Scenes at the British Museum

Scenes at the British Museum

All the great galleries and museums rely on benefactors, who may be very rich, and endow a gallery or wing or two, or just art lovers who stump up a modest but not negligible sum for various “membership” schemes.

The British Museum has tiered schemes, at the top of which is a “Patrons” category. For quite a lot of money, Patrons get various privileges (mummification not included). One privilege is an annual Open House evening, when the museum is given over, after public closing, to the Patrons and a generous allocation of guests – of whom I was very grateful to be one at the end of November. 

The Museum, beyond its galleries and artefacts, is its own exhibit. Its great neo-classical front presents as a temple to its collections. Once inside, you are invited into one of the world’s most idiosyncratic spaces – the Great Court, once open, but in recent years roofed over by an impossible glass curvature. The Court contains the old Reading Room, where Karl Marx and others laboured in the mines of political economy. The Room is now converted to the use of temporary exhibitions, shop and restaurant.

The space around the Reading Room, under the glass roof, is vast. That evening, it was lit by light with a seemingly bluish tint, highlighting the great classical portico on the reverse of the front antechamber, and respectfully illuminating the Patrons and their guests, who were throughout tempted with delicious canapés and drinks of all sorts.

We were not there just to party in the unique nocturnal ambience. We were offered education as well: several presentations about objects in the collection.

The presentations were scheduled to be very, very short and sharp- 15 minutes in fact.  But a good scholar can convey a lot in that time, and the Museum is full of excellent scholars, prepared, or under contract, to transmit knowledge to this financially important audience.

My knowledge of Renaissance Bologna, the brutal ascendancy of the Assyrians in the Middle East of the Old Testament, was increased from zero to passable.

The presentation on an exquisite box, once containing an alleged relic of the murdered bishop/martyr saint, Thomas a Becket, told us of the Medieval European Roman Catholic Union (all important roads of power ran through Rome). It was also an interesting reminder of the stresses between Rome and national sovereigns (Thomas favouring Rome over king), which, among other causes, led to the Reformation – Kingxet, in the case of Henry VIII.

I’ve already noted the impression made by the Museum’s own architecture and spaces. There’s another impact, especially felt after hours on the ground floor. It is the awesome strangeness of the mostly massive exhibits from the ancient Middle East: the vast reliefs of kings, warriors, slaves and beasts; the heads of sovereigns.

As one passes through the dimly-lit galleries, with the by now diluted numbers of the Patrons’ party, there grows the impression of imperial oppression, of cruelty, of a colossal indifference to subjects and slaves: of the gulf between those regimes and our times… but perhaps a narrowing gulf?

I seized upon the somewhat spooky presence of a small Greek temple with cultural recognition, and relief.

Dec 2018