When in London for...The Frieze Art Fair
Published: October 8, 2007
 
Courtesy The Tate Modern
Louise Bourgeois’s "Seven in Bed" (2001) at the Tate Modern
Courtesy David Adjaye Associates
A rendering of the new Rivington Place cultural center.
On-the-Ground Reports from Frieze and the Satellite Fairs
The Fair:
Where: Regent’s Park, SE corner; 44-20/78-33-72-70; www.frieze.com.
What: 150-plus commercial galleries in a massive art circus.
When: October 11–14, 11 a.m.–7 p.m.
How: By tube to Regent’s Park station on the Bakerloo line.
Highlights: Richard Prince’s fully functioning model of a 1970 Dodge Challenger, the artist’s first public piece in the United Kingdom. • Mexican artist Mario Garcia Torres’s conceptual piece, installed here as part of the prize for winning the Cartier Award for emerging artists. • The first shared curated booth: Three galleries—Jan Mot, Brussels; GB Agency, Paris; and Raster, Warsaw—have appointed outside curator Aurélie Voltz to select works by their artists. • Glenn Branca’s Symphony no.13, Hallucination City for 100 Electric Guitars: This year’s music presentation is performed by volunteer amateurs using their own amps (October 12, 7:30 P.m., at the Roundhouse, Chalk Farm; www.roundhouse.org.uk). • The on-site restaurant: Mark Hix, of Le Caprice, is the chef in charge.
Stay:
Dukes
Since One Aldwych’s Gordon Campbell Gray, the cognoscenti’s preferred hotelier, took over Dukes this year, the fusty old dame has become a dazzling debutante. The redo hasn’t so much diluted as updated the Englishness on which the redbrick Edwardian has always traded: chintz draperies replaced by Savile Row tailoring plus flat screens, WiFi, and excellent AC. What remains intact: the spectacular, and quiet, Green Park location and Dukes Bar’s supreme martinis, surrounded by the mahogany paneling and new navy velvet. (Directions: Green Park station, Bakerloo to Oxford Circus, one stop on the Victoria line.)
St. James’s Pl.
44-20/74-91-48-40
RATES: $600–$1,370
www.dukeshotel.com
The Haymarket
Tim and Kit Kent, the famously talented duo behind Firmdale Hotels—whose stable includes the Covent Garden and the Soho—opened a seventh London location this summer, and it’s their most central and urbane yet. Just try to get through Frieze without passing the Tony Craggs in the Haymarket’s yellow-and-black lobby en route to some event in the glamorous Shooting Gallery, with its bleached-oak floors and wallpaper resembling grayscale Rousseaus, or the pool bar (pools are rare in this city, let alone cobalt blue ones that host parties). For next year’s Frieze, consider re-serving the Townhouse: four floors, five bedrooms, and a private entrance. Failing that, the 50 serene bed chambers are also hot properties. (Directions: Charing Cross station, three stops on the Bakerloo line from Regent’s Park.)
1 Suffolk Pl.
44-20/74-70-40-00
RATES: $490–$4,550
www.firmdale.com
The Stafford
Next door to Dukes and—paging joggers!—sharing its Green Park privileges is another redbrick Edwardian hotel, this one for traditionalists. A riot of toiles, brocades, tartans, and velvets studded with antiques, and many a four-poster, the Stafford’s “olde” decor reaches its zenith of cute in the hotel’s major calling card, the 13 black-beamed Carriage House rooms located in a 17th-century annex on its own cobblestoned mews. Since spring, these have looked out on their polar opposites across the way: 26 brand-new Mews Suites, all bright white walls and clean lines. (Directions: Green Park station, Bakerloo to Oxford Circus, one stop on the Victoria line.)
St. James’s Pl.
44-20/74-93-01-11
RATES: $500–$2,430
www.thestaffordhotel.co.uk
Eat:
Galvin Bistrot de Luxe
Chef brothers Jeff and Chris Galvin have been lauded in London ever since they opened this impossible-to-dislike (Francophobes aside) restaurant two years ago. The dark wood paneling, crisp white napery, bentwood chairs, and smoked white walls (not literally) do Paris better than most Parisian bistros; ditto Jeff’s duck confit on Puy lentils and poulet des landes rôti forestière. (Chris has opened a posher Galvin, on top of the Park Lane Hilton.) Prices, too, are remarkable. All this plus the easy stumble from Regent’s Park makes Galvin the unofficial Frieze cafeteria.
66 Baker St.
44-20/79-35-40-07
Wild Honey
The hit of 2006 was Arbutus, from chef Anthony Demetre and front-of-house head Will Smith, which turned out carefully sourced mod-Brit food at very reasonable rates, albeit in a featureless, harshly lit room. In Wild Honey, their summer ’07 opening, the duo have resolved the ambience problem with dark oak-paneled walls, contemporary canvases, slipper chairs, and banquettes while Frenchifying the menu in regional bistro fashion. Wines, as at Arbutus, are all offered by carafe as well as by bottle.
