Unpopular kid at school

The museums of London are just like those kids in the playground who no one wanted to play with. These little fellas were so desperate to attract play mates they would have done just about anything to make themselves popular. If you ever wondered what happened to these sad things you can tune in and watch them on Big Brother.

I make this comparison to museums after my recent visit to the V&A. I should say upfront that the V&A is my favourite of all the London museums. Admittedly for an entirely unscholarly reason: the homemade beef pies in the café. The fact that they have resorted to baking us treats should tell you that they are a tad on the desperate side for friends. Baking is the adult version of doing someone else’s homework. I must also admit I wasn’t opposed to it then and I am certainly not opposed to it now.

It isn’t just the pies, which gives away the museum's desperation.

The museums are in an unusually tricky situation, most of the great unwashed British general public go to the museums because they are free. I don’t judge as we have already established I go for the baked goods.

In the face of economic downturn back in the 1980’s the British government managed to democratise culture, art and history. It was as if Marie Antoinette’s ghost was their financial advisor; ‘Let them eat cake Prime Minister.’ Or in this case pies. Let the Londoners go to galleries and they will forget that they can’t afford bread and milk. If the working classes survived their impoverished childhoods they grew up with a very well informed opinion on whether modern day architecture is influenced most by the Greeks or by the Romans. This is incredibly useful if you get stuck for something to say to the person next to you in the benefits queue outside the Post Office on a Monday morning.

So after years of telling people that museums are free, or in other words, ‘I’ll pay you to be my friend and hang out with me’, it is then very difficult to be taken seriously. This is despite housing some of the most magnificent wonders in the world, such as my beloved pie and various other priceless artefacts.

The first sign that the V&A is desperate for friends is the decision to have a donation box at the front entrance. Their first mistake is using the word ‘voluntary.’ Not just because most people walk straight past it without putting their hands in their pockets but because most people born of the X (Factor) generation cannot pronounce such a big word, let alone know what it means.

I watch as everyone walks past the sad little empty box, everyone except for the people who seem least likely to be able to afford to make a donation: an elderly man and woman who has a bible hanging out of her handbag (circa 1973.) Maybe they didn’t read the sign outside, took one look at the architecture and thought they were walking into a church. I watch the same couple put £1 into the box for a museum map. I hope by this stage that they have realised that they are not in a church and that they are not buying a map to heaven, but rather to the men’s room.

The security bag search is also somewhat on the pathetic side. I walked in with a relatively large bag, not only because I am a woman and my gender mandates it, but because I am also carrying a laptop and more shopping than I expected to lug around London on a Saturday afternoon. Behaviour also mandated by my gender. I sling my bag on the table in front of the security guard begging to be searched. I take some pleasure in disappointing security workers by not carrying corrosives. The security guard takes one look at the bag, then at me and says, ‘No, it’s OK.’ I again was left with the impression that he didn’t want to stretch my friendship with the museum too far. OK, his leniency may have been influenced by me looking like a walking Gap ad rather than a threat to national security.

Once inside, like most visitors, I headed straight for the museum gift shop. Why look at a Venetian fresco when you can look at a Venetian fresco reproduced on a tea towel?

The shop itself takes up a significant part of the ground floor. I can just see the architect saying to the Director of the museum, ‘Now if you want the punters to come, you will have to give them a reason to hang around. I suggest we downsize the Chinese Pottery section in favour of a wall to house overpriced pretentious postcards.’ Never mind the centuries of priceless artefacts, the pencil sharpener in the shape of a pyramid will be a bigger hit and make us more popular with the cool kids.

Perhaps the most obvious sign that the museums are desperate for friends is the instruction printed on my map (the one I didn’t pay £1 for): ‘Please keep mobile phone use to a minimum.’ Only to a minimum? If there is one place on the planet where you should live in fear of phone confiscation it is a museum. Especially a museum that looks a little bit like a church. But at the V&A they don’t want to rock the boat, so you and your phone can roam freely and piss off as many people as you want, just as long as you hang out there a little bit longer. I long to experiment whether you can also talk with your mouthful and run with scissors in here.

Admittedly my beloved V&A doesn't come across as desperate as the Science Museum: on a Friday night they serve cocktails. I can only assume that this came out of a brainstorm where the thing most commonly associated with science for most people was being drunk in the back row of the science lab, after testing, and re testing the beaker labelled ‘100% alcohol.’

As I head to leave this particular Saturday I smile sympathetically at the two women standing in a booth near the exit. They are selling memberships to the V&A. How silly do they think I am? Actually maybe the last laugh is on me: my pie was £6.99. Maybe like all the geeky kids at school they will end up millionaires.