Things to do in London when you're red

Bauhaus: Art as Life

Barbican Art Gallery
Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
www.barbican.org.uk

The Bauhaus art school was founded in Germany by architect Walter Gropius in 1919. The school’s lecturers and students worked with other pioneers to design huge workers’ housing estates.

The revolutionary upsurge after the First World War had a big impact on artists. New styles developed as part of the revolt against the old order. Artists like Kandinsky were associated with Bauhaus. The exhibition charts the school from its opening until its closing in 1933.

Fact into Fiction: Charles Dickens—a Southwark childhood

Cuming Museum
151 Walworth Road, SE17 1RY
www.southwark.gov.uk/cumingmuseum

In the current age of austerity, links are often drawn between Charles Dickens’ times and the Tories’ vision for our society today. This exhibition looks at Dickens’ life in Southwark, 1824, when his father was imprisoned for debt. It reveals the real people and places that inspired Dickens’ characters.

Codebreaker: Alan Turing’s life and legacy

Science Museum
Exhibition Road, SW7 2DD
www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

Scientist Alan Turing pioneered computer programming in the 1940s and is celebrated for breaking secret Nazi codes. But in 1952 the police found out that Turing had had a sexual relationship with a man.

Turing was forced by the state to take a course of oestrogen as a form of chemical castration. He was banned from government work. In 1954, Turing committed suicide. The exhibition explores his scientific work as well as his life.