Starry nights and magic mushrooms: pulling an all-nighter at London’s Van Gogh exhibition

Friends Sarah Polak and Nicole Horgan among the visitors at the Van Gogh exhibition. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

Forget Soho bars, Covent Garden ­eateries, King’s Cross clubs and Mayfair casinos, the place to be in ­central London at one o’clock on Saturday morning was the National Gallery’s sell-out exhibition Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers.

For only the second time in its ­history, the gallery acted like a ­frantic student on the eve of finals and pulled an all-nighter.