London has been a smokeless zone for over sixty years. The city used to be famous for its ‘London fogs.’ They were described by the novelist Charles Dickens and even led to the creation of a type of American rainwear called London Fog. Then the Clean Air Acts were passed in the late 1950s and 1960s, largely as a reaction to the ‘great smog’ of 1952 and London Fogs gradually became a thing of the past that will hopefully never be seen again.

It is not known to many people, but William Shakespeare began his theatrical career in the East End of London rather the place most often associated with him – Southwark, the area to the south of London Bridge. Sam Wannamaker, the American actor and director, felt that Shakespeare deserved a monument in London, the city where he made his fame and fortune. Wannamaker decided to rebuild the Globe Theatre in Southwark near the Tate Modern Museum and raised the money from donors to do so.

The main impetus for the founding of The National Gallery was the purchase, by the British government, of thirty-eight paintings – including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Rubens and Titian - from the collection of John Julius Angerstein, a successful banker and marine insurance broker born in St Petersburg to German parents. When the gallery first opened to the public, in May 1824, it was housed in Angerstein’s former home at 100, Pall Mall.

Did you know that Vincent Van Gogh lived in London before he became an artist and that the house in which he lived is open to the public? Van Gogh’s House is a non-profit contemporary arts organisation based in the South London boarding house where the young Vincent lived in 1873-74.

The British Museum is one of the world’s great museums but has a very inappropriate name. Many of the treasures on display were acquired – sometimes by fair means, sometimes by foul – over the centuries when Britain was a great imperial power and most people thought little of the morality of taking treasures from countries that had been colonised as part of the British empire and displaying them in central London in a building designed by Sir Robert Smirke and his brother Sidney. Many of these countries now want their treasures back and are growing increasingly strident in demands for their return.

In 1824 the House of Commons agreed to pay £57,000 for the art collection of the wealthy banker John Julius Angerstein. His 38 pictures became the core of a new national collection. Great encouragement came from another collector, Sir George Beaumont, who donated 16 paintings to the new gallery and in 1838 the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square finally opened its doors.

The artist Yoko Ono, who turned 91 in February, has enjoyed a successful—if notorious—career over seven decades. She spent the seventies as the wife of Beatle John Lennon until his assassination in New York in 1980, and appropriately for British audiences, that part of her life forms the core of her current exhibition, 'Music of the Mind' at Tate Modern.

William Shakespeare (1552 to 1616) was undoubtedly our greatest playwright and poet. He lived until the age of fifty-two and although he was born and is buried in Stratford-upon-Avon, it was in London that he made his fame and fortune. Known as The Bard of Avon, his plays are regularly revived on the London stage, and the Globe Theatre, where he made his reputation as a playwright, was rebuilt in the late twentieth century largely as a result of the efforts of the American actor and theatre director Sam Wanamaker.

I recently visited The National Portrait Gallery, which re-opened in June 2023 to much fanfare - and it is duly deserved. It was apparent whilst viewing the rooms that more women across the centuries were featured. Before the gallery's closing in 2020 for refurbishment, exhibits and images of women were approximately 20% of the collection; now, it is 48%!

When the smoke cleared at the end of the First World War, or The Imperial War as it was then known (because it was fought by empires – British, German, and Russian), a shocked Britain was moved to create memorials all over the country. The Imperial War Museum was the grandest of these and was established by an Act of Parliament in 1920. The building in Waterloo was previously the Bedlam Hospital, established by Henry VIII after he dissolved the monasteries in 1533, which accounts for his name above the columned entrance. No tour is complete without him.

The British Museum is the most visited museum in London. Visitors from all over the world are drawn to the museum to see with their own eyes world-famous artefacts, such as the Rosetta Stone or the Parthenon frieze, artefacts that might have only be seen in school or art books. They also come to experience other cultures, because after all the British Museum is the museum of the world for the world. But for the discerning visitor a scratch beneath the surface of all the "celebrity" objects can reveal some real surprises. Here is my list of such surprises.

South Kensington in London is synonymous with museums. Three of our best known national museums can be found here: the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, known affectionately to many as The V&A.

In May 2021, the UK’s first museum dedicated to LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer) history and culture opened in King’s Cross. Queer Britain is located at 2 Granary Square in London and joins destinations including Berlin, San Francisco, and Fort Lauderdale in having a permanent queer museum space.

