20+ Reasons to Head to London (Besides the Olympics)

And you thought the Olympics was only about sports. To match the marvel of athleticism that the world will be watching during this summer’s London Olympic Games, Great Britain is putting on a bona fide spectacle of its own—presenting the best art, music, theater, accommodations, and dance that the country has to offer. Here are more than 20 stops to work into your British vacation.

Photo: Courtesy of BBC 1 

Kicking off a summer of unparalleled athletic and cultural prowess, this weekend, a roster of big-name U.S. acts (Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Jack White) descend on the once-derelict East London grasslands that now make up part of the 2012 Summer Olympic Park. Also keep an eye out for homegrown London talent in the form of Vogue favorites Jessie Ware, Plan B, and Florence + The Machine.
bbc.co.uk/music/

 

Photographed by Uli Weber, Vogue, August 2011 

No playwright so defined the English theater as Shakespeare, and no actor more boldly embodies the country’s continuing theatrical dexterity than Simon Russell Beale. Assuming his rightful post as the grand monsieur of the British stage this summer, Russell Beale takes on the role of swaggering yet vulnerable lead in Timon of Athens. An unprecedented collaboration between U.K. and international arts organizations, the festival marks the biggest celebration of Shakespeare ever staged, with thousands of artists coming together for more than 70 productions. Meanwhile, over at the Globe Theatre, the curtain goes up on another lion of the British stage on July 14. Mark Rylance, the Globe’s former artistic director, returns for the first time, playing Machiavellian antagonist in Richard III (opposite dashing up-and-comer-to-watch Johnny Flynn as Lady Anne), and Olivia in Twelfth Night on September 22.
shakespearesglobe.com

In an Olympics devoted to global interconnectedness, World Cities 2012 may quite literally be the moving embodiment of the festival’s message. Marking their first-ever collaboration, London’s Sadler’s Wells and the Barbican arts centre will present a monthlong season of ten works (seven of which are U.K. premieres) by the renowned late choreographer Pina Bausch. The pieces, which Bausch began choreographing in 1986 after time spent living in each place, will be performed by her one-of-a-kind dance company, Tanztheater Wuppertal. From Palermo and Hong Kong, to India, Brazil, Los Angeles, Budapest, Istanbul, Santiago, Rome, and Japan, each performance makes for a dynamic travelogue.  
sadlerswells.com

 Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Sympathy in White Major - Absolution II 2006 (Detail) Butterflies and household gloss on canvas © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved. DACS 2012. 

Britain’s über-artist Damien Hirst proves that the leopard can change his spots in this tour-de-force retrospective of everything from butterfly paintings to sculptures. Opening July 17, the provocative installation artist Tino Seghal launches one of his mysterious, ephemeral pieces, often involving interaction between the public and performers, in the Turbine Hall. Through October 28.
tate.org.uk

  

Any Britons who forget to set their alarms on July 27 will have precious little chance of oversleeping. At 8:12 that morning, all of England will be transformed into a virtual carillon as thousands nationwide, from professional tollers and steeple-keepers to anyone with a cow, door, or bike bell, will take up chimes of every tone to ring in the opening of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Artist Martin Creed may have earned a reputation for creating minimalist pieces (he won the Turner Prize in 2001 for an installation featuring an empty room in which lights flickered on and off at varying intervals) but his Work No. 1197: All the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes promises to be a mass-participatory performance on an epic, shall we say, Olympic scale.
To take part, register at allthebells.com

 

The Handspring Puppet Company, the award-winning South African team that famously brought Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse to life on the West End and Broadway stage, tackles Ted Hughes’s Crow. Combining puppet designs, skillful manipulation, and dance choreography, the production makes eerily real Hughes’s bleak sequence of poems, inspired by illustrations by American artist Leonard Baskin.
handspringpuppet.co.za

 

