Ruskin in 1876. The British drawings and watercolours in the BNY Mellon collection were largely acquired in the 1980s. The exhibition is being held as part of the Royal Academy’s 250th anniversary. Admission is free. For more, see www.royalacademy.org.uk.

• A free exhibition focusing on one of pioneering groups of people migrating to Britain – the Bajan nurses from Barbados, is opening in Guildhall Yard on Friday as part of Black History Month. Celebrating 70 years of the NHS, the display reveals individual stories of achievements, struggles and leadership with the focus moving from world famous figures to the unsung midwives who helped deliver Britain’s post-war baby boom. The British-Barbadian Nursing Revolution can be seen anytime until 31st October. There’s a series of talks accompanying the display. For more, head to the City of London website.

• New Year’s Eve is coming up fast – yes, it’s that time already! – and the first tickets for the world famous London event go on sale at midday on Friday. Tickets for the event, which features more than 12,000 fireworks, are still priced at £10 (a further batch will be sold in late November). Those without a ticket will not be able to enter the viewing area in central London (although it will, of course, be broadcast on TV). There are a maximum of four tickets per transaction. Head to www.london.gov.uk/nye.

Send all items for inclusion to exploringlondon@gmail.com.

This Week in London – Celebrating India at the Science Museum; Opie and Van Dyck/Dali and Duchamp; and, first NYE tickets on sale…

by exploringlondon

• The Science Museum is commemorating 70 years of India’s independence with Illuminating India, a season of exhibitions, specially commissioned artworks and events telling the stories of Indian innovators and thinkers who have often been overlooked or written out of Western versions of history. The exhibition Illuminating India: 5000 Years of Science and Innovation celebrates India’s central role in the history of science and tech by surveying its contributions to subjects ranging from space exploration to mathematics, communication and engineering while Photography 1857-2017 is the first exhibition to provide a survey of photography from its beginnings in India in the mid-19th century through to the present day and pivots around two key dates in India’s history – 1857 and 1947. Alongside the exhibitions, artist Chila Kumari Burman has been commissioned to create a special series of artworks and there is a comprehensive program of related public events, some of which are free. The Illuminating India season runs until 31st March. For the full programme of events, head to www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/indiaseason.

• To mark the return of Sir Anthony van Dyck’s self-portrait (pictured) to the National Portrait Gallery after a three year nationwide tour, contemporary artist Julian Opie has been invited to present his works in dialogue with the painting. Julian Opie After Van Dyck features new and recent works including Faime (2016), Lucia, back 3 (2017) and Beach head, 6 (2017). The free display in the seventeenth century galleries opens tomorrow and runs until 7th January. It’s the final of three displays held in the gallery as part of the three year tour following the purchase of the Van Dyck self-portrait, painted in about 1640, in 2014. For more, see www.npg.org.uk. PICTURE: National Portrait Gallery.

• The friendship and works of Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp are explored in a new exhibition opening at the Royal Academy tomorrow. Dali/Duchamp features more than 80 paintings, sculptures, “readymades”, photographs, drawings, films and archival material and is organised into three thematic sections – ‘Identities’, ‘The Body and the Object’ and, ‘Experimenting with Reality’. Among the highlights is Duchamp’s The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (1912), Fountain (1917/1964), and The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915), as well as Dali’s The First Days of Spring (1929), Lobster Telephone (1938) and Christ of Saint John of the Cross (c1951). Runs until 3rd January and then moves to The Dali Museum in St Petersburg, Florida. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.royalacademy.org.uk.

• The first tranche of tickets to see this year’s New Years Eve fireworks event over the River Thames in central London were released late last week. The display will feature more than 12,000 fireworks, and involve 2,000 lighting cues and 30 tonnes of equipment on three barges (and, despite the renovation work, the New Year will still be rung in by the bongs of Big Ben!). The tickets, which are available for £10 each, provide access to a range of specific areas – some of these are already sold out. The full cost of the tickets goes towards costs associated with the ticketing system. People can book up to four tickets at www.london.gov.uk/nye.

Send all items for inclusion to exploringlondon@gmail.com.

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

by exploringlondon

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.

Send all items for inclusion to exploringlondon@gmail.com.