In 1799 Thomas Bruce, the Seventh Earl of Elgin, was appointed ambassador by the British government to the Ottoman Court of Turkey, which at that time ruled Greece. Within twenty years of his appointment many of the carvings from the Parthenon, the Temple of the goddess Athena, were transported to London. These used to be referred to as the Elgin Marbles but are now normally called the Parthenon Marbles in honour of where they came from and not who was responsible for bringing them to London. The marbles can be seen in the Duveen Gallery of the British Museum, which has been open since 1962.

Britain used to rely almost exclusively on coal for its electricity generation, mining it in Wales and the north and central part of England, then bringing it, usually by train, to power stations where it could be burned to heat up water that would generate electricity. Then the water was cooled down in cooling towers that can still be seen in many parts of the country.

Dinosaurs first appeared on earth nearly 250 million years ago and survived until a mass extinction event around 65 million years ago. This means that they were dominant animals on the planet for over 150 million years – far longer than human beings. Most scientists believe that the mass extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by a meteor landing on earth.

The English painter David Hockney was born in July 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire. At the time of writing, he is still going strong in his mid-eighties and a new exhibition of his work is on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. It includes a recent self-portrait by Hockney.

Visitors who arrive in London via Heathrow Airport will pass the Hogarth roundabout in Chiswick as they approach the city along the A4 from the west. They may see the house in which William Hogarth (1697 – 1764) lived, which is now a museum. Their Blue Badge Tourist Guide may even tell them that it is believed that Hogarth’s habit of sketching people’s faces on his thumbnail gave us the phrase ‘a thumbnail sketch.’

A blockbuster exhibition at the National Gallery traces the travels of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), the ‘Apelles of the black line’ as Erasmus called him. These journeys were principally to cities along the Rhine (1490-4), twice to Venice (1505-7), and the Netherlands (1520-21). No other artist has produced a comparable body of work from the experience of travel. Like the landmark self-portrait of 1500, which evokes Christ (above) Durer’s art signals a self-awareness that crosses frontiers.

The Tate Modern in Southwark has become one of the most popular museums in the world since it was converted from its former use as a power station and opened by the Queen in 2000. It is one of four galleries in Britain created from the legacy of the sugar entrepreneur Henry Tate. These are the original Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain), Tate St Ives and Tate Liverpool.

Paintings of dancing maenads, maidens, and a cavorting Bacchus in beautifully choreographed compositions are the subject of this themed exhibition which will be at the National Gallery from 9th October to 2nd January next year. Dance – both secular and religious – is one of the great themes in Western Art.

Deep under Whitehall – the home of the United Kingdom’s major government departments – is a secret lair to rival anything created by a James Bond baddie intent on world domination. The Churchill War Rooms were constructed secretly as the bomb-proof centre of wartime government. Churchill was initially reluctant to go underground but he fought fascism here from 1939 to victory in 1945. With him was his wartime coalition ‘cabinet of all the talents’, his senior chiefs and advisors - and a small army of military and civilian staff, all engaged in top-secret work.

On 8th May 2020, we will be commemorating the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (VE Day), when World War II came to a conclusion. The war had been long, exhausting and involved a rollercoaster of highs and lows, militarily, politically, economically, socially and emotionally. I have chosen six objects that can be seen in London to tell the tale of some of these events. Each is on display at either the Imperial War Museum (in Lambeth, south London and free to visit) or the Churchill War Rooms (in central London, £23 for a standard adult ticket).

London is a port city, and Britain became great because of its navy and ability to trade across the globe. The capital’s wealth is built upon that sea trade. There are reminders of London's maritime history everywhere. In Trafalgar Square, we commemorate the 1805 victory (and the death) of Admiral Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar. At Tower Hill, we remember the 36,000 merchant mariners lost at sea with no known grave. And the Museum of London Docklands examines the triangular trade in goods, sugar and slaves, upon which so much of the city’s wealth was built.

The year 2020 marks the centenary of London’s Imperial War Museum, a site exploring the history of conflict from the First World War through the present day. Located south of the River Thames at Lambeth, the museum’s compelling exhibits help us appreciate what life was like during wartime, both for the military and for civilians.

A phrase which many Blue Badge Tourist Guides use, particularly when taking people outside London, is ‘England’s green and pleasant land.’ It comes from William Blake’s famous poem Jerusalem which is often sung as a hymn on patriotic occasions, most recently at the Last Night of the Proms, the series of classical music concerts held every summer at the Royal Albert Hall.