With an extra four million visitors showing up in town for a spectacle of the grandest order, what better time and place for a contemplation of emptiness, immaterialism, and the unknown? The Hayward Gallery’s current exhibition “Invisible: Art About the Unseen,” takes up questions first raised by Yves Klein in 1958 when he staged his “architecture of air,” a show in Paris made up of (to the naked eye, anyway) bare white rooms. Works by Klein, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Maurizio Cattelan, and others explore the unseen aspects of visual art, with approaches that range from the fun and absurdist (a virtual maze, invisible ink drawings, a platform on which Warhol once briefly stood), to the haunting (Claes Oldenburg’s underground memorial to JFK) and those that stir the imagination, like Ono’s typewritten instructions for a painting: Set a blank canvas outside overnight; in the morning, it will be colored by the pink light of dawn.
southbankcentre.co.uk

  

Always such a pleasure to visit in its Hyde Park setting, the Serpentine has chosen Yoko Ono for its summer exhibition, showing both new and older works. One, #smilesfilm, has been 45 years in the making, envisaged, said the artist in 1967, as “a film which includes a smiling face snap of every single human being in the world.” Through September 9.
serpentinegallery.org

  

Making a glamorous addition to the London hotel scene in time for the Olympics, The Dorset Square Hotel debuted this week as the latest offering from Firmdale, the same group behind the Knightsbridge, the Soho, the Charlotte Street, the Haymarket, and Number 16. In the charming Marylebone neighborhood, within walking distance of West End theaters and Oxford Street shops, the hotel opens its doors in a handsome Regency town house—with 38 rooms that sport bold colors, rich fabrics, and a whimsical mix of contemporary furniture and one-off art objects.
For rates, visit: firmdalehotels.com

 

Punchdrunk, the avant-garde theater company whose immersive Macbeth-inspired dance installation Sleep No More has been in residence in New York’s gallery district since March 2011, brings this more family-friendly Doctor Who–inspired time-travel adventure to Ipswich’s New Wolsey Theatre. As with Sleep No More, each visitor can take a unique route through the installation, but instead of being passive observers in a tense Hitchcockian murder mystery, audience members are invited to partake in the Doctor’s dimension-hopping mission to save the world.
mif.co.uk

  

An opportunity to channel one's Downton Abbey mores arise this summer at the Waddesdon Manor, where the Rothschild family’s estate hosts ceramicist Edmund de Waal’s latest porcelain exhibition. Inspired by the Manor’s opulent, gilded interiors and rich legacy (most recently its exterior was filmed for scenes in Downton), de Waal created pieces that reflect the family’s deep passion for art collecting. Ten installations will be integrated into the Manor’s ground floor rooms, on display as if the Rothschilds themselves had arranged the pieces—contemporary echoes to traditional decoration.
waddesdon.org.uk

 

Old master meets X-rated in painter John Currin’s impressive new series of female nudes in “Sadie Coles HQ” (69 South Audley Street). Through August 18. A few blocks away in Coles’s new location, more New York artists are represented in a collaboration between Elizabeth Peyton and Jonathan Horowitz, exploring the symbolism of plants—especially when used as a metaphor for sex or psychology—through paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and photographs. Through August 25.
sadiecoles.com 

 

When Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison and acclaimed theater director Peter Sellers sat down for lunch more than ten years ago, the conversation turned to Shakespeare’s Othello. It’s a horrible play, Sellers asserted: badly motivated, disturbing, and not very relevant in our time. After a lengthy rebuttal, Morrison posed a challenge: If Sellers would stage the play, she would respond to it with an original production of her own. Sellers, having made good on his side of the deal, directed Morrison’s Desdemona. The piece, a collaboration between Morrison and Rokia Traoré, a Malian singer, is running at Barbican Hall as part of the World Shakespeare Festival, for two nights in July. Imagining conversations beyond the grave between Othello’s wife, Desdemona, and her nursemaid, Barbary, Morrison’s script posits that Barbary was African, and that she raised Desdemona through Moorish song and folklore.
barbican.org.uk

