Welcome to the IanVisits alternative guide to London.
Lectures, talks, heritage events, organised walks and other random geeky miscellany.
This is quite an old listings page, did you want: Saturday, 6th January 2024?
Displayed in date order by how soon they close.
New and rarely seen works from the internationally renowned South African artist Athi-Patra Ruga.
(Ending Soon Sun, 6th Jan)
Somerset House
Discover this year’s top picks across fashion, architecture, digital, transport, product and graphic design. (Ending Soon Sun, 6th Jan)
The Design Museum
Francis Upritchard’s site-specific installation draws from figurative sculpture, ceramics, glassblowing and more. (Ending Soon Sun, 6th Jan)
Barbican Centre
£11.50
Life in the Dark
Leave daylight behind and put your senses to the test in this illuminating exhibition. (Ending Soon Sun, 6th Jan)
Natural History Museum
The exhibition explores the man, his life and his unprecedented contribution to the nation’s cultural heritage. (Ending Soon Sun, 6th Jan)
Wallace Collection
£16.50
Space Shifters
Featuring 20 artists and spanning a period of roughly 50 years, the exhibition includes innovative, minimalist sculpture from the 1960s as well as recent works that extend the legacy of 'optical' minimalism in different ways. (Ending Soon Sun, 6th Jan)
Hayward Gallery
Free
Votes for Women
A display featuring iconic objects from the museum’s vast Suffragette collection, including Emmeline Pankhurst’s hunger strike medal. (Ending Soon Sun, 6th Jan)
The Museum of London
With over 150 posters and original artworks on display, this exhibition recognises some of these forgotten design heroines and reveals the hidden stories behind their work. (Ending Soon Sun, 13th Jan)
London Transport Museum
An exhibition that reveals sunken, forgotten letters recently recovered from a shipwreck. (Ending Soon Sun, 13th Jan)
The Postal Museum
The exhibition explores the day and evening styles of the decade, complemented by photographs of the stars who championed them. (Ending Soon Sun, 20th Jan)
Fashion and Textile Museum
This exhibition traces the development of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings through a selection of over forty masterpieces. (Ending Soon Sun, 20th Jan)
The National Gallery
Free
Dream On
An exhibition which explores dreams, the unconscious and an imaginary world between sleep and wakefulness. (Ending Soon Sun, 20th Jan)
V&A Museum of Childhood
History, as somebody wise once said, is just one damned thing after another. But is it really? Who decides what is ‘history’? (Ending Soon Sun, 20th Jan)
The British Museum
Designed and curated in close collaboration with Piano himself, this is the first exhibition in London to put the spotlight on Piano in 30 years. (Ending Soon Sun, 20th Jan)
Royal Academy of Arts
The first UK exhibition to explore the complex relationship between fashion and nature from 1600 to the present day (Ending Soon Sun, 27th Jan)
Victoria and Albert Museum
Discover two artists who changed the course of Western European art (Ending Soon Sun, 27th Jan)
The National Gallery
£16.50
Ribera: Art of Violence
The first UK show of work by the Spanish Baroque artist and printmaker, Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652). (Ending Soon Sun, 27th Jan)
Dulwich Picture Gallery
The Enchanted Garden explores how Morris's contemporaries and subsequent generations of artists have responded to the allure of garden spaces, using them as stages for the magical, menacing and romantic. (Ending Soon Sun, 27th Jan)
William Morris Gallery
The exhibition explores the Gestetner machine as a device that revolutionised the office. (Ending Soon Thu, 31st Jan)
Bruce Castle Museum
Prepare for the unknown – on the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of ‘Spanish Flu’, this display explores how a future epidemic might hit London. (Ending Soon Sun, 3rd Feb)
The Museum of London
Featuring over fifty works from across the world, some of which have never been on display before, Gainsborough’s Family Album charts his career from youth to maturity. (Ending Soon Sun, 3rd Feb)
National Portrait Gallery
£10
Repton Revealed
See how Repton’s career unfolded in this special exhibition which brings together Red Books and watercolour paintings, many never publicly displayed before, to celebrate the bicentenary of his death. (Ending Soon Sun, 3rd Feb)
Garden Museum
The uncompromising sculpture that emerged in Britain after the Second World War (Ending Soon Mon, 4th Feb)
Tate Britain
Discover the expressive sensitivity and immediacy of Lorenzo Lotto’s portraits in the first UK exhibition of its kind (Ending Soon Sun, 10th Feb)
The National Gallery
A landmark exhibition on the history, art, literature and culture of Anglo-Saxon England. (Ending Soon Tue, 19th Feb)
The British Library
One of the last Pre-Raphaelites, Edward Burne-Jones brought imaginary worlds to life in awe-inspiring paintings, stained glass windows and tapestries (Ending Soon Sun, 24th Feb)
Tate Britain
An exhibition exploring the connection between Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dalí, starting from their one meeting, to which Dalí brought his recently completed painting The Metamorphosis of Narcissus. (Ending Soon Sun, 24th Feb)
Freud Museum
