Events Guide to Covent Garden

GALLERIES

London is home to a number of fantastic galleries. With new and exciting exhibitions opening all the time it is easy to get your fix of culture whilst staying at One Aldwych. Read on for our guide to what's on at London's galleries.

Tate Modern (20 minute walk)

Saloua Raouda Choucair
17 April to 20 October 2013
This will be the first exhibition in the UK of Lebanese artist whose work combines an experimental approach to materials with an elegant use of symmetry, line and curve.

Ellen Gallagher
1 May to 1 September 2013
This solo exhibition will survey this American artist's 20 year career and showcase her use of literature, music, myth, black popular culture, science fiction and advertising in her works..

The Courtauld Gallery (2 minutes walk)

Collecting Gaugin: Samuel Courtauld in the '20s
20 June to 8 September 2013
The Courtauld holds the UK's most important collection of works by the Post-Impressionist master Paul Gauguin. This was assembled by pioneering collector Samuel Courtauld and in this special display his collection of Gaugin's paintings, works on paper and sculpture is brought together for the first time.

Imagining Islands: Artists and Escape
20 June to 21 July 2013
Presented by the MA Curating the Art Museum students at The Courtauld Institute of Art, Imagining Islands responds to The Courtauld Gallery's Summer Showcase, Collecting Gauguin: Samuel Courtauld in the 20s.

Somerset House (2 minute walk)

Editions: Contemporary Rugs for Collectors
2 May to 30 June 2013
Christopher Farr celebrates its 25th anniversary by launching Editions: Contemporary Rugs for Collectors at Somerset House.

Blumenfeld Studio: New York, 1941-1960
23 May to 1 September 2013
Berlin-born photographer Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969) was one of the most internationally sought-after portrait and fashion photographers in the 1940s and 1950s.

The National Gallery (10 minute walk)

Birth of a Collection: Masterpieces from the Barber Institute of Fine Arts
22 May to 1 September 2013
An outstanding collection of Old Master and 19th-century paintings will go on display at the National Gallery as part of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts anniversary celebrations.

Michael Landy: Saints Alive
23 May to 24 November 2013
A series of large-scale kinetic sculptures bring a contemporary twist to the lives of the saints.

Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure
26 June to 8 September 2013
Explore the musical pastimes of the 17th-century Netherlands through this exhibition combining the art of Vermeer and his contemporaries with rare musical instruments, songbooks and live music.

National Portrait Gallery (10 minute walk)

HRH The Duchess of Cambridge
11 January to 1 September 2013
Don't miss this chance to see Catherine Elizabeth Middleton, now Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge as painted by Paul Emsley.

George Catlin: American Indian Portraits
7 March to 23 June 2013
During the 1830s Pennsylvanian-born artist George Catlin (1796-1872) made five trips to the western United States to document the Native American peoples and their way of life. The resulting portraits have become one of the most extensive, evocative and important records of indigenous peoples ever made.

BP Portrait Award 2013
20 June to 15 September 2013
The BP Portrait Award showcases fifty-five of the most outstanding and innovative new portraits from around the world. From informal and personal studies of friends and family to revealing paintings of famous faces, the exhibition features a variety of styles and approaches to the contemporary painted portrait.

Royal Academy of Arts (20 minute walk).

Summer Exhibition
10 June to 18 August 2013
For it 245th year, the RA's open-submission Summer Exhibition is serving up its standard mix of painting, printmaking, photography and sculpture by established and unknown artists.

Tate Britain

Focus: Rose Wylie
6 May to 6 October 2013
See Wylie's large scale energetic and compelling images which have been drawn from memory and inspired by her veracious appetite for visual culture.

Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life
26 June to 20 October 2013
Bringing together around eighty of the much-loved British painters works, this exhibition aims to show his achievement as Britain's pre-eminent painter of the industrial city.

Barbican Art Gallery

Dancing Around Duchamp
26 March to 28 July 2013
The Barbican salutes Marcel Duchamp, the man who transformed 20th century art by putting urinals and bicycle wheels into galleries and calling them art.

Fashion and Textile Museum

ZANDRA RHODES Unseen
12 July to 31 August 2013
With spectacular textiles, ravishing dresses and original sketches, Zandra Rhodes Unseen presents a rare opportunity to explore the archive, studio and creative process of one of the world's most distinctive designers.

Whitechapel Gallery

The Bloomberg Commission: Giuseppe Penone: Spazio di Luce
4 September 2012 to 11 August 2013
Over the past 45 years, Italian artist Giuseppe Penone has examined our relationship to nature. For the latest Bloomberg Commission, he has created a twelve metre bronze cast of a tree, with a radiant gold-leaf interior, which spreads across the columned gallery.

Our Concierge team are the definitive guide to what's hot in London and would be delighted to give you the inside knowledge on where to go and what to do during your stay. Many of London's galleries are free to enjoy and our Concierge team will be happy to arrange tickets for those events that do require tickets.

Tickets to all galleries, exhibitions, theatre and the opera are subject to availability. However we will always try our best to secure your first choice or to suggest alternatives.