For the third instalment of the new Lates series supported by Morgan Stanley, Somerset House and The Courtauld will offer visitors another true site-wide takeover with exclusive live performances and experiences themed around current exhibitions.
These special one-off Lates nights offer unique after-hours access across our site, with activities hosted by artists and curators, plus live performances, bars and delicious food pop-ups to see you through the evening. All courtyard activities are free of charge to everyone, while after-hours exhibition entry is free to those aged 25 and under. Activities inside exhibitions will incur any applicable exhibition entry fees on the evening.
This event will explore and reflect on the complex legacy of European colonialism and The Courtauld’s expert team of historians, curators and conservators will be conducting talks throughout the evening, unveiling stories that connect the galleries artworks to colonisation, exploitation and the varied stories of people who lived through these historical periods. Talks include Sanctum Sanctorum Imperialism: Somerset House and the British Colonial Mindset and Decolonising Silverware.
In addition, the team behind conservation and technology at The Courtauld will run interactive drop-in sessions, giving visitors a rare opportunity to ask questions, interrogate and scrutinise the complex and surprising origins of the pigments that make-up much loved artworks.
Guests can also explore our latest exhibitions, alone or guided by a curator tour available exclusively for this event, including:
Fuseli and the Modern Woman: Fashion, Fantasy, Fetishism (14 Oct 2022 – 8 Jan 2023), explores one of the most original and eccentric artists of the 18th-century, Henry Fuseli.
Fifty of the artists striking private drawings will be on display, many of which depict the spectacularly extravagant hairdos and fashions of the day, revealing the artist’s secret lifelong obsession with the female figure and sexuality.
In addition, you’ll have the chance to explore, for the first time in 25 years, works by Helen Saunders, one of the early 20th century’s most radical female abstract artists. Helen Saunders: Modernist Rebel (14 Oct 2022 – 29 Jan 2023) traces her artistic development, from glimpses into her early period as an artist in the orbit of Roger Fry and the Bloomsbury Group, to a landmark group of six drawings from her Vorticist period.
A Modern Masterpiece Uncovered: Wyndham Lewis, Helen Saunders and Praxitella (14 Oct 2022 – 12 Feb 2023) will present an important lost masterpiece, Atlantic City, by Helen Saunders. The painting was discovered by two Courtauld students beneath Wyndham Lewis’s (1882-1957) major modernist portrait Praxitella (1921) and this display will present both works as well as a range of technical material to tell the story of this extraordinary discovery.
