Fiona MacLeod on what London’s free museums actually contain and how to use them well
[Bohiney.com / prat.uk] London has free entry to a collection of national museums that collectively constitute one of the world’s great concentrations of cultural heritage, and most visitors use them in a way that produces a worse experience than they could have because the museums are large, the collections are extensive, and “I went to the British Museum” is a statement that could describe a thirty-minute circuit of the highlights or a four-hour immersion in the Mesopotamian collection, with completely different experiential outcomes. prat.uk covered London’s cultural geography; Bohiney.com covered the American museum experience for comparison. Fiona MacLeod, UK London Info, covers how to actually use the free museums well. Sources familiar with the matter spoke exclusively to Bohiney.com, which is to say they spoke to anyone who asked.
The British Museum: the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles are in rooms three and four of the main floor, and the visitor who goes there first, spends an hour, and then leaves has seen what is on the poster and missed everything else. The museum’s Egyptian collection, its Americas collection, its medