The British Museum’s Korea and the National
Gallery’s Renoir and Love open on back-to-back days, the latter
putting a 150-year-old Impressionist icon on British walls for the
first time. Café OTO gathers three generations of free-jazz
improvisers for a 101st-birthday tribute to a trumpeter most listings
pages have never mentioned. Three runs close the same Saturday within
walking distance of each other, and Croydon gets a free harvest
weekend built around a fortune-telling puppet pig.
A hand-checked shortlist of the week in London culture
· new every Thursday
Two of the biggest autumn museum shows in London open on back-to-back
days this week: the British Museum’s Korea on Thursday, the
National Gallery’s Renoir and Love on Saturday — the latter
putting Bal au Moulin de la Galette on UK walls for the first
time in its life. In between, Café OTO marks what would
have been Bill Dixon’s 101st birthday with a gig built entirely
around a trumpeter most people have never heard of, and three runs
— Fire Fire at the Arcola, A Month in the Country at the Donmar,
Police Cops’ workshop run at Battersea Arts Centre — all end
the same Saturday within half a mile of each other. Croydon gets a
free harvest weekend built around a fortune-telling puppet pig.
A fatigue note: Café OTO returns for a second issue running
— we don’t usually allow that, but a one-night, unrepeatable
centenary tribute with Evan Parker and Alexander Hawkins on the bill
earned the exception on its own. Vortex and the Barbican both rest
completely this week after two issues running each; a Latino Film
Festival pick that would otherwise have opened at the Barbican was
moved to its Regent Street Cinema date instead.
False Locust marks 101 years since the birth of
trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon — an artist who spent a
career resisting standard definitions of composition, timbre and
jazz — with an evening built in three parts. First, Kevin Le
Gendre (who interviewed Dixon for the BBC in 2004) talks to
35-year collaborator Stephen Haynes; then a ten-piece dectet
including Evan Parker, Alexander Hawkins and Charlotte Keeffe
improvises freely; then the Index Orchestra, conducted by Sam
Eastmond, performs “Index,” the large-ensemble work
Dixon considered among his most significant.
The most specific, least repeatable thing in London this week.
National Gallery · Trafalgar Square, WC2 · opens Sat 3 Oct, to 31 Jan 2027 · £20 Sun–Thu / £25 Fri–Sat (under-18s & members free)
The biggest UK Renoir show in twenty years:
Bal au Moulin de la Galette (1876) makes its UK debut
alongside 50-plus other works tracing Renoir’s run of
paintings about love, courtship and intimacy. A Pay-What-You-Wish
Friday evening scheme starts 23 October if full price isn’t
for you.
A 150-year-old painting having its actual UK debut this weekend.
British Museum · Bloomsbury, WC1 · opens Thu 1 Oct, to 31 Jan 2027 · from £14 (early bird); under-16s free
Drawn almost entirely from the 23,000-work bequest
the late Samsung chairman Lee Kun-Hee left to Korea’s
national museums in 2021: sculpture, painting and decorative arts
across two millennia, and the most comprehensive survey of Korean
visual culture staged in Europe in over 40 years. A first London
showing for nearly everything on the walls.
Kings Place, Hall One · King’s Cross, N1 · Fri 2 Oct, 6–9pm · from £25
Editor-in-chief Olga Rudenko hosts a night of live
storytelling from the independent Ukrainian newsroom: CEO Daryna
Shevchenko and reporters Francis Farrell, Dominic Culverwell and
Olena Zashko on what it means to run a newsroom in a
country at war, alongside a photo exhibition, “The War They
Live,” shot by Ukrainian soldiers themselves. Livestream
tickets exist if you can’t get there; a handful of seats come
with a closed dinner afterwards.
Direct from a newsroom with no ad budget and no PR agency — just the reporters.
Battersea Arts Centre · SW11 · to Sat 3 Oct, 2.30pm & 7.30pm · £20 · 15+
This Edinburgh Fringe sell-out decides what stays in
tonight: eight brand-new songs previewed live, with an original
score by Brit-winning Ben Adams, directed by Sean Foley. The
creators (Zachary Hunt, Nathan Parkinson, Tom Roe) are in the room
workshopping in real time — last week to catch it before it
either disappears or reopens somewhere bigger.
Five Points Brewing Co · 61 Mare St, Hackney E8 · Fri–Sun from midday · Free entry
An independent Hackney brewery's own Oktoberfest, not
a branded pop-up: German guest beers in the taproom and courtyard,
a live oompah band, food stalls and a best-dressed Lederhosen
competition that nobody is taking entirely seriously. Free to get
in; pay for what you drink.
Arcola Theatre · Dalston, E8 · to Sat 3 Oct · £20–£29 (Pay What You Can Tuesdays)
Gabrielle Brookes and Chris Simmons play an
unlikely pair — a climate activist and an oil worker —
in Jennifer Tang’s 80-minute two-hander about how class
shapes attitudes to global warming long before politics does.
Last weekend to catch it.
Donmar Warehouse · Covent Garden, WC2 · to Sat 3 Oct · £25–£70 (£20 for 35s and under, £15 standing via Daily Release)
Sophie Okonedo leads Lyndsey Turner’s revival
of Turgenev’s study of a stifled marriage and a household
upended by a younger man’s arrival. Final weekend; the
Daily Release drops £15 standing tickets every morning at 10am
for performances seven days out, so there’s a cheap way in
even now.
Design Museum · Kensington, W8 · to Sun 4 Oct · from £15.29
The streetwear godfather’s first UK
retrospective: 700-plus objects from NIGO’s own collection
charting the route from Harajuku to A Bathing Ape to Kenzo,
including a full recreation of his teenage bedroom. Down
Sunday night, for good.