Patrons of the arts are serving London's art-loving public well. Earlier this year, we told you about Artist Rooms and Anthony D'Offay's donation of his personal art collection. Now, some rarely- and never-before-seen works are on display at the National Gallery and Tate Britain. The late Simon Sainsbury (great-grandson of the grocer) bequested 18 works of art with a combined estimated value of £100m to the museums in 2006. Amongst the paintings are works......

Tate Britain is mid-way through its run of Turner-nominated painter Peter Doig’s exhibition, and this weekend we ducked in from the rain to catch a bit of the sublime. Doig employs immense canvases upon which he layers textured melancholic colour upon colour, executing incredibly complex fragments that appear effortless from a distance. The exhibit follows his beginnings at Chelsea Art School in London through to his most recent work rendered in Trinidad, where the......

It's officially Spring and by Pisces it's lovely out there in the sunshine. Crocuses have been spotted in Highbury Fields so our biggest recommendation for expenditure light trips this week is get to the parks and into the gardens and witness the miracles of the changing seasons. If you're in need of more artificial stimulation, however, and are squirrelling all your spare cash into your ISA before the end of the tax year then......

Ahh, art or money? It's something we ponder daily here at Londonist. (Can't we have both?) The big question is also being asked over at the Old Vic by none other than Kevin Spacey and his mate Jeff Goldblum in Mamet's Speed-the-Plow. We're also pondering how to get our hands on tickets for this sure-to-sell-out show. Previews run til Saturday; the show's booking until April. Also Opening Photography fans should pop along to the......

We've not done very well on the virtuous January front and seem to have spent all our money and most of our nights out on the lash with a flagrant disregard for propriety and our bank account. We don't mind though because, as usual, there are some excellent free things to do in town this week. Monday: British Asian gangsta folk ska punk is where it's at with the intriguing sounding Barbar Luck at......

Out with the old, in with the new: Clapham Junction to get new residential towers, new train station entrance, new ticket hall, new escalators, and revamped shopping centre (not a new one? way to ruin the theme, developers). Recently rechristened Old Hoxditch to get its very own music fest. Three Graces, to which Londonist will ineloquently refer in conversations with friends as “you know – the three hugging naked ladies ”, to be exhibited......

Right, so you're either saving up to blow the last of the December salary on one helluva NYE out or you're just stony broke after Christmas/sales shopping. Either way, unless you're happy to simply hibernate for the week here are some ideas for New Year jollity on a budget. New Year's Eve: Follow our top tips and gird your loins for the massive fireworks display along the Thames, focusing on the London Eye and......

Every day this month the Londonist team will be pointing you in the direction of a Christmas present that (with a bit of luck) you won't already have on your list. Climb up onto our collective lap and we'll see what we can move from our sack to your stockings... For the friends and family members who seem to always be busy with art exhibitions, arthouse films, dance, theatre and music of a more......

The Turner Prize may have been spirited away to Liverpool but Mark Wallinger's recreation of Brian Haw's protest camp outside the Houses of Parliament pre-SOPCA nailed the Turner Prize for him last night. Although he chose to exhibit himself dressed as a bear, wandering around a gallery in Germany for the prize exhibition it was clear that the judges awarded the annually controversial £25,000 gong to Wallinger on the merits of his "bold political......

Advent is upon us. Hanukkah starts on Wednesday. Office parties are already everywhere. Tis the season to be jolly, jolly, jolly but we know this can be draining, emotionally and financially. Don't let the state of your wallet throw you over the edge. We can't afford to buy tickets to the BFI IMAX all-nighter next weekend and we're not allowed to enter our own competition. But we can do the following splendid things for......

We nearly always mention the monthly Late at Tate Friday nights because each month the events, ideas and people involved are more weird and wonderful than the last. It's all about winning this month in Late at Tate Britain: Jackpot. Winning and prize-giving is consuming the various Tate Galleries as the annual Turner Prize exhibition of shortlisted artists is relocated to Tate Liverpool. In Tate Britain, there's the Turner Prize: A Retrospective exhibition instead......

The Mayor of London wants you to stay up late. Stay up late for the Lates October season. He wanted you to cut back on sleep and catch up on culture back in May when the first Lates season was launched, now it's October, he wants you to check out the things you miss during the day in the big museums and galleries. Have you been meaning to see something at any of the......

Fight the temptation to sneak under the duvet tomorrow night - it may be getting dark ever earlier and there's a definite hiding-under-duvet chill in the crisp air but fight! Resist! Protest! Agitate! Agitate: Late at Tate Britain! The first Friday of every month is the special late opening of Tate Britain and there have been some very good themed nights to kick off the weekend in style - the burlesque evening, the village......

Seeking somewhere new to have a picnic lunch? Perhaps you're an MP in need of an oasis of calm? Or a Vauxhall clubber who's lost their way on the north bank? St John's Gardens provides the perfect place. A small but perfectly-formed garden in Millbank, its high trees, huge flowerbeds, formidable fountain and generous smattering of benches make it a lovely summer spot and only a hop and skip from Parliament or the river.......

First Friday of the month today which means Tate Britain is open late tonight with lots of free events to round off your week. This month's gallery fun coincides with the last few days of Sing London and has been cunningly named Sing Local as all things SW1 will be celebrated too. If you're limbering up for the big finale on Sunday at the South Bank Centre then you might want to get down......