12 St. George St.
44-20/77-58-91-60
Canteen
When checking out the East End galleries or antiques-junk-fashion at the adjacent Spitalfields Market (best on Sun-days), this is the place to end up—or start off: Breakfast is served all day. Glass walls, central communal tables, and wooden booths create an effect more architect-chic than bleak, and the all-British cuisine (remember, Britain is now food obsessed) bears as much relation to canteen fare as Rembrandt does to street portraitists.
2 Crispin Pl.
Spitalfields
44-84/56-86-11-22
Wonder Bar
On the ground floor of trendy department store Selfridges, a dangerously irresistible wine-delivery method: the wine jukebox. After downloading cash to a smart card, you tour the 52 bottles, dispensing Petrus ($325 for a small glass) as if it were Diet Coke. With luck, the store will by now have won its bid to bring back the sample sip sizes ($65 for Petrus) deemed illegal by city council bureaucrats back in July. There’s food, too: shellfish, charcuterie, or cheese served on wooden boards.
Selfridges & Co.
400 Oxford St.
44-11/33-69-80-40
See:
Tate TV
The first all-art noncommercial digital channel is launching now, co-funded by the Arts Council, Channel 4, and the BBC. Watch its initial 30 hours of original content about Tate artists in your hotel room on www.tate.org.uk.
Louise Bourgeois
Just five years shy of 100, the great artist gets her first major U.K. retrospective since 1995, with 200 works in many mediums, at the Tate Modern, while over in the West End, new Bourgeois works, including six bronzes, are set off against the crimson silk walls of Hauser & Wirth Colnaghi.
Tate Modern
Bankside
44-20/78-87-88-88
www.tate.org.uk
Hauser & Wirth Colnaghi
15 Old Bond St.
44-20/73-99-97-70
www.hauserwirth.com
Southbank Centre
This summer, after endless renovations, the equally beloved and maligned Brutalist Thames-side arts center reopened amid much hoopla: Beethoven’s Ninth using Billy Bragg’s translation of Schiller’s text, 27 gamelan ensembles, and more. At the Royal Festival Hall, the resident London Philharmonic celebrates its 75th birthday on October 7 with new principal Vladimir Jurowski conducting a suitably populist program: Mozart’s Prague Symphony; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 4, featuring pianist Maurizio Pollini; and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. Then, on October 15 and 16, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, South Africa’s unofficial ambassadors and ever-popular masters of a cappella isicathamiya and mbube music, raise the new roof and counteract any art-pretension hangovers. In the smaller Queen Elizabeth Hall, period-instrument maverick Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment celebrates its 21st anniversary on October 13 and 14 with a fresh interpretation of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, the first great British opera.
Belvedere Rd.
44-87/16-63-25-00
www.southbankcentre.co.uk
Rivington Place
This not-to-be-missed visual arts center/gallery/exhibition space, dedicated to cross-cultural work outside the mainstream, is just opening. Among its many appealing virtues is the building itself, by “it” architect David
Adjaye (see the new Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, page 52).
6–8 Standard Place
Rivington St.
44-20/77-29-96-16
www.rivingtonplace.org
The Wellcome Collection
The Wellcome Trust, which funds research into human and animal health, opened this extraordinary space this summer. Quite possibly the world’s only museum dedicated to the human condition, it presents exhibits ranging from contemporary works exploring bodily issues to Napoleon’s toothbrush and a bronze Greco-Roman phallic amulet—the latter two are part of the collections compiled by the trust’s founder, the medically minded philanthropist-entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome (1853–1936).
183 Euston Rd.
44-20/76-11-22-22
Play:
Fortnum & Mason
October sees not only the queen’s grocer’s tercentenary but also the unveiling of its huge renovation. This most aristocratic of department stores wishes to be known for more than tea and Christmas hampers. To that end, it has added new departments a-go-go, including a third floor that is all about men, offering leather goods, games, and swank valises, and four new restaurants. Outside, small effigies of Mr. Fortnum and Mr. Mason still emerge to strike the hour on the famous clock.
181 Piccadilly
44-20/77-34-80-40
www.fortnumandmason.com
All Star Lanes
A cultural disconnect within a cultural disconnect, here’s a heartland pastime in a mall—albeit a pretty Edwardian mall that’s growing beyond chain stores. The original Bloomsbury branch of this upscale bowling alley had its boldfaced followers; this one will surely follow suit. Get a house julep of Buffalo Trace with your crab cakes and burgers.
Whiteleys
Porchester Gardens
44-20/73-13-83-63
"When in London for...The Frieze Art Fair" was originally published in the October/November 2007 issue of Culture + Travel magazine.
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July 24, 2008 
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