The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre in Oxford, UK, launches its public programme on 25 April 2026 with a free day of events and performances
Wayne McGregor: On The Other Earth – “the world’s first post-cinematic choreographic installation” – continues its run in Venice before moving to London and Hong Kong.
Italian visual artist Cris Devil has music and movement at the centre of his work – I talked with him about his striking images and animations.
A portrait slashed with a butcher’s cleaver by a suffragette in the National Portrait Gallery will go back on display there for the first time in over twenty years. A photograph showing the damage will be included for the first time in a complementary display devoted to the suffrage movement that inspired the attack in…
William Kentridge’s mural, Triumphs and Laments, in Rome became the city’s biggest contemporary art work and is also Kentridge’s largest public work. The 550m stretch of black and white images was unveiled on 21 April 2016. It was commissioned to mark the anniversary of Rome’s founding in 753BC. The mural’s inauguration was celebrated by a…
Lina Cavalieri – the soprano who sang with Caruso at the Met and inspired artists with her stunning looks – was known as ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’; Gina Lollobrigida even played her in a biopic of the same name. Piero Fornasetti’s obsession with the face of Cavalieri, his muse and ‘theme’, led to more…
The ‘Amici della Scala‘ sure knows how to throw a party! The indefatigable Anna Crespi, who has been guiding the Friends of La Scala association since its birth in 1978, had the idea to get some of the most important Milanese artists invite their friends to celebrate the great sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro (90 next month) and…
35 living descendants of Leonardo Da Vinci‘s family have been identified. Although Da Vinci didn’t have any children, a project – started in 1973 – sort to create his family tree starting from the children of his siblings. Art historians Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato, from the Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci, have been putting…
An important archive comprising Lucian Freud‘s sketchbooks, drawings and letters has been acquired by the nation from the estate of Lucian Freud through the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme. The archive has been permanently allocated to the National Portrait Gallery, which in 2012 staged the acclaimed Lucian Freud Portraits exhibition, the Gallery’s most visited ticketed exhibition. Sir…
The first ever exhibition solely to consist of portraits by the twentieth-century artist Alberto Giacometti opens at the National Portrait Gallery tomorrow, Thursday 15 October. Giacometti: Pure Presence (15 October 2015 – 10 January 2016) comprises over 60 works, including paintings, sculptures and drawings, spanning the entire range of the Swiss artist’s career. Including very rare…
A newly commissioned portrait of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has been unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in London. A painted bronze sculpture, by artist Sean Henry, shows Berners-Lee standing at two-thirds life-size on a tall plinth, carrying the leather rucksack in which he keeps his laptop. Apart from…
The first ever exhibition dedicated to Alberto Giacometti’s portraits is to open at the National Portrait Gallery this autumn. This was announced today just hours after a sculpture of the Swiss artist sold for millions of dollars at an auction in New York, making him the world’s most highly prized modern sculptor. Giacometti: Pure Presence…
The Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan – opening last week to coincide with the beginning of the Milan Expo on 1 May – is not to be missed, even if the show misses some opportunities itself. Unfortunately pipped to the post by London’s Leonardo exhibition just three years ago, which actually…
The Louvre in Paris has given the ok for three of its Leonardo da Vinci paintings to travel to Milan for the ambitious exhibition of the painter’s works to coincide with the Milan Expo in 2015. Leonardo lived in Milan for 17 years and, of course, his The Last Supper is painted on the walls of…
A major exhibition exploring the life and achievements of Virginia Woolf opens at the National Portrait Gallery tomorrow, 10 July 2014. Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision, which is on display until 26 October, will feature painted portraits, photographs, drawings and rare archival material. The exhibition looks at Woolf as a novelist, intellectual, campaigner and…
English National Ballet will present a First World War themed world première at the National Portrait Gallery this Friday 16 May for one night only as part of Museums at Night and the Gallery’s Late Shift programme. The site-specific dance performance is inspired by David Jones’s seminal First World War poem In Parenthesis and is…
