Covent Garden, circa 1890

Covent Garden. c. 1890
(Photo by London Stereoscopic Company / Getty Images)

Chinese New Year

The 19th of February was the Chinese New Year celebration. This means that from now we are living in the Year of the Sheep. This animal is a symbol of peace, harmonious co-existence and tranquility and it is also the representation of the Arts.

The Chinese Zodiac says that babies born this year (or people who were born in 1967, 1979, 1991 or 2003) are clever, polite, kindhearted, wise and indecisive.

Outside Asia, London's Chinese New Year celebrations are the largest. Last week, as every year, thousands of curious joined London's Chinese communities on this festivity. On Sunday, all of them walked along Trafalgar Square and Chinatown, where the main festivities took place.

Pancake Day

It has been a year already, and tomorrow it will be, again, Pancake Day. What does that mean? It means that we need to clear our cupboards and finish up all sugars, fats and eggs because Lent starts on Wednesday. 

There are many different recipes but lemon and sugar pancake is the classic one. If you don't care about the diet try it with banana, strawberries and nutella or berries and vanilla ice cream. Yummy!

If you are going to feel guilty because of the extra calories, you can participate in some of the races that will take place in the capital. Parliamentary Pancake Race will start at 10 o'clock while Bankside Pancake Day Race will begin in Borough Market at 12:30. At the same time, the starting signal at The Great Spitalfields Pancake Race will be happening. The participants will go through Brick Lane wearing fancy dresses and holding their crêpes.

So there are 48 days left before Easter Sunday. Are you ready to chose your Easter Egg?

55 Boadway

Not always the artists and their work are well recognized. The best example from Art History is one of Michelangelo's masterpieces, the Last Judgment. This marvelous fresco, done between 1536 and 1541, was partially modified due to the Council of Trent. Paul III and the Roman Catholic Church had condemned, at that time, nudity in religious art. For that reason, the great mannerist painter Daniele da Volterra, known as Il Braghettone, was hired to cover the genitals of Michelangelo's work.

Coming back to UK, the American-British sculptor Jacob Epstein did some controversial pieces. In London, it is possible to see some of his works like Rush of Green and W.H.Hudson Memorial, both of them placed in Hyde Park, or Ages of Man. But it was on 1929 when censorship and social pressure influenced Epstein's work.

Above the entrance of the London Underground Ltd headquarters, popularly known as 55 Broadway, Epstein designed the sculptures Day and Night. His work was considered controversial and indecent because, according to the censors, the small figure, the Day, had a "big" penis. Epstein agreed to remove from the naked statue one inch and a half. This is the length that the censors thought was acceptable and decent. 

London Underground will move to its headquarters this year and 55 Broadway, placed in St James's Park, will be a residential building. Whatever the case may be, it is still possible to enjoy the interesting front of this building.

The Institute of Sexology

In this photograph, taken in the late 1920s, we can see a nurse next to the Marie Stopes birth control clinic. Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes was a British author, palaeobotanist, academic, eugenicist, campaigner for women's rights and pioneer in the field of birth control. 

This picture, property of the Wellcome Library, is part of the exhibition The Institute of Sexology. This unique exposition will be at the Wellcome Collection until the 20th of September, 2015.

'The Institute of Sexology' brings together the pioneers of the study of sex through films, photographs, sculptures, archives and sexual instruments.

Besides this picture of Marie Stopes, the show collects some works and objects from Magnus Hirschfeld, Sigmund Freud, Margaret Mead, Virginia Johnson or Richard von Krafft-Ebing, among others.

Undress your mind and explore how sex was observed and analysed, since the 19th century, from different points of view as perversion, sadomasochism or homosexuality.