Dear Londoners — Part of what makes the capital the best place in the world to live is the sheer amount of stuff on offer. Want a Tuvan throat singing concert? You got it. An exhibition where the air is perfumed with baby milk? Done. But sometimes, this can be a little overwhelming. When there's a billion things to do, where do you even start? That's where our members' culture edition comes in. In this instalment, we'll tell you everything that's worth seeing, doing or reading in June. Easy-peasy. And what's more, we've also rounded up all of the must-read cultural news. Let us know what you'd like to have more of in the comments below.
Your culture briefing
🖼️ A long-disputed portrait by Lucian Freud has gone on display for the first time ever at the Garden Museum in Lambeth. While alive, Freud denied that the painting, titled Man in a Black Scarf, was his, but recent evidence has suggested this assertion may have been motivated purely by spite — the artist had feuded with the original owners of the work, Denis Wirth-Miller and Richard Chopping, who he knew from school.
🚨 Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Talay Riley, who also wrote music for stars like Dua Lipa and Britney Spears, died last Friday after being stabbed in Silvertown. The Met investigation continues amid tributes from friends, family and fellow musicians such as Stormzy. Three people have now been arrested in conjunction with his murder: a 27-year-old man has been released on bail pending further enquiries, while a man aged 24 and a woman, 25, have been released with no further action.
🏹 Though the exact details of the Bayeux tapestry’s journey from Normandy to London are top secret, French culture minister Catherine Pégard has said it will be “safe as a baby” in a specially designed, temperature- and humidity-controlled shell. The French government’s decision to loan the Bayeux tapestry to the British Museum has been deeply controversial, with some conservation specialists claiming that the nearly thousand-year-old artwork is too fragile to travel. Nevertheless, it’s heading to the capital for 18 months, and will be on display beginning from the 11 September.
⌚ Find yourself bored between the end of the work day and meeting your friends in central? The National Gallery’s got your back: the institution will now open until 7pm daily throughout July and August (apart from on Fridays, when it remains open until 9pm). Van Eyck at 6pm, pints at 7pm — hard to think of a better advertisement for our glorious capital.
✍️ Tucked in a passage near Sadler’s Wells, the new Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration is now open, four years after it was originally tipped to. Housed in a restored 18th-century waterworks, the centre is the brainchild of Blake, the beloved artist best known for his accompaniments to Roald Dahl’s novels, and is run by the UK’s only charity dedicated to illustration.
🔨 In the midst of its 75th birthday celebrations, it’s been announced that the Royal Festival Hall is set to get a £10m refurb, which will go towards fixing its roof and drainage systems, as well as its antiquated rigging and glazing.
Know more about the above stories? Or have any tips about any other culture stories? Let us know using the anonymous form below or email our editor.
Our June picks
Drowning in gallery listings? Perplexed by the amount of gigs on offer? We've sifted through everything on offer to find out which exhibitions, plays and gigs to spend your time on this month.
Art
Summer Exhibition 2026
Royal Academy, 16 June – 23 August 2026
It can be hard to pin down the Summer Exhibition. Part gallery display, part art market, it can be a somewhat uneasy combination: are you meant to look at the works on the walls purely to gauge their merit as art? Or are you meant to think about how they’d look in your lounge? At the private view yesterday, for instance, I was struck by a painting by Louis Loveless which took the perspective of a CIA drone bomber (titled “PREDATOR_DRONE_01”). I thought it was an excellent piece, though the thought of having it on my wall made me queasy (as the best art often does). The issue is also why critics seem unable to review the show properly — devolving either into tedious grumpiness, if not outright nastiness (the Guardian's Jonathan Jones seems to attend every year purely to harrumph that there's no contemporary Constable in there).
Perhaps the best solution to the conundrum is the one I quickly found: be unable to afford any of the work regardless. That way, you’re able to kick back, relax, and enjoy everything contemporary art has to offer. After all, where else would you find a £100,000 sculpture, a £39,500 linen painting called “Cost of Tuition: £39,500 (International Students, MA Painting, Royal College of Art 2025/26)” and a £300 painting of a dog in the same space (there are, it must be pointed out, dozens of pet portraits)? Bang for your buck, it’s easily the most enjoyable day out you’ll have all year.
Frida: The Making of an Icon
Tate Modern, 25 June 2026 – 3 January 2027
Frida Kahlo’s fame is such that she can be identified not just mononymously, but in disparate aesthetic symbols: unibrow, flower crown, red lipstick. It’s odd, then, that most British audiences will have seen her image but not her work itself — perhaps this is the reason why Tate Modern’s landmark retrospective promises, somewhat ominously, to explore the artist’s transition into a “global brand [featuring] more than 200 commercial objects that encompass her art, image, style and persona.”
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