The Movieum, London

I have a diary note for 20 October 2002 that reads: "Let it lie." It refers to a letter I had published in the Sunday Times berating the British Film Institute (BFI) for the organisation's callous abandonment of the Museum of the Moving Image (Momi) on London's South Bank.

I decided then, that as the designer of Momi, I should put its demise behind me and move on. I would remember the global plaudits, be thankful for all the work it had created for me and remember with respect and affection the team that went the extra mile to create this groundbreaking museum.

But when Museums Journal asked me to review Movieum, which has recently opened on London's South Bank, I could not help but remember Momi and use my knowledge of the film industry when making comparisons.

"You have to be really untalented to mess up the story of the moving image," said my client at the BFI in 1986. I had to agree. The magic of the moving image is part of our everyday life. Movies are just one aspect of this culture and British film is just one more subdivision in a global story. British film-making, according to the Movieum's publicity, is the thrust of a new attraction in London's former County Hall.

The name Movieum suggests it is unsure whether it is an attraction or a museum. It is neither. Instead, it is an ill-conceived way of taking peoples' money in one of London's prime tourist locations.

Loose connections

I visited Movieum a week after it opened. From the box office I was sent down endless dismal timber-clad corridors. Having passed the entrance, I found more corridors with cheap poster prints mounted directly on to the wooden panelling. To break the monotony there were piles of movie-making props.

There was hardly any information to give context. There was no explanation of how this junk can be made into the precious images that we know and love. The lighting was bad. The sounds were competing with each other.

The few captions were small or too far away to read. There was no attempt to create a narrative. It lacked everything. The authors must have been in marketing because the brand "Movieum - for the love of film" was the largest graphic element in all locations.

A few rooms off the corridor attempted to theme their displays: Heroes and Villains, Science Fantasy, Period, Horror. But these small rooms were very, very thin on content.

We are told that Movieum was art directed rather than designed. Well, if this is the case, it does the great tradition of British art direction no justice at all.

The fact that Movieum sets out to celebrate British film-making is praiseworthy, but it doesn't even skim the surface. It does hardly anything to engage the visitor with the stories of the British studios. Running talking-head videos in each display is not good communication.

The displays do nothing to set the film industry in the context of society, war, politics or technology. I had come to terms before visiting with the fact that it might not tell the glorious history of shadow plays, optical toys and flea-pit cinemas, but I had hoped for an interesting history of Shepperton, Pinewood and Ealing.

"OK," I can hear the organisers saying, "We don't want to be too worthy. We don't want to be too academic." If they don't want to do that, what approach to entertainment do they want to use? I saw no method.

I saw little animation in this moving-image attraction. I did see a Dalek wave its sink plunger, but that was about it. There is a relatively large installation of LCD screens and video projections, but considering that the attraction's tag line is "for the love of film", I felt no love and I saw no film at all. I did see one man dressed up like a 1920s Hollywood director, although he said nothing and seemed content to drink his coffee.

London deserves better

It might be that some of the monitors and electronics were suffering teething problems and, having opened many new museums, I'm sympathetic to these issues, but even with everything working there would be little worthwhile.

The BFI has a great collection of artefacts and knowledge that it could have shared to help give this attraction authority, but one suspects that neither party had the energy to create such a partnership and meet security and conservation standards. Leave the collection in storage - it's safer.

London has a long list of cheap and failed attractions and I believe that Movieum is in that category. Its marketing fails to deliver on site. Museums can be fun as well as academically correct. Attractions should be entertaining. Britain's heritage can be explained in an attractive as well as a beautifully documented way.

Movieum fails to deliver on any front. The owners should be ashamed of themselves for taking admission money from visitors. At £12 for adults and £9 for children, it is poor value.

I wonder if the career-minded bureaucrats who abandoned London's internationally renowned Momi feel any guilt in seeing the runt of an attraction they have allowed to take its place. London has been robbed of a world-class attraction.

Britain has lost a worthy home to its world-famous film skills. The South Bank has gained an attraction that is an embarrassment to creative Britain.

The BFI might say that its Mediatheque has attracted 30,000 visitors in its first year, but compared to Momi's 560,000 visitors in its first year, this is not giving the moving image the popular multimedia platform it deserves.

Neal Potter is an independent museum design consultant