What do the objects in your home say about you?
In house museums they are preserved as arranged at the moment of their owner’s departure, a domestic time capsule that offers a glimpse into the lives of those who once inhabited it. A place – frozen in time – promising access to personalities through their belongings.
Van Gogh lived in Lambeth in 1873, in a house now dedicated to him (with the blue plaque to prove it). Yet he stayed for only a year and, as an unknown, 20-year-old lodger, left nothing behind. The artist’s transient relationship with the building is much like many people’s housing situations in London today, and it complicates how we think about the house museum.
Are these institutions monuments to the famous dead, sustaining myths of individual genius – or places to question such ideas? Could the house museum help us to think about what it means to be at home today?
The eighth cohort of New Architecture Writers invites you to Housewarming: a reignition of the Van Gogh House in a lively evening of interviews with artist Michael McMillan, filmmaker Soudade Kaadan and curator Sasha Galitzine. Throughout the evening, these conversations will unfold across the house, inviting attendees to reconsider what it means to make the domestic public.
Date, time and location:
Wednesday 29 July 2026, 7–9pm
Van Gogh House, SW9 0RE
N.A.W. Cohort 08:
Kiran Benning, Sam Elbahja, Serena Faizal, Suaad Jama, Minsung Son, Ninu Sonuga, Monzie Tan, Nyahalo Tucker and Kyiga Wilberforce.
Guest speakers:
- Michael McMillan’s installation of a Caribbean-descended British family’s domestic interior, the Front Room, has been exhibited around the world.
- Soudade Kaadan’s film When the Tiles Spoke is currently on show at Leighton House.
- Sasha Galitzine is founder of Gerry’s Pompeii, a canal-side sculpture garden in west London created by Gerard Dalton.
In partnership with the Van Gogh House. Special thanks to Livia Wang.
Tickets are available here.
100% of ticket sales go directly towards the running of New Architecture Writers and the next generations of the programme.
