Absence makes the heart grow fonder: a post-Covid trip to the museum
The Blavatnik Building exterior 2 © Iwan Baan
Absence makes the heart grow fonder: a post-Covid trip to the museum
by Alice Jaspars
I never expected to queue to get into the National Gallery, nor to don a facemask prior to entering the Tate. I certainly did not anticipate liberally applying hand sanitizer for a mere trip to the V&A. Then again, it seems very few of us foresaw the past few months.
This brave new world has robbed us of what we took for granted prior. The ability to move around freely seems a luxury we were previously unaware of. From being unable to see our families, to our favourite artworks, we all made sacrifices both big and small. Now, it seems that we are returning to some sense of normality, and even to some spaces of culture.
I joined the first queue a mere 24 hours after the National Gallery reopened, co-opting a work event to render my journey essential. For the first time in some 111 days, the gallery was among the very first in the UK to reopen.
For the director, Gabriele Finaldi, the reopening was duly compared to “coming out of exile”. Upon my most recent visit what struck me most of all was not the strange Covid-idiosyncrasies, but the kindness of fellow visitors and staff alike. Arriving late, a result of London’s perilous public transport system, a couple behind me waived me ahead. Entering the metal detectors, the guard smiled through their mask. Covid can, it seems, only take so much from us.
The queue moves swiftly, and we are instructed to have our tickets ready, though no one checks them. Smuggling oneself into the National Gallery would be a strange decision, even after 111 days of lockdown. A frustrated few who did not get the memo attempt to blag their way into the gallery, though it seems that luck is not on their side today.
By the time I visit the National Gallery, I have visited more virtual exhibitions than one can shake a stick at. I have trawled Google Arts and Culture till it runs dry (the most intriguing suggestion that one makes a Hepworth from a potato still plays upon my mind). At least viewing the BP Portrait Award online removes the commute, though it loses some of its charm and gravity when sitting in the company of Facebook, open on another tab.
I do not dislike virtual exhibitions per say. Indeed, I am infinitely grateful to all the galleries who elected to feature them during the pandemic, bringing me halfway across the world at a time I was unable to get the tube to Victoria. It is not the same, which is both petulant and deeply pertinent. One cannot possibly gain the same experience through a screen as in a gallery. The expression size matters springs to mind. The impression of A Bigger Splash makes a rather smaller one when viewed in my bedroom on my laptop no bigger than an exhibition catalogue. Screen fatigue is very real, though museum fatigue has never plagued me yet. One cannot help but be reminded – the digital world was supposed to supplement, not replace, our real one.
For those who remain unconvinced by this new turn of events, not all the changes to the National Gallery are to its detriment. Indeed, the three or so months of closure has allowed for the museum to restore and replace Van Dyck’s Equestrian Portrait of Charles I, on show following two years’ worth of restoration work. Other such changes include an extension to the gallery’s Titian: Love, Desire, Death exhibition, closed after a mere three days in March. Thanks to pulling some rather tense strings, the gallery has managed to extend the show until 17 January 2021.
The first route, helpfully named A, takes me through a short history of Renaissance Art. Timed at approximately 15 minutes, guests are instructed to walk clockwise as they peruse the hallowed halls. It is akin to being in church. The smallest rooms, where social distancing is quite impossible, are cordoned off, encouraging visitors to peer in. The detail is lost, but the overall effect is not.
Route C ends at the Bridget Riley mural, with arrows indicating the choice of either the shops or the bathroom. I find myself at the end when I had rather fancied myself a chance to begin again saving route B and the promise of Vermeers until last. It is then, the hero of the piece comes into play.
In the National Gallery, the most important people are not the age-old painters, nor the esteemed and bejewelled subjects of almost impossible works. The most important people are the guards. For my gallery-based adventure, it is they who truly saved the day.
