Culture
The South Bank is a significant arts and entertainment district. The Southbank Centre comprises the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and The Hayward. The Royal National Theatre and BFI Southbank are located adjacent to the east, but are not part of the centre. County Hall is no longer used as the seat of London government and has been converted to house the Sea Life London Aquarium, the London Marriott Hotel County Hall, the London Film Museum, and is the location of the London Eye. The OXO Tower Wharf is located towards the eastern end of South Bank, and houses gallery@oxo, shops and boutiques, and the OXO Tower Restaurant run by Harvey Nichols.
Cultural organisations situated near to the South Bank include The Old Vic Theatre which has been under the artistic direction of Kevin Spacey since 2003, the Old Vic Tunnels which operates under the artistic direction of Hamish Jenkinson, and the Young Vic which specialises in giving opportunities to young actors and directors. IWM London (Imperial War Museum) is also near the South Bank, hosting exhibitions from the first world war to the present day. The Florence Nightingale Museum is situated close by, next to Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital. Coin Street Community Centre host exhibitions throughout the year.
Part of the South Bank Centre known as the under-croft, has been used by the skateboarding community since the early seventies. Originally an architectural dead-spot, it has become a home of British skateboarding. The size of the under-croft has been reduced in recent years and was supposed to be returned to original size. This now seems unlikely and the future of the whole space is completely unsure at present. Part of the South Bank Centre has been turned into shops looking out over the river.
The South Bank is a central location in the 1952 comedy film The Happy Family which is set around the Festival of Britain.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The aggregate of all knowledge has not yet become culture in us. Rather it would seem as if, with the progressive scientific penetration and dissection of reality, the foundations of our thinking grow ever more precarious and unstable.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Culture is the suggestion, from certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture redresses this imbalance, puts him among equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)