London Blue Badge Tourist Guides usually have a working knowledge of film releases and locations, particularly anything to do with those highly successful franchises Harry Potter and James Bond. However, the director Stanley Kubrick, who began life in the Bronx and ended up living in Britain, could never be pigeon-holed or defined by a franchise.

This year marks 500 years since the death of the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci in May 1519. Although he was born in the heart of Tuscany in Italy, Leonardo had a profound influence on art the world over. You can see evidence of this right here in London. Leonardo's image features in mosaics decorating the National Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum. We are also lucky to have several works in London by the great master. These display not only his creative genius but also his intellect and huge appetite for knowledge.

London’s Blue Badge Tourist Guides often take their groups around the city's art galleries and are trained to be familiar with the works of major painters. One of these is Vincent van Gogh. Many of us know a few famous facts about the Dutch post-Impressionist -- he only sold one painting during his life; he cut off his ear and later committed suicide. Brilliant artist, unstable person is the general view of Vincent van Gogh.

When visitors come to London’s National Gallery it is an overload to the senses. There are so many styles, so many characters, so many stories. There is too much to take in! Well, let me tell you where you might start…. As the famous song says… ‘Start at the very beginning…!’ When entering via the modern Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery you are introduced to some of the earliest paintings.

The British Museum is truly a world museum with collections ranging from Africa, Oceania and the Americas to The Middle East, Ancient Greece and Rome to Asia and back to Britain and Europe.

The newly opened National Army Museum in Chelsea area of London tells the story of the British army over the past 400 years. It is felt that many people know little about what the army does, let alone the soldier’s real experience now or in the past. The museum seeks to bridge the gap between the army and British society.

The Postal Museum was the only finalist in the 2018 Museum of the Year shortlist to be located in London. Although the postal service has been operating for 500 years, The Postal Museum in London only opened its doors in its present form a year ago in Phoenix Place near the Mount Pleasant sorting office, where modern postal vans can still be seen dispatching mail.

The art-loving and generous founder of the Tate, sugar magnate Henry Tate, collected contemporary British art. He knew what he liked; pictures (some say sentimental) that told a story, animal subjects, and landscapes. He bought works by Millais, Stanhope Forbes, and Luke Fildes, displayed in his own gallery at Park Hill. However, intellectuals sneered at his taste. Resolved to found a public gallery of British art with his own pictures, the gallery finally opened in 1897.

The recent release of the Winston Churchill movie, Darkest Hour has brought one of London's most popular tourist attractions into even sharper focus. The movie, in which Gary Oldman brilliantly captures the look, mannerisms and voice of Britain's great wartime leader, is largely set in the Churchill War Rooms.

Sandycombe Lodge, the Thames-side villa designed by J. M. W. Turner, has now been re-opened to the public, following a £2.4 million conservation programme. Built in Twickenham in 1813, it was a peaceful retreat for him and he lived there with his father until 1826. Using Turner’s sketches, a William Havell drawing of 1814, architectural evidence and paint analysis, the Turner’s House Trust has returned the house to its original form and decoration as closely as possible.

The year 2017 marks the bicentenary of the exhibition of the Parthenon Marbles at the British Museum. The artefacts were removed from the Athenian Acropolis in 1801 and 1802 by Thomas Bruce, seventh Lord Elgin British Ambassador (1799–1803) to the Ottoman Empire. The sculptures were commissioned in the fifth century BC as part of the rebuilding of the City of Athens ordered by the statesman Pericles following the successful war against the Persians.

As Chairman of the Royal Society of Musicians, I am delighted that one of our treasures, the oldest surviving score of Handel’s Water Music, will be displayed in the Handel Gallery at the Foundling Museum (7 July – 6 October 2017) to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the first performance on 17 July 1717.

John Constable (1776 – 1837) came from the country to the capital, portrayed a calm, unchanging England and was devoted to one woman, whom he waited for, married and then mourned when she died from consumption after bearing seven children in nine years.

One of the most popular items in the British Museum in London is the Rosetta Stone. It is rather unremarkable. It is the height of a child, cracked at the edges, lacking colour, and with inscriptions on only one side. There is little beauty in it, and the inscriptions are boring decrees - yet it is maybe one of the most famous stones in the world. For over 20 years it became the focus of a race to crack a code of strange pictures and shapes and in doing so uncover the life of Ancient Egypt.