Explaining my predicament to one guard, who swiftly summons another, I soon find myself escorted, quite contrary to the one-way system, to see the Vermeer I had been waiting 111 days for. It is worth the wait, as his work always is, and I find myself quite alone with the piece for around five minutes. It is perfection. The National Gallery reminds me of all I missed over the course of the past months.
Tate Britain, Manton entrance. Photocredit: Tate Photography
The Tate Britain is different.
I visited twice over the course of the past weekend. My first trip restricted me to the 1930s until now route, which my companion and I whisked through in under half an hour. The work is by no means lacklustre, indeed, the Hockney still takes my breath away – it is just short.
The route disappoints as much as it deprives us, though thankfully the hallowed Henry Moore hall remains relatively untouched, a small mercy given the extent to which the museum has been somewhat brutally spliced in two. It is not possible to see any of the installations for fear of social distancing, and as such the Art Now gallery is cut out entirely, a crying shame when one considers the resolute excellence of the pieces there last year.
It is entirely possible my trip to the Britain, at least on the very first day, will come across as almost jaded, especially considering the fact that in days of yore I was able to sneak in during my lunch hour and bask in the extensive glory of the museum. For now this is impossible, though there seems to be little use in mourning for it.
The second day is better. My most recent companion and I begin the charge with a tour of the 1540s onwards, which takes us the more respectable time of an hour. We wander through the hallowed halls, and while something feels different, it is almost impossible to determine precisely what.
The Britain still does this well – dazzling us in the final room, perhaps in the hope that we forget about the ones we previously encountered.
Again, it is possible I am being unfair. The pre-covid Britain spoiled me, allowing me to flit from Moore to more contemporary works at my leisure. Now there is a silence to which I am ill-accustomed. At the end of our tour, two ladies tell us about Turner (he’s not my favourite, she whispers conspiratorially to me as we go to leave). Not so silent after all.
For the Britain, in spite of superb staff and wonderful works, it seems that something has been lost in translation. The precise rationale for splicing the museum in half (though by no means evenly so) is lost upon me, as I imagine it is on the majority of its latest visitors.
The decision to do so becomes even more bizarre when one considers the way in which the Tate Modern has reopened, with free access to all collections, using a guided route, far more conducive to a pleasurable post-Covid experience.
The Modern is much the same as it was before, with its escalator still puzzling those who simply wish to see Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus from a slightly greater height. Yet the gallery has done an excellent job of tricking visitors into believing the museum is as before, with masks more of a passing trend than a safety measure.
Entering through the turbine hall, the gallery has placed markers everywhere and in between, preventing the less museum savvy from ending up in the cloakroom for the umpteenth time. My companion and I head for the second floor, and are bemused to find another guard asking to see our ticket. One wonders precisely who is breaking into the Tate Modern.
Warhol exhibition extended until late November in something of a scheduling miracle. Photograph: Guy Bell/Rex/Shutterstock
The museum is much as before, with pieces changed little. Still spacious, still airy, still, for want of a better word, modern, the Dalis and Duchamps sit close to one another, demanding attention. My companion delights in the Kandinskys most of all, though the installation on the penultimate floor of radios all tuned to different channels also serves to illicit joy.
Our visit coincides neatly with the announcement that some 313 employees are to be made redundant, a travesty for the museum community and for the gallery in kind. The employees of both the Britain and the Modern were the highlight of all our visits, essential to our ability to make sense of where we were as well as who we are. We need them now more than ever.
It is not the same, though I am unsure that we expected it to be. It is not the sanitizer, nor the masks that alter our experience, so much as the lack of spontaneity. There is something else to this brave new world, though precisely what is unclear. My thanks and praise goes out to all those who have worked hard to reopen our museums across the country, and across the world. We need you now more than ever before, and we are grateful for all that you do.
For all museums, and for all of us, it seems that masks and sanitizer will be here to stay for the foreseeable. Yet one thing rings truer than all else – the adage, “absence makes the heart grow fonder” has never been more true.