The Three Dancers

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

by exploringlondon
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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Around London – Chiswick House’s Camellia Festival; Picasso at the Tate; and, Mondrian at the Courtauld…

by exploringlondon

• The second annual Camellia Festival kicks off in  gardens surrounding the neo-Palladian property, Chiswick House,  in west London this weekend. The month long festival, run by the Chiswick House & Gardens Trust, was kicked off in 2011 with the aim of showcasing Chiswick’s world renowned Camellia Collection, believed to be the largest in the Western world. Following the success of last year’s festival following a £12.1 million garden restoration project, the flowers will once again be on display in the Conservatory (designed by Samuel Ware in 1813). Complementing the display of camellias will be a showcase of early spring flowers planted in the newly restored Italian Garden (originally created for the 6th Duke of Devonshire in 1814, it was, at the time, at the forefront of horticultural fashion). The Camellia Collection, meanwhile, includes rare and historically significant plants featuring pink, red, white and striped blooms, many of which are descended from the original planting in 1828. Among them is the Middlemist’s Red which was originally brought to Britain from China in 1804 by John Middlemist, a nurseryman from Shepherds Bush. It is one of only two in the world known to exist (the other is in Waitangi in New Zealand). The festival runs from the 18th February to the 18th March.  Admission charge applies. For more information, see www.chgt.org.uk. PICTURE:  The Middlemist’s Red Camellia at Chiswick House © Clare Kendall.

• On Now: Picasso and Modern British Art. This exhibition at Tate Britain explores the influence of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso on British art and the role this played in the acceptance of modern art in Britain as well as celebrating the connections Picasso made with Britain following his first London visit in 1919. It features more than 150 works including 60 by Picasso, among them Weeping Woman and The Three Dancers, as well as works by the likes of Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney. Runs until 15th July. Admission charge applies. For more information, see www.tate.org.uk

• On Now: Mondrian || Nicholson in Parallel. This show at the Courtauld Gallery tells the story of the extraordinary relationship between celebrated 20th century painter Piet Mondrian and Ben Nicholson, one of the UK’s greatest modern artists. The exhibition will follow the parallel artistic paths taken by the two artists in the 1930s and their subsequent creative relationship. Each of the works selected for the exhibition have a particular historical significance and the presentation also includes archival material such as photographs and letters. Admission charge applies. For more information, see www.courtauld.ac.uk.