Every cloud has a silver lining, sure the Cutty Sark was destroyed by fire but at least Greenwich now gets a visit from the Duke of Edinburgh. From today the Tate Britain displays a photographic exhibition of British life. A London postman has been jailed after he was found to have amassed almost 3000 items of post in a shed having got behind on his deliveries. London's swift population is dwindling as a result......

With the popularity of monthly late night events at Tate Britain and the V&A, is it any wonder that other museums want to get in on the act? The latest addition to the fold is the Museum of London, which will be holding its first late night opening tonight. They haven't entirely got the hang of it - it'll all be over by 9pm - but the principle of the thing is sound. With......

The House of the Orange Monkey chronicles the adventures of a very special tourist. Mr Monkey is one of the few simian visitors to our city. He certainly makes the most of it, exploring the parts other tourists cannot reach, and writing up surprisingly useful field notes. We caught up with him to ask a few questions. 1. Tell us a bit about yourself I'm a pocket sized beanie monkey living in the north-west.......

An astonishingly workaday title for a book that features a singing otter, flying dinosaurs and a sheet of electronic tissue paper. Welcome to the madcap world of Paul Ewen, a softly spoken New Zealander with a knack of finding trouble in public houses. It’s a world not unlike that of Michael Hodges, only with less vitriol and more adjectives. The just-published paperback collects together 44 ripping yarns, each set in one of London’s famous......

The kind of record-breaking attempt where you balance an egg on your head while performing La Traviata backwards in a vat of custard - Londonist thinks those are pretty lame, on the whole. The kind of record-breaking attempt where you stand up for free speech in the UK while pointing out the ridiculousness of the paranoid laws introduced by the government which curb the right to protest, however - those are the kind of......

Tomma Abts has become the first female painter to win the £25,000 Turner Prize. She was awarded the prize last night by Yoko Ono in a ceremony held at Tate Britain. The run-up to the event was dogged with the usual controversy - the Stuckists had a bit of a protest outside the gallery and one of the judges, Lynn Barber, said the judging process was so farcical that it has seriously 'dampened her......

The Big Chill is a multi-media festival, bar, club event, record label and lifestyle "dedicated to transforming the spirit of our times"... and they're taking over Tate Britain for the monthly Late at Tate. DJs will play live sets dotted around the artworks, there's a bar, animation, live performances and readings, and entry to the Holbein in England and the Turner Prize exhibitions are half-price. Late at Tate - The Big Chill, Friday 1......

There's not much more to say about the weekend ahead except... "Whoosh! Whee! Bang! fffsssssssssstttttt....POW!" It's Bonfire Night so London is going to be quite preoccupied with either getting as close as possible to some pyrotechnic displays or heading for the hills far away from the fireworks. In case you need any other distractions between now and Monday, here's a slightly truncated Culture Crawl for those who would rather get their thrills from non-exploding......

There's a yard behindThe Old Blue Last, off Great Eastern Street, that frankly makes our eyes bleed. For anyone on the prowl for weird and wonderful street art (and it's not just us, right?), this is untouchable. Stenciler El Chivo provides the colourful backdrop, flytippers provide the furniture, and the Tate Britain should be providing a Turner Prize. Superb.......

It's a bit of a mixed bag this week, to match the weather and the annual wardrobe meltdown that we are facing as we try to cover all potential weather situations. It's been a bit of a scramble to bring the Culture Crawl indoors after such a great summer of outdoor pursuits but inside we go... and there's plenty to see and do... Shunt, the people who brought us Tropicana and Amato Saltone in......

Remember when the Tate Modern first opened and one of the rooms contained a gigantic heap of metal that was constantly dragging itself across the floor only to be pulled back by great clunking chains? We loved that. And now we love the idea of a flying steamroller: The Flying Steamroller, 1996, is a huge sculpture which consists of a twelve ton steamroller that is attached to a pivoting arm with a counterbalance weight.......

"The annual farce of the Turner Prize is now as inevitable in November as is the pantomime at Christmas." - Brian Sewell, The Evening Standard, 19 November 1992 The Turner Prize is "intended to promote public discussion of new developments in contemporary British art." This rather lofty decription of the award's intention tends to translate each year into tabloid indignation about how rubbish, elitist and silly modern art is. There will be the inevitable......

Pakistan's president has claimed in his memoir that the Al Qaeda 'mastermind' behind 9/11 was also connected to the 7 July bombings. A 22-year-old man is being questioned by police over the death of Lucy Brahamm who was found stabbed to death at her parents' house in the grounds of Harrow School ten days ago. Looks like Frost/Nixon is going to make its way to Broadway and the big screen (with Ron Howard directing......

In case you missed it earlier: The Met have pleaded not guilty to health and safety charges relating to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. It's a 'test case' apparently. Police patrols at churches and mosques in London have been stepped up following the protests over Pope Benedict's remarks about Islam. A survivor of July 7 has criticised TerrorBull Games of Cambridge for creating War on Terror: The Board Game. The game includes......

The super-stacked summer season of stuff to see and do is over... and the even more packed autumn schedule of stuff to see and do has launched without pause for breath. There's no time to stop and stare in London - and why would you want to? Friday 1 September Late at Tate Britain, 6.00pm - 10.00pm, FREE The monthly Late at Tate Britain, held on the first Friday of each month, is tonight......