One of the most overlooked and yet fascinating galleries in London is the National Portrait Gallery. If you’re interested in British history or would like to check up on 20th century faces, the National Portrait Gallery is a great destination. Often overlooked, it sits behind the National Gallery but has a completely separate identity. The National Portrait Gallery holds around 200,000 portraits of people from diverse backgrounds who have all been chosen for their great achievements or aristocratic connections. See some of the most famous people of the last 500 years of British history.

With a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects, London's Victoria & Albert Museum is the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design. You would need many years – maybe a lifetime - to look through this unequalled treasure trove so what better solution than hiring a Blue Badge Tourist Guide to select and explain some of the exceptional artefacts on display.

Tate Modern is the jewel in the crown of modern art galleries in London. It holds the nation's collection of modern art from 1900 to the present day. With 5.7 million visitors it is in the top ten most visited museums and galleries in the world. The collection holds masterpieces of international and British modern art. From Picasso's "The Three Dancers", to Dali's "Autumnal Canibbalism", to Rothko's "The Seagram Murals", to Duschamp's "Fountain", to Parreno's "Anywhen", Tate Modern is a one stop shop for modern art lovers.

The art of 1930s America tells the story of a nation in flux. Artists responded to rapid social change and economic anxiety with some of the 20th century’s most powerful art – brought Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930 together now in this once-in-a-generation show. 45 truly iconic works paint an electrifying portrait of this transformative period.

One hundred years on from the Russian Revolution, this powerful exhibition explores one of the most momentous periods in modern world history through the lens of its groundbreaking art. Renowned artists including Kandinsky, Malevich, Chagall and Rodchenko were among those to live through the fateful events of 1917, which ended centuries of Tsarist rule and shook Russian society to its foundations.

Contributing to London as a cultural mecca are 200+ museums, many of which can be explored with a knowledgeable Blue Badge Tourist Guide. Each has permanent collections as well as major exhibitions to help draw in visitors. Highlighted below are 11 major museum exhibitions happening in London during the 2017 calendar year.

A new Picasso exhibition will be on display at the National Portrait Gallery. Picasso’s portraits epitomise the astonishing variety and innovation of his art. This major exhibition with over 80 works focuses on the artist’s portrayal of family, friends and lovers and reveals his creative processes as he moved freely between drawing from life, humorous caricature and expressive painting from memory.

At the end of February, Turner Prize winner Richard Wright started on a new artwork for the Queen’s House, part of the Royal Museums Greenwich. This is the first time an artist has worked on the ceiling of the Great Hall since Orazio Gentileschi created a series of nine paintings in 1639. Richard’s complex installation, inspired by the Tulip Stairs, will be on view when the Queen's House re-opens after restoration on 4 July 2016 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of its commissioning and design.

Submerged under the sea for over a thousand years, two lost cities of ancient Egypt were recently rediscovered. Their story is told for the first time in what is expected to be a blockbuster exhibition at the British Museum – Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds.

The Sicily Culture & Conquest exhibition is currently on display at the British Museum. Sicily has been shaped by waves of conquest and settlement by different peoples over 4,000 years. Since the 8th century BC, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans all settled or invaded the island, lured by its fertile lands and strategic location.

The British Library has announced the acquisition of the personal archive of Kenneth Williams, including 43 personal diaries and approximately 2,000 letters spanning his entire life and career from the age of 18 until his death in 1988.

The Victoria & Albert Museum has unveiled When Soak Becomes Spill, a major new installation by leading Indian contemporary artist Subodh Gupta.  

Using the work of Monet as a starting point, The Royal Academy of Arts landmark exhibition Painting The Modern Garden: Monet To Matisse examines the role gardens played in the evolution of art from the early 1860s through to the 1920s.

Interested in comic art?  Then consider organising a Bath tour with one of our Blue Badge Tourist Guides and be sure to check out the High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson exhibition at Holburne Museum of Art. 

Launching on 13th November 2015 at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace is a new exhibition titled: Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer.

  From 24 October 2015 until 3 December 2015, the Crystal Sceptre given by Henry V to the City of London in grateful thanks for their help in loaning him money for the Battle of Agincourt will be on show at the Guildhall Art Gallery.

The Victoria & Albert Museum will launch The Bejewelled Treasures: The Al Thani Collection exhibition on 21 November 2015.  Spectacular objects, drawn from a single private collection, will explore the broad themes of tradition and modernity in Indian jewellery. 

