🏛️ The National Gallery has announced that Japanese architecture firm Kengo Kuma & Associates (KKAA) will design its new wing, part of its £750m Project Domani. As well as numerous public projects in Japan and Europe,including the Tokyo Olympic stadium, KKAA is probably best known to Brits for designing the leviathan bulwark of V&A Dundee. The National Gallery’s new extension should be completed around 2030, and is set to contain art painted after 1900. Previously, the gallery has generally avoided as part of an unspoken agreement with the Tate that is now set to be broken. Know anything about the beef in London’s gallery community? Get in touch.
🏹 In other National Gallery news, there’s been tabloid outrage over a new video installation by Singaporean artist Ming Wong that depicts the martyr San Sebastian played by an “Asian trans man”. The saint’s image has often been re-interpreted by queer artists, though that didn’t stop conservative morality group the Family Education Trust worrying that “Children may believe this depiction of St Sebastian is accurate.”
🥳 Danny Boyles’ You Are Here is set to take place at the Royal Festival Hall on 3 May, with 1,000 performers and over 10,000 people predicted to attend. Designed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Festival of Britain and the opening of the Royal Festival Hall, it promises an immersive journey through British youth culture.
🚨 Finsbury Park festival Wireless has been cancelled after headline act Kanye West was denied permission to enter the UK by the Home Office. West previously made antisemitic remarks and voiced his admiration for Hitler. Earlier this year, he apologised for his behaviour and revealed his bipolar diagnosis. Over the weekend, prime minister Keir Starmer said West’s booking was “deeply concerning”.
Quick hits: the V&A has launched a website exploring the provenance of its items, part of what director Tristram Hunt calls an “institutional commitment to accountability and transparency; galleries Edel Assanti and Emalin both announce expansions; the Harry Styles-curated Meltdown festival at Southbank is already seeing an overwhelming people trying to buy tickets (let’s hope their servers hold fast!).
Are London theatres right to bank big on heartthrobs?
Les Liaisons Dangereuses, dir. Marianne Elliott
National Theatre, until 6 June 2026
The dancing that happens continuously throughout Marianne Elliot’s National Theatre revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses is sensual, violent: open thighs, sighing silks, bodies thrown into the air and then held tight, skin against skin. Here, in the chandelier-lit salons and boudoirs of 18th century France, seduction is a blood spot. There are predators, and there is prey.
Set among the aristocracy of pre-Revolutionary France, the plot is roughly as follows: the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont are Libertines, friends and former lovers involved in a psychosexual game of control and manipulation with those in their social circle. But when Merteuil demands Valmont ruin Cecile, the daughter of her friend, and Valmont plots to corrupt the virtuous Madame de Tourvel, the fireworks threaten to ignite their elegant world of salons and boudoirs — and burn the whole world down.
For this staging, Merteuil is played by the inimitable Lesley Manville, an Olivier-winner and Oscar nominee as experienced on stage as she is in film. In a delightful piece of circularity, she also played Cecile in the original 1985 production at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon. But in the play’s marketing, Manville isn’t the main draw. Instead, that’s Irish heartthrob Aidan Turner, better known for BBC bodice ripper Poldark and Sky bonkbuster Rivals than for his theatre chops. But, to put it simply, is he any good?
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