Things to do on Mother's Day in London
Art shows, museum exhibitions and tours – your Mother's Day dilemmas are solved
Treat your mum to a day out in London on March 10. You could spend the day taking in a wonderful exhibition, exploring an Art Deco palace or going on a behind the scenes tour of one of the capital's best-loved buildings. Throw in lunch and you'll have nailed the perfect Mother's Day. To help you plan a perfect Mother's Day outing we've tailored our picks: Art and design features great exhibitions; Museums and attractions includes venues with maximum mum appeal; Tours will help you discover a new part of town or gain a different perspective on an old favourite.
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- Art and design
- Museums and attractions
- Tours
Art and design events on Mother's Day
Poster Art 150: London Underground's Greatest Designs
The exhibition showcases 150 of the best posters commissioned during the past 150 years, including early maps and fare charts, classics from the 1930s and the best contemporary designs. Visitors to the exhibition will be invited to vote for their favourite and the most popular poster will be revealed at the end of the show.
- London Transport Museum Covent Garden Piazza, WC2E 7BB
- Fri May 24 - Sun Oct 27
Treasures of the Royal Courts: Tudors, Stuarts and the Russian Tsars
The ever-fascinating subject of cultural diplomacy and trade between Britain and Russia, starting with their origins in 1555 when the Muscovy Company was founded, provides the impetus for this exhibition. The show reveals the pageantry of royal courts between the times of Henry VIII and Charles II, and Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) and the early Romanovs, exploring how monarchs sought to strengthen their power against a backdrop of religious and social upheaval.
Love and Peace
- Free
A fifteen-foot-high flower sculpture has sprouted on the grassy central reservation of Park Lane as part of Croatian artist Ana Tzarev's 'Love & Peace' project.
Design Museum
- Critics choice
Opened in 1989 (following its original incarnation as the Boilerhouse established in the V&A by Terence Conran), the Design Museum by Tower Bridge encompasses modern and contemporary industrial and fashion design, graphics, architecture and multimedia. The smart Blueprint Café has a balcony overlooking the Thames.
- 28 Butlers Wharf, Shad Thames, SE1 2YD
V&A
- Critics choice
- Free
The V&A houses one of the world's greatest collections of decorative arts, in such varied fields as ceramics, sculpture, portrait miniatures and photography. Among the highlights are the British Galleries 1500-1900, which are arranged chronologically to trace the history of British design from the reign of Henry VIII to that of Queen Victoria.
- Cromwell Rd, SW7 2RL
National Gallery
- Free
Founded in 1824 to display a collection of just 36 paintings, today the National Gallery is home to more than 2,000 works. There are masterpieces from virtually every European school of art.
- Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN
National Portrait Gallery
- Free
Portraits don't have to be stuffy. The National Portrait Gallery has everything from oil paintings of stiff-backed royals to photos of soccer stars and gloriously unflattering political caricatures. The portraits of musicians, scientists, artists, philanthropists and celebrities are arranged in chronological order from the top to the bottom of the building.
- St Martin's Place, WC2H 0HE
Saatchi Gallery
Charles Saatchi's gallery, which opened after numerous delays in October 2008, has three floors, providing more than 70,000sq ft of space for temporary exhibitions.
- Duke of York's HQ, King's Rd, SW3 4SQ
Wallace Collection
- Free
This handsome house, built in 1776, contains an exceptional collection of eighteenth-century French furniture, paintings and objets d'art, as well as an amazing array of medieval armour and weaponry. It all belonged to Sir Francis Wallace and has been open to the public since 1900, with room after grand room containing Louis XIV and XV furnishings and Sèvres porcelain, while the galleries are hung with paintings by Titian, Velázquez, Fragonard, Gainsborough and Reynolds.
- Hertford House, Manchester Square, W1U 3BN
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