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)

Lichtenstein: A Retrospective
21 February to 27 May 2013
Lichtenstein is renowned for his visually exciting works based on comic strips and advertising imagery, coloured with his signature hand-painted Benday dots. This momentous show brings together 125 of Lichtenstein's most definitive paintings and sculptures and will reassess his enduring legacy.

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)

Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901
14 February to 26 May 2013
Discover the remarkable story of Pablo Picasso's breakthrough year as an artist and see the spectacular paintings which launched his career.

Somerset House (2 minute walk)

Editions: Contemporary Rugs for Collectors

02 May to 30 June

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 01 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)

Barocci: Brilliance and Grace
27 February to 19 May 2013
Experience the charm and sensitivity of Barocci's most spectacular alterpieces - never before seen outside Italy.

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.

Man Ray Portraits
7 February to 27 May 2013
Man Ray was one of the leading artists of the Dada and Surrealist movements and this will be the first major retrospective of his photographic portraits. The exhibition will feature over 150 of Man Ray's vintage prints, many of which feature his friends, lovers and contemporaries, ranging from Kiki de Montparnasse and Lee Miller to Pablo Picasso and Catherine Deneuve.

Royal Academy of Arts (20 minute walk).

From the Shadows: The Prints of Sydney Lee
27 February to 26 May 2013
This long overdue celebration of the art of Sydney Lee RA (1866-1949) offers an opportunity to rediscover the work of one of Britain's most significant yet overlooked painter-printmakers.

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

Looking At The View
12 February to 2 June 2013
This stunning thematic display looks at continuities in the way artists have framed our vision of the landscape over the last 300 years and works by familiar names like Turner and Emin will be on display.

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

Kaffe Fassett - A Life in Colour
22 March to 29 June 2013
This celebration of the work of one of the great practitioners of contemporary craft. Kaffe Fassett's exhibition features over 100 works within a dramatic installation.

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.