Copyright: Jorge Herrera Photography A newly commissioned portrait of Dame Monica Mason, by artist Saied Dai has been unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery. In the larger than life-size portrait, Dame Monica – former ballerina and Director of the Royal Ballet – takes on a commanding pose as she sits holding a mask; a position reflective…
Italian art experts and archeologists are getting close to identifying the skeleton of the presumed sitter for Leonardo da Vinci‘s Mona Lisa. It is generally believed that the model was Lisa Del Giocondo, wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco Del Giocondo, who died in Saint Ursula’s convent in Florence in the mid-16th century. A skeleton exhumed in 2012…
The National Portrait Gallery and the Art Fund announced yesterday that they have received over £3.2 million in support of their appeal to secure the last self-portrait of Sir Anthony Van Dyck, and prevent it from going to a private collection overseas. This includes a recent pledge of £1 million from The Monument Trust, the largest…
Conservators at the National Portrait Gallery have uncovered a small painted passage in a portrait of Sir Walter Ralegh which reveals the depth of the explorer’s devotion to Queen Elizabeth I. The discovery was made during preparation for the Gallery’s forthcoming exhibition Elizabeth I & Her People (10 October 2013 – 5 January 2014), when centuries of old over…
London’s National Portrait Gallery has acquired a re-discovered portrait of the 17th-century patron, builder and conservationist, Lady Anne Clifford. This was a rare woman who fought in a male-dominated establishment, and Clifford is now seen as a proto-feminist, determined not to be bullied or coaxed into accepting less than she believed to be her due….
A selection of portraits by Pop Artist Derek Boshier will be shown in the UK for the first time at the National Portrait Gallery. Derek Boshier: Imaginary Portraits (28 September 2013 – May 2014) will feature 10 works from the artist’s ‘imaginary portraits’ series, including his oil-on-canvas portrait of David Bowie, which was painted in New…
London’s National Portrait Gallery has commissioned a poem by Ben Okri to go alongside a special display of its loaned painting of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, the first portrait of a black African Muslim and freed slave. The display will open 20 September. Fascinated by the enigmatic story of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, and his relevance today,…
For the first time the National Portrait Gallery opens a display space of prints made from portraits from its collections – which visitors can buy! Sir Michael Gambon, Robert Powell, Antony Andrews, Steven Berkoff and Tim Piggott-Smith launched the new Print Sales Gallery today. They were part of a group of leading figures from the…
A previously unseen portrait of the education activist Malala Yousafzai will go on show in a new display of work by Jonathan Yeo opening at the National Portrait Gallery on Wednesday 11 September 2013. Jonathan Yeo Portraits (11 September 2013 – 5 January 2014) will feature several previously unexhibited portraits of well known figures, including Damien Hirst and Kevin…
An impressive selection of rarely seen celebrity portraits by renowned photographer Bob Carlos Clarke have been donated to the National Portrait Gallery collection by the Bob Carlos Clarke Foundation. The photographs, which were taken in various locations between 1971 and 1998, include portraits of high profile figures such as Marco Pierre White, who Carlos Clarke…
Pastel portraits by Bob Dylan will be shown for the first time at London’s National Portrait Gallery in September – the first time his work will have been seen in a museum in Britain. The 12 new works to be displayed represent the latest portrait studies from an artist who has sketched and drawn since…
A major new painted portrait of contemporary artist Damien Hirst will feature in a display of work by Jonathan Yeo at the National Portrait Gallery in September. Jonathan Yeo Portraits (11 September 2013 – 5 January 2014) will feature several new and previously unseen artworks, including the striking, six-foot-high oil-on-canvas portrait of Damien Hirst. The portrait painting, in which Hirst dominates the…
Dance firsts are rare: Albrecht nude? Seen it. Swan Lake in the round? Been there. But ballet manga is something new, at least when it involves a real dancer. What is manga? I hear the balletomanes cry who never venture far from the local opera house. Well, Wikipedia defines it thus: Manga are comics created…
The National Portrait Gallery has announced the winner of the BP Portrait Award 2013. The prestigious first prize was won by 57-year-old artist Susanne du Toit, for Pieter, a powerful painting of her eldest son. Educated at the University of Pretoria and the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, du Toit is an artist now based in Crowthorne, Berkshire. The sitting took place…
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