The Royal Academy of Arts is showcasing an exhibition on the work of Jean-Etienne Liotard who was an artist in great demand across Enlightenment Europe and beyond.

Tate Britain has launched an exhibition featuring Frank Auerbach (b 1931, Berlin), a British artist who has made some of the most vibrant, alive and inventive paintings of recent times. Often compared to Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud in terms of the revolutionary and powerful nature of his work, his depictions of people and the urban landscapes near his London studio show him to be one of the greatest painters alive today.

The Victoria & Albert Museum established in 1857 by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert is the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design and houses a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects. This vast collection is stored and displayed in a number of buildings over 12 acres of land in the South Kensington area of London, with over a third of a mile in circumference. These objects along with a wide range of exhibitions make the Victoria & Albert Museum one of the more popular tourist attractions in London.  Below we highlight six upcoming exhibitions at the Victoria & Albert Museum.  

The Fabric of India exhibition will be the highlight of the Victoria & Albert Museum India Festival and will explore the dynamic and multifaceted world of handmade textiles from India from the 3rd to the 21st century.

Whaaam! Pop! Kapow! This is pop art, but not as you know it. Tate Modern is ready to tell a global story of pop art, breaking new ground along the way, and revealing a different side to the artistic and cultural  phenomenon.

Below are 5 reasons why the Royal Academy of Music Museum in London is a must for music lovers! 

In April 2016 the Saatchi Gallery will host the Rolling Stones exhibition Exhibitionism which will cover their 50-year history through more than 500 articles.

From 19 September to 13 December 2015 the major artist and cultural phenomenon Ai Weiwei takes over the main galleries at the Royal Academy of Arts with brave, provocative and visionary works. 

This autumn the British Museum, in partnership with National Museums Scotland, will stage the first British exhibition in 40 years on the Celts. Celts: Art And Identity opens at the British Museum on 24 September and will draw on the latest research from Britain, Ireland and Western Europe.

A new waterlily species has been found on a plant-hunting expedition in a remote spot in Kimberley, Western Australia. As plant-hunter Carlos Magdalena investigated the waterlily, it became clear this was not the first time the species has been encountered by Kew Garden experts. 

From a basement in New York, Joseph Cornell channelled his limitless imagination into some of the most original art of the 20th century. Cornell hardly ventured beyond New York State, yet the notion of travel was central to his art. His imaginary voyages began as he searched Manhattan’s antique bookshops and dime stores, collecting a vast archive of paper ephemera and small objects to make his signature glass-fronted ‘shadow boxes’.

Currently at the National Portrait Gallery is a fascinating photographic exhibition on the life of actress and fashion icon Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993). 

The Serpentine Gallery unveiled its 15th annual summer pavilion on 22 June brining a touch of Glastonbury to Kensington Gardens in the form of a giant multi-coloured tent.

The Frames in Focus: Sansovino Frames exhibition marks the first in a series of exhibitions at the National Gallery which will explore specific frame types; bringing together 30 exquisite examples of this distinctive style of frame associated with Venice and the Veneto.

Soundscapes (8 July – 6 September 2015) is part of the National Gallery Inspires programme of exhibitions. Drawn from the National Gallery collection, the exhibitions take a fresh view of National Gallery paintings. Soundscapes has commissioned musicians and sound artists to select a painting from the collection and compose a new piece of music or sound art in response. Immersive and site-specific, the experience encourages visitors to ‘hear’ the paintings and ‘see’ the sound.

Since 1769, famous artists, aspiring professionals and amateurs have submitted their work for the event of the summer - the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. It is the world’s oldest open-submission exhibition that had famous artists such as Reynolds, Constable and Turner; amateur artists such as Winston Churchill (1955) showing off their talents at this prestigious event. This is a popular event with an annual 200,000 people visiting the exhibition.  

The Fighting History exhibition launching at Tate Britain in June will focus on the conflict, martyrdom and catastrophe found in history painting from the eighteenth century to the present day.

Tate Britain will open the first major Barbara Hepworth exhibition in London for almost fifty years. Barbara Hepworth (1903–75) is most commonly associated with St Ives, Cornwall, where she lived from 1939 until her death in 1975.

The Coral Reefs: Secret Cities of the Sea exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London explores the richness of life beneath the waves and the importance of these delicate ecosystems and includes more than 200 specimens spanning corals, fish and fossils, a live coral reef and a virtual dive through stunning imagery from the Catlin Seaview Survey. 

