Nice, very nice, lovely. Museums are forever banging on about what we think of them: visitors' books, online surveys, comment cards littering reception desks and cafes.
I once had the mortification of being surveyed at the Natural History Museum, immortalised as a single white professional 35/50 female, who had spent 15 minutes or less in the museum for the sole/main purpose of buying the fluffy-toy pencil case which the Infant Samuel craved. I pleaded for 48-plus museum visits a year to be taken into consideration, but the woman with the clipboard didn't have a tick box for it.
The results must rot the brains of the people who have to read them: nice, very nice, lovely. It's why I never trust those surveys claiming more people crave museums than chocolate, sex or football. If the implied choice is, "do you take your family to lovely educational museums, or do you prefer to sprawl on the sofa in your tracksuits eating chicken by the economy bucket?", then nine out of ten cats will lie.
Could museums bear it if their visitors actually told the truth? Kerry County Museum has just mounted a remarkable exhibition on William Melville, a publican's son from Sneem who emigrated to join the Metropolitan police in the 1870s, formed a network of spies and informers that broke several of the Fenian bomb plots terrorising London, became head of the Special Branch, and then a founder of MI5 - and possibly an inspiration for James Bond.
None of this is ancient history in Kerry, where flowers are still regularly laid on roadside memorials to men who died in republican skirmishes 80 years ago. The very museum building is named after Thomas Ashe, who died in prison in 1917 after being force fed to end his hunger strike.
The museum has been picketed by Republican Sinn Fein, denouncing Melville as "a renegade". The most recent text from the (extremely Irish) museum director says they've just had an anonymous bomb threat, denouncing her as "a West Brit harlot".
Sometimes nice, very nice, lovely, would be nice.
I once had the mortification of being surveyed at the Natural History Museum, immortalised as a single white professional 35/50 female, who had spent 15 minutes or less in the museum for the sole/main purpose of buying the fluffy-toy pencil case which the Infant Samuel craved. I pleaded for 48-plus museum visits a year to be taken into consideration, but the woman with the clipboard didn't have a tick box for it.
The results must rot the brains of the people who have to read them: nice, very nice, lovely. It's why I never trust those surveys claiming more people crave museums than chocolate, sex or football. If the implied choice is, "do you take your family to lovely educational museums, or do you prefer to sprawl on the sofa in your tracksuits eating chicken by the economy bucket?", then nine out of ten cats will lie.
Could museums bear it if their visitors actually told the truth? Kerry County Museum has just mounted a remarkable exhibition on William Melville, a publican's son from Sneem who emigrated to join the Metropolitan police in the 1870s, formed a network of spies and informers that broke several of the Fenian bomb plots terrorising London, became head of the Special Branch, and then a founder of MI5 - and possibly an inspiration for James Bond.
None of this is ancient history in Kerry, where flowers are still regularly laid on roadside memorials to men who died in republican skirmishes 80 years ago. The very museum building is named after Thomas Ashe, who died in prison in 1917 after being force fed to end his hunger strike.
The museum has been picketed by Republican Sinn Fein, denouncing Melville as "a renegade". The most recent text from the (extremely Irish) museum director says they've just had an anonymous bomb threat, denouncing her as "a West Brit harlot".
Sometimes nice, very nice, lovely, would be nice.