This major exhibition tells the story of Ashurbanipal through the British Museum’s unparalleled collection of Assyrian treasures and rare loans. (Ending Soon Sun, 24th Feb)
The British Museum
This exhibition brings back to Strawberry Hill some of the most important masterpieces in Horace Walpole’s famous and unique collection for a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition. (Ending Soon Sun, 24th Feb)
Strawberry Hill
Explore the design and culture of contemporary videogames (Ending Soon Sun, 24th Feb)
Victoria and Albert Museum
This exhibition features over 40 original paintings from his time with the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War. (Ending Soon Sun, 3rd Mar)
National Army Museum
Free
Call in the Cavalry
From flamboyant uniforms to fast horses, this exhibition looks at the shared heritage between the Hungarian and British hussars. (Ending Soon Sun, 3rd Mar)
National Army Museum
Snoopy comes to London in this exhibition of Charles M. Schulz original Peanuts cartoons. (Ending Soon Sun, 3rd Mar)
Somerset House
This exhibition explores how our built environment contributes to our physical and mental health in both positive and negative ways. (Ending Soon Sun, 3rd Mar)
Wellcome Collection
This exhibition presents fifty original magazine covers from Time Out’s archive and explores the stories behind them. (Ending Soon Sun, 3rd Mar)
Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising
Free
Cats on the Page
Whether raising a smile, solving a crime, wreaking magical havoc or even performing in theatre, cats take centre stage in this free exhibition. (Ending Soon Sun, 17th Mar)
The British Library
Free
African Soldier
This multi-screen installation by artist John Akomfrah remembers the millions of African men and women who participated in the First World War (Ending Soon Thu, 21st Mar)
Imperial War Museum
£16
Home Futures
Explore today’s home through the prism of yesterday’s imagination. Are we living in the way that pioneering architects and designers throughout the 20th century predicted, or has our idea of home proved resistant to real change? (Ending Soon Sun, 24th Mar)
The Design Museum
Explore the extraordinary lives and deaths of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and go behind the scenes to uncover the science behind one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century. (Ending Soon Sun, 24th Mar)
Science Museum
In this immersive sound installation, 32 people who fought and lived through the First World War share their personal stories of the Armistice. (Ending Soon Sun, 31st Mar)
Imperial War Museum
Discover more about Georgian Black Londoners, alongside a collection of rare and unusual portraits of Black Georgians. (Ending Soon Sun, 31st Mar)
Bruce Castle Museum
Through a rich collection of photographs, discover the innovation and resourcefulness that shaped the rebuilding and regeneration of the world post-war, revealing resilience and creativity in times of great change. (Ending Soon Sun, 31st Mar)
Imperial War Museum
The Oscar Wilde Temple is a wholly immersive work of art and secular space honouring one of the earliest forebears of gay liberation. (Ending Soon Sun, 31st Mar)
Studio Voltaire
Free
War Brides
Collectively these portraits and stories speak across continents and generations of an extraordinary post-war emigration of women who made a leap of faith for the love of an airman. (Ending Soon Sun, 14th Apr)
RAF Museum
The Charles Dickens Museum explores the pivotal role of food in the author’s life and novels and give new insights into the experience of dining with Dickens. (Ending Soon Sun, 21st Apr)
Charles Dickens Museum
This is the V&A Museum of Childhood’s first major exhibition to focus on fictional pirates and their influence in popular culture. (Ending Soon Mon, 22nd Apr)
V&A Museum of Childhood
Portraits, sculpture, photographs, archival documents and miniature masterpieces by Fabergé illustrate historic events and family meetings between the rulers of the two nations. (Ending Soon Sun, 28th Apr)
The Queen's Gallery
Free
The Lore of the Land
The exhibition features ceramic artworks dispensing scents inspired by the Horniman Gardens, and a soundscape based on the chemical processes occurring in plants and trees.
(Ending Soon Tue, 30th Apr)
Horniman Museum
This exhibition is the story of humanity’s ever-changing relationship with our nearest star. (Ending Soon Mon, 6th May)
Science Museum
This display presents six innovative projects from the collections of the RIBA and the V&A, each demonstrating a unique experiment in social housing design. (Ending Soon Sun, 26th May)
Victoria and Albert Museum
Women were inspired to serve their country by Florence Nightingale's work. But in 1918, as WW1 approached its end, nothing could have prepared them for what was to come - the deadly Spanish Flu. (Ending Soon Sun, 16th Jun)
Florence Nightingale Museum
This exhibition showcases extraordinary animal behaviour and the breathtaking diversity of life on Earth. (Ending Soon Sun, 30th Jun)
Natural History Museum
Showcasing the most spectacular space photography of its kind, the exhibition celebrates ten years of awe-inspiring images shot by astrophotographers worldwide. (Ending Soon Sun, 4th Aug)
Royal Observatory Greenwich
