Two free museum openings land on the same Friday
with nothing in common but timing — a show on the women who
built punk in Camden, and the Science Museum’s account of the
science behind America’s founding. Dua Lipa borrows the
Royal Festival Hall to put Patti Smith on stage for the literature
festival she’s curating herself. A world-premiere musical takes
its final bow at the Young Vic, and pianist Craig Taborn and trumpeter
Peter Evans play two sets of duo improvisation nobody else will hear
at Vortex.
A hand-checked shortlist of the week in London culture
· new every Thursday
Book ahead for the Science Museum’s free opening — general
admission still needs a ticket, even at no cost — and allow
time to find the other free opening this week, a museum tucked into
a part of Camden most readers won’t have reason to visit
otherwise. Saturday is a closing-soon cluster worth planning
around rather than squeezing in: the Mayfair pair is one afternoon’s
walk, Beaconsfield in Vauxhall is its own separate trip across the
river, and Thelma & Louise takes its final bow at the Young Vic
the same day. Sunday pairs Diwali in Trafalgar Square with Dua Lipa
putting Patti Smith on stage at the Royal Festival Hall for the
literature festival she curates herself.
No food pick this issue — nothing on the pop-up or
supper-club circuit held up to a second look with a confirmed date
inside the window. The ideas circuit, by contrast, is unusually
full: four talks made the cut, more than we’d normally run, so
they’re kept to Also Worth It rather than crowding the leads.
Full source notes and the cut list are in the footer.
Vortex Jazz Club · 11 Gillett Square, Dalston, E8 · Wed 28 Oct, two shows: doors 7.30pm/9.30pm · £25 standard / £23 members, students & UC (limited)
Pianist Craig Taborn and trumpeter Peter Evans —
two of New York’s sharpest avant-garde improvisers, rarely in
the same room — play two separate sets in one night, each a
different conversation. No record to promote, no reunion to mark:
a ticket buys you one set only, so the two shows are genuinely
different nights, not an early/late repeat.
Two shows, two different duos' worth of music — pick a door time and commit.
Museum of Youth Culture · 51 St Pancras Way, Camden, NW1 · opens Fri 23 Oct, to 22 Nov · Free
An exhibition dedicated to Poly Styrene, the
X-Ray Spex frontwoman who helped invent punk's look as much as its
sound, built around her own archive alongside original artwork by
photographer Linder, unseen pieces by saxophonist Lora Logic and
fashion from Dame Zandra Rhodes. It's the flagship show of the
city-wide Up Yours! festival on the women the punk story usually
skips — confirmed via Time Out, ianvisits and two music
outlets after the museum's own site returned a "suspended account"
error on every attempt this run.
A whole museum built around the women punk usually erases, in a part of Camden worth the detour.
Science Museum · Exhibition Road, South Kensington, SW7 · opens Fri 23 Oct, to 25 Apr 2027 · Free, book ahead
Four decades, 1760s to the first US presidency, told
through the science that built a nation: colonial border-mapping,
fossil-hunting and plantation science set directly against the
knowledge of enslaved and free African-descended people and
Indigenous scientific practice, with objects tied to George III and
George Washington either side. The museum flags its period material
as carrying racist language and imagery, rather than quietly
editing it out.
A British museum willing to show another nation's founding science as entangled with slavery, not separate from it.
Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre · Belvedere Rd, SE1 · Sun 25 Oct, 7.30pm · from £29
Dua Lipa interviews Patti Smith on Bread of
Angels, her new memoir tracing a childhood after the war
through to returning to performing after the death of her husband,
Fred “Sonic” Smith — recorded live for Lipa's
Service95 Book Club podcast. It's the centrepiece of the London
Literature Festival Lipa is curating this year, not a one-off
booking by the venue.
Patti Smith on her own memoir, interviewed by someone who's clearly read it properly.
Trafalgar Square, WC2N · Sun 25 Oct, 1–7pm · Free, no ticket
The Mayor of London's free Diwali festival opens with a
200-strong dance sequence filling the square, then runs through
community performances, workshops and street food into the
evening. Just turn up — worth building a Sunday around, not
just stumbling into.
A proper public festival in the most central spot in London, with nothing to book and nothing to pay.
The Other Palace · Palace St, Victoria, SW1E · Tue 27 Oct, 7pm (also Sun 25, Wed 28–Fri 30 Oct) · around £42–£54 via resale — check the venue's own box office for the official price
Clown-trained Australian comedian Garry Starr attempts
to perform the entire Penguin Classics canon — Homer to
Dostoevsky — in seventy minutes, mostly by refusing to take
any of it seriously. Properly silly, physical comedy rather than a
literary lecture in disguise.
Seventy minutes of deeply silly physical comedy, not a lecture on the canon in disguise.
Young Vic · 66 The Cut, Waterloo, SE1 · to Sat 24 Oct · price not confirmed on the venue's own page when we checked — see youngvic.org
The world premiere of a new stage musical built from
the 1991 film, with Callie Khouri — who wrote the original
screenplay — adapting her own story and Neko Case writing
music and lyrics, Amy Lennox and Rachel Tucker as Thelma and
Louise. Final weekend of a run that opened 3 September.
No.9 Cork Street, Mayfair, W1S · to Sat 24 Oct · Free
Two galleries' Frieze-week pop-ups close the same
day: New York's P·P·O·W brings Brooklyn
painter Robin F. Williams to the UK for the first time with
Act Natural, while The Third Line shows Jordan Nassar's
No History of Shapes, pattern and place worked through
Palestinian embroidery technique. Both free, both gone Sunday.
Timothy Taylor, 15 Bolton St, Mayfair, W1J · to Sat 24 Oct · Free
Hayal Pozanti's geometric, biomorphic abstraction
— invented glyph-like forms built into dense, colour-driven
compositions — in its final days at this Mayfair gallery.
Beaconsfield · 22 Newport St, Vauxhall, SE11 · Wed–Sat 12–5pm, to Sat 24 Oct · price not stated on the venue's page — a nonprofit artist-run space, likely free
Jumana Emil Abboud's When the devil's hair is the
only care draws on Palestinian folklore — springs,
spirits and the stories attached to them — at one of south
London's longest-running artist-run spaces, never featured in
these pages before.