Five hot cultural happenings worth travelling for
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
For the love of Lindbergh in Spain
Peter Lindbergh’s untimely death in 2019 was a loss both for the fashion world and the fine-art one. Now a long-awaited posthumous retrospective of his atmospheric black-and-white photographs is landing in Galicia, in northern Spain. Curated by the photographer shortly before his death, and realised by his son Benjamin and Marta Ortega, a friend and long-time admirer of his work, Peter Lindbergh: Untold Stories will take over a waterside industrial building in the port city of A Coruña from 4 December, which has been renovated for the occasion by the award-winning Galician architect Elsa Urquijo. Expect many versions of young Naomi, Linda, Christy, Amber et al, as well as Hollywood icons along the lines of Charlotte Rampling and Nicole Kidman. Taschen has released the accompanying book/catalogue.
Stay: A Quinta da Auga, in nearby Santiago de Compostela – a lovely converted 18th-century paper mill that’s been earning its Relais & Châteaux status for almost two decades. From around £180, aquintadaauga.com
Jenny Saville takes Florence
The cradle of the Renaissance is currently the site of the largest ever show of the work of British painter Jenny Saville, whose monumental nudes and reconsidering of the female form are spread across a full five historic venues in Florence, among them the Palazzo Vecchio and the Museo Novecento (whose director, Sergio Risaliti, curated the entire exhibition). Amid works by Della Robbia, Michelangelo and Botticelli that propose idealised images of woman- and motherhood, Saville’s pitiless (but often terribly poignant) representations – among which is her jarring self-portrait, The Mothers – resonate all the more in contrast. It’s a brilliant dialogue between 15th-, 16th- and 20th-century art, and a lovely way to explore the beauty of the city.
Stay: Hotel Lungarno, Leonardo Ferragamo’s classic on the river, a Michele Bonan-designed looker with a perfect bar that’s an easy walk from all five Saville venues. From €550, lungarnocollection.com; or AdAstra, Betty Soldi and Matteo Perduca’s jewelbox B&B, overlooking the city’s largest private garden. From €220, adastraflorence.it
Devon goes Down Under
The timing feels serendipitous: as Australia prepares to reopen its borders to international travellers, one of the largest shows of the country’s indigenous patrimony, entirely curated by First Australians and showcasing their work across painting, sculpture, video, installation and performance, is having its European premiere. The National Museum of Australia’s Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters features several hundred works by more than 100 artists, which recount elements of the Seven Sisters Dreaming stories – creation narratives that date back tens of thousands of years – with an aim to help both disseminate and preserve them. It’s equal parts art, history and science. Who better to host it than The Box, the dynamic £46m museum-archive-learning space in Plymouth, which opened last year? theboxplymouth.com
Stay: Boringdon Hall, for some old-school West Country luxury. From around £140, boringdonhall.co.uk
Holbein and Rubens hit Tinseltown
LA has become a city of powerhouse cultural institutions, but the Getty – in both its iterations, the Getty Center and the Getty Villa – still more than holds its own. To wit, the one-two Old Masters punch that’s just come down the pipe: discrete shows of Hans Holbein the Younger (at the Center, opened this week and the first such large show of the artist in the US) and Peter Paul Rubens (at the Villa, opening 10 November, where works by the 16th-century Flemish artist, diplomat and notorious social butterfly will be contrasted with Greek and Roman pieces from the museum’s permanent collection). getty.edu
Stay: Santa Monica Proper, for slick Kelly Wearstler-designed surrounds and rooftop pool gratification. From about $322, properhotel.com; or The Oceana, for walking access to Palisades Park and the beach. From around $750, hoteloceanasantamonica.com
Art after dark in Mexico
And in Mexico City it’s culture more or less all the first half of November (starting with the festivities surrounding Día de los Muertos, in the Zócalo and beyond). From 5-7 November, the Distrito Federal celebrates the eighth edition of Gallery Weekend CDMX, the city’s informal contemporary art event of the season, which sees more than 50 galleries, dealers and artist-run spaces in Roma, Condesa, Juárez, San Miguel Chapultepec, Polanco and beyond – both established and emerging – staying open into the late hours. This year is the first that design galleries are integrated into the mix, and promises, after 2020’s pause, to bring extra ebullience to the scene. galleryweekend.org
Stay: Círculo Mexicano, the slick, ultra-central 25-room hotel from Grupo Habita: all natural surfaces and native woods, spare design, and views over the Metropolitan Cathedral. From about $330, grupohabita.com
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