Elizabeth Streb describes herself as a “movement anthropologist” and an “extreme action architect.” Her dancers do not mince through footlights in pink satin and tulle; they are Lycra-clad superheroes who hurtle through panes of glass, scale walls, and launch themselves unsupported from breathtaking heights. Yet Streb’s innovative brand of choreography elevates her work above mere acrobatics. This summer Streb and her company will collaborate with English dancers to bring beautiful, gravity-defying stunts to some of London’s major landmarks. The specifics remain a secret, but Streb promises to “etch moments in the air that will sear the sky and the land.”
More information to be released via Twitter, @london2012fest


 

The first collaboration of its kind, "Metamorphosis: Titian 2012" synergizes the talents of Britain’s most famous contemporary artists, musicians, and choreographers. Inspired by Titian’s masterpieces Diana and Actaeon, The Death of Actaeon, and Diana and Callisto, the group of virtuosos, including painter Christopher Ofili, choreographer Wayne McGregor, and the Royal Ballet’s own Christopher Wheeldon, will produce three new ballets to be performed at the Royal Opera House and simultaneously live-streamed in Trafalgar Square on July 16. An exhibition in the National Gallery (where the original artworks are held) will showcase the studies and new set pieces produced for the project, proving that the work of the old masters can be an evergreen source of inspiration.
roh.org.uk




On three consecutive nights in July, visitors can venture through a labyrinth of flaming sculptures, burning pots, and candlelit pathways when one of Britain’s most celebrated landmarks is set ablaze by French fire alchemists Compagnie Carabosse. The Fire Garden installation will be open until midnight throughout the weekend, making it perfect for a post-dinner pop-over.
salisburyfestival.co.uk


 

With more than 50 performances taking place every ten to 20 minutes, West End Live accomplishes the seemingly impossible task of bringing together every musical currently being staged in London for a two-day festival that engulfs Trafalgar Square. This weekend, Londoners and Olympic pilgrims alike can catch glimpses of the West End’s most celebrated shows—from Billy Elliot to Sweeney Todd, from Matilda to One Man, Two Guvnors—at no cost, except of course for the Tube ticket to Charing Cross Station.
westendlive.co.uk


 

In Knightsbridge, just off Hyde Park, a legendary Italian name in luxury has just opened the latest in its spin-off line of chic small hotels and resorts. London’s Bulgari Hotel and Residences has 85 oversize rooms and suites, done in sleek Italian silks, fine woods, Marquina marbles, and highlighted by silver objects from the private Bulgari collection. Divine accommodations aside, the hotel has a new Italian restaurant, accessed from a sleek hot bar-lounge via a dramatic polished-steel staircase—plus the largest spa in central London and a stunning, 25-meter swimming pool made of Vicenza stone. Harrod’s is just steps away.
For rates, visit: bulgarihotels.com


 

What better place for Liberty’s first satellite store than “The Street,” Olympic Park’s central promenade? The recently opened outpost features products from the brand’s print collaboration with Dr. Martens, Barbour, and Nike, as well as an array of classic Liberty floral accessories, including stationery, sunglasses, scarves, and ties. Adhering to the store’s British roots, two Queen’s guards in full uniform are positioned at the entrance.
liberty.co.uk

 

Effervescent New York–based sculptor Sarah Sze—America’s pick for the U.S. Pavilion at next year’s Venice Biennale—has installed one of her multi-part, kinetic sculptures in the gallery, transforming its two floors into an intriguing laboratory of intricately connected objects. Through August 11.
victoria-miro.com




For a light-hearted taste of tradition, the Royal Academy is holding its 244th annual Summer Exhibition, with more than 1,000 works by artists who run the gamut from the utterly unknown to the hugely famous—including Tracey Emin and Raqib Shaw—hung side by side. Through August 12.
royalacademy.org.uk




In August, London cultural mecca the Southbank Centre will host a season of musical programming and performance art devised and curated by England-born baroque-pop countertenor Antony Hegarty (the piercing falsetto behind Anthony & The Johnsons.) The lineup is a who’s-who of artists that have inspired the singer’s career (aka, a guest list for a really fun party), ranging from Marina Abramović to a rare appearance by former Cocteau Twins front-woman Elizabeth Fraser.
meltdown.southbankcentre.co.uk