Few visitors to the Natural History Museum are aware of the ‘living exhibit’ in the grounds. However, this year, the low-profile Wildlife Garden celebrates its 20-year anniversary.

Although on display at the Charles Dickens Museum in Doughty Street, the desk was privately owned and although it had been passed down through the Dickens family after his death in 1870, it was auctioned for the Great Ormond Street Charitable Trust in 2004.

The Bethlem Royal Hospital better known as Bedlam was set up in 1247 as Europe’s first centre dedicated to the treatment of psychiatric illness.   It has moved between various locations in London – including at the building that is now the Imperial War Museum.

The Shoes: Please And Pain exhibition will look at the extremes of footwear from around the globe, presenting around 200 pairs of shoes ranging from a sandal decorated in pure gold leaf originating from ancient Egypt to the most elaborate designs by contemporary makers.

A new exhibition at Tate Modern will showcase the work of Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) who was a key figure in the Parisian avant-garde and became the European doyenne of abstract art.

Powerful, beautiful and inventive, the Victorian era was a golden age for sculpture. Tate Britain’s exhibition Sculpture Victorious celebrates some of the most astonishing and lavish works produced in this groundbreaking period.

At a time when Britain will be engaged in the democratic process of an election, the Victoria & Albert Museum will examine the role of public institutions in contemporary life and what it means to be responsible for a national collection.

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London will showcase a What is Luxury? exhibition which will interrogate ideas of luxury today. It will address how luxury is made and understood in a physical, conceptual and cultural capacity.

A rarely seen portrait of the Duke of Wellington goes on view at the National Portrait Gallery as part of exhibition marking the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815) and illustrates his extraordinary life as a soldier and statesman. 

The Royal Academy of Arts will host an exhibition of the works of Richard Diebenkorn.   Revered as one of the great post-war masters in his native United States, Richard Diebenkorn is an artist whose staunchly independent career takes us from abstraction to figuration and back again.  He is described by the Washington Post as one of America’s “finest abstract painters."

One of America's most revered cultural institutions, The Smithsonian, is in talks about building an outpost on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Stratford Waterfront, close to the site of the former Water Polo Arena.

Two ‘lost’ statues have been identified as original Michelangelo sculptures – and are possibly the only surviving bronzes by him, experts have claimed. The pair, which show naked young men riding panthers, are described as ‘phenomenally important’ and, if truly by the master, would solve one of the greatest mysteries in art history.

Marlene Dumas is one of the most prominent painters working today. Her intense, psychologically charged works explore themes of sexuality, love, death and shame, often referencing art history, popular culture and current affairs.

Madame Tussauds London is opening a new Star Wars experience in Baker Street on Saturday, 16th May.   

Whether a sacred sanctuary, a place for scientific study, a haven for the solitary thinker or a space for pure enjoyment and delight, gardens are where mankind and nature meet. A new exhibition at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace will explore the many ways in which the garden has been celebrated in art through over 150 paintings, drawings, books, manuscripts and decorative arts from the Royal Collection, including some of the earliest and rarest surviving records of gardens and plants.

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was the greatest portrait painter of his generation. Acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, he was closely connected to many of the other leading artists, writers, actors and musicians of the time. His portraits of these friends and contemporaries, including Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet and Robert Louis Stevenson, were rarely commissioned and allowed him to create more intimate and experimental works than was possible in his formal portraiture.

There is no shortage of excitement and interesting places to visit while in London, but there is also a great deal of culture. If you are looking to expand your horizons or you are keen to find out more about the world that we live in, you will find that the top London museums will provide you with fascinating insight into the world around us.

A spectacular Stegosaurus skeleton was unveiled on 4 December at the Natural History Museum in London. It is the first complete dinosaur specimen to go on display at the Natural History Museum in nearly 100 years. The 150 million year old Stegosaurus stenops is the only Stegosaurus in a public collection outside the USA.

This exhibition will bring together masterpieces produced during Rubens' lifetime, as well as major works by great artists who were influenced by him in the generations that followed.

2015 marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo and the defeat of Napoleon. In celebration of the allied victory, George IV created the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle, a grand space filled with portraits of those instrumental in the victory, among them the Duke of Wellington. 

For all of the Blue Badge Tourist Guides who led tours around and in the London Olympic Park, one of the most frequently asked questions was 'Who will be chosen to light the Olympic Flame? How will it work on the night?' But of course, it was as much of a mystery to us, as to everyone else!

