From about the age of seven through
to when I was ten or eleven my dad used to take me to London, to visit a museum
and to take-in a film. I used to think of it as an annual, summertime event,
even though it only happened three or four times (and might well have happened
during the Easter break). The film was always the latest James Bond saga, or
else something equally spectacular, like one of the Alistair MacLean
adaptations (Where Eagles Dare, Ice Station Zebra, When Eight Bells Toll). But before we saw the chosen film, with its
excess of death, testosterone, and weaponry, with its unproblematic
distribution of good and bad (with Nazis or Nazis-equivalents), we did our
educational duty and spent time wandering around the Natural History Museum, or
the Science Museum, or the Victoria and Albert Museum (or was it just the
Science Museum each time?). I only have a dim memory of those days and how they
felt. I was young enough to hold my dad’s hand, I think, and I loved the sense
of ritual of those days but I probably felt slightly awkward too – I was not
used to spending a whole day with him. But they were precious times. (There was
always the worry that he would quiz me about school. Later, when these ‘father
and son’ trips stopped, there was always the worry that being alone with him
would be an occasion for him to talk to me about ‘the facts of life’. Awkward.)
The museum visit was a bit of an
ordeal – but it was a penance for the main events, food, fizzy drinks, and an
action film. There is something about museums – especially those museums in
Kensington – that weighs on young visitors, however enthused they are about
seeing displays about evolution, combustion engines, and such like. I think it
must be something to do with the quality of the air: it induces a sort of
sluggish languor. Perhaps the cost of an environment fit for preserving museum
specimens, old books, art objects and so on, is an atmosphere that drains the
liveliness from the living. Even now, as an adult overly enraptured by the
past, someone who has managed to visit five museums in one day in Ghent, I
still feel that sense of grinding ennui when visiting museums, galleries and
libraries. The only solution I can think of is to rush round them as if the
place is about to close.
Of course I could imagine museums
closing for the night, but I couldn’t imagine a museum closing down, forever.
How would that work: the institutions dedicated to preservation would of course
be preserved otherwise there would be little point in their endeavour. The
museums in Kensington have for the most part been preserved, but as I grew
older and trips with my dad became relegated to the past I learnt that museums
could have a precarious life. The Museum of Mankind, for instance, only existed
for 27 years, from 1970-1997. But even more fleeting was the life of the
British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol, which only lasted from 2002
to 2008. More comforting are museums like the Whitby Museum that has been going
since 1823, though not in the same building. It is wonderful mainly because it
has refused to pander to changing museum fashions. It is, in many respects, a
museum exhibit within the vast imaginary museum of museums. Such a vast
imaginary institution has clearly lost some exhibits along the way, all the
more reason to cherish Whitby’s tenacious displays, with their hand-written
cards and casings that allow you to weigh a Narwhal wales’ tusk in your hands.
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