Art and design
Courtauld to embark on £82m campus project at Somerset House in London
November 27, 2025The Courtauld has unveiled an £82m campus redevelopment it is calling a “once-in-a-generation transformation” of its Grade-I listed building, Somerset House, in London. The Stirling prize-winning architects Witherford Watson Mann will take charge of the four-year project at the teaching and research centre and public gallery, which follows their 2021 revamp of the Courtauld Gallery […]
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Minne Fry obituary
November 16, 2025My friend Minne Fry, who has died aged 91, was an abstract artist who emerged in early 1960s London at the New Vision Gallery in Marble Arch, where the director, Denis Bowen, encouraged his exhibitors to be distinct and expressive. He also wanted to counter the then prevalent notion of abstract art as “throwing a […]
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Man who stole Banksy print to pay off drug debt given 13-month sentence
November 14, 2025A man who stole a Banksy print from an art gallery to pay off a drug debt has been given a 13-month prison sentence. Larry Fraser, 49, stole the limited edition print from the street artist’s Girl With Balloon series after breaking into the Grove gallery in Fitzrovia, central London, last September. Sentencing him on […]
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Champagne, celebs and artefacts: British Museum hosts first lavish ‘pink ball’ fundraiser
October 18, 2025There will be champagne, of course, and dancing, fine Indian food served alongside the Parthenon marbles and cocktails mixed in front of the Renaissance treasures of the Waddesdon bequest. And everywhere – from the lights illuminating the Greek revival architecture, to the carpet on which guests arrive, to the glamorous outfits they are requested to […]
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Bank of England show to remember lost splendours of Sir John Soane building
August 29, 2025A century ago the wrecking ball demolished the halls, courtyards, arches and domes of one of London’s best-loved buildings in what the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner would decry as “the greatest architectural crime” to befall the capital in the 20th century. The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street (as the Bank of England was nicknamed after […]
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BMXs, boomboxes and black eyes: growing up on Peckham housing estates in the 80s – in pictures
July 22, 2025Copner Way, North Peckham Estate, 1985 Newell says: ‘My grandmother and mother moved to the Redbridge Gardens estate, Peckham, in the early 60s when it was first built, and I was born in Peckham in 1965, where we lived until 1968. I returned permanently to London with my mother in 1976. Our first Peckham home […]
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All aboard the Nike Northern line? Why corporate takeovers of London’s tube are a terrible idea | Oliver Wainwright
July 16, 2025Few public brands have ever garnered as much unbridled popular affection as the London underground. From the moment that architect Leslie Green unleashed his first station facades of gleaming oxblood-red terracotta tiles on to the streets of Edwardian London, the tube has offered a masterclass in the power of design to represent a truly public […]
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Tate raises £43m from donations as it launches ‘ambitious’ endowment fund
June 26, 2025Tate has launched an endowment fund and secured £43m from donations in what it calls “one of the most ambitious cultural fundraising campaigns of its kind in the UK”. Donations to the Tate Future Fund have come from individuals, foundations and Tate trustees, including James Bartos, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Nick Clarry, Mala Gaonkar, Anthony and Sandra […]
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Translucent bridge to form centrepiece of national memorial to Elizabeth II
June 24, 2025The national memorial to Queen Elizabeth II will include a new bridge in St James’s Park designed by Norman Foster. The peer, who was once among architects to accuse King Charles of using his “privileged position” to “skew the course” of the Chelsea barracks development, described being awarded the project as an honour. His translucent […]
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One of JMW Turner’s earliest paintings rediscovered after 150 years
June 6, 2025An oil painting of a stormy Bristol landscape has been rediscovered as one of the earliest works of JMW Turner, created when the artist was 17 years old and lost to his canon for the past 150 years. Turner’s signature on The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent’s Rock, Bristol was discovered in the […]
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