A new exhibition showcasing the career of British Pop artist Allen Jones, from the 1960s (when alongside peers like Hockney and Caulfield he was closely associated with the rise of Pop Art) to the present day will open at the Royal Academy of Arts.

There is a new exhibition titled: Cairo to Constantinople – Early Photographs of the Middle East in the Queen's Gallery at the Royal Trust Collection which follows the journey taken by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) in 1862, as he undertook a four month tour around the Middle East.

A new display in the Theatre and Performance Galleries at the Victoria & Albert Museum titled Russian Avant-garde Theatre: War Revolution and Design 1913 – 1933 presents more than 150 radical designs for theatrical productions by celebrated figures of the Russian avant-garde.  

Timed specifically to coincide with the centenary of the First World War, this exhibition concerns the relationship between photography and sites of conflict over time, highlighting the fact that time itself is a fundamental aspect of the photographic medium.

Joseph Mallord William Turner was not the most sociable of men but he found a true friend in George O'Brien, Third Earl of Egremont and owner of Petworth House in Sussex. The Earl was a sociable and generous aristocrat with a love of art, a large house and an open purse. Every year he had a party in the grounds of Petworth for the local community on his birthday and, when 6000 people turned up one time, he made sure they were all welcomed, fed and watered.

The Queen's Gallery Gold exhibition at the Royal Collection Trust celebrates the enduring qualities of gold, and draws on works of art from the Bronze Age to the present day. The distinctive properties of gold – its lustre and its warm yellow colour which appears to mirror the sun, its rarity and its perceived purity, because it does not tarnish, have meant that this material has always been associated with the highest status, both earthly and divine.

This year the Museum of London welcomes an exciting new exhibition, delving into the mind of the world’s famous fictional detective, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. 

The acclaimed Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition premieres at London’s Natural History Museum each year and tours more than 60 cities in the United Kingdom and across the world.

This is the first comprehensives exhibition in the United Kingdom of Giovanni Battista Moroni’s work.   He was one of the greatest portraits of 16th century Italy.  Famed for his gift capturing the exact likeness of his sitters, he created portraits that are as penetrating and powerful now as they were more than 400 years ago.

In September 2014, the Royal Academy will present the first major retrospective of work to be held in the UK by Honorary Royal Academician, Anselm Kiefer.  This will be the most significant exhibition of the German artist’s work ever held in the UK, spanning his entire 40-year career and unveiling new work created in direct response to the Royal Academy’s spaces.

The Great Gallery, one of the finest collections of Old Master paintings in the world, is reopening on 19 September with a new hang following its two-year refurbishment.

This major exhibition titled Constable: The Making of a Master will reassess John Constable's influences, techniques and legacy to offer a new interpretation of one of Britian's best-loved artist.  Discover how great works are created as Constable's most famous masterpieces are united with revoluntary oil sketches: expressive evocations of land, sea and sky that allowed him to transfer the freshness of the outdoors into his exhibition paintings.

The Natural History Museum has received its largest donation but a much-loved feature, a dinosaur replica, Dippy could be removed. Sir Michael Hintze gave the London museum £5m to improve galleries and aid research.

The Royal Academy’s annual Summer Exhibition is the world’s largest open submission contemporary art show. Now in its 246th year, the 2014 exhibition continues the tradition of showcasing work by both emerging and established artists in all media, including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, architecture and film.

Be awestruck as huge fossils and life-size models of mammoths and their relative’s tower above you and meet Lyuba, the world’s most complete mammoth, as she takes centre stage in the Mammoth's Ice Age Giants exhibition at the Natural History Museum. 

The Victoria & Albert Museum has announced that Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty exhibition is coming to London in 2015. This is the first and largest retrospective of McQueen’s work to be presented in Europe.

From a Suffragette tea service to protest robots, the Disobedient Objects exhibition coming to the Victoria & Albert Museum will be the first to examine the powerful role of objects in movements for social change.

The Design Museum is currently showcasing an exhibition of American architect Louis Kahn (1901-1974) who is regarded as one of the great master builders of the Twentieth Century. Kahn created buildings of monumental beauty with powerful universal symbolism.

The London Transport Museum has launced a new exhibition Goodbye Piccadilly – From Home Front to Western Front which will run from Friday 16 May 2014 to Sunday, 8 March 2015. A key theme in the exhibition is the acceleration of social change as a result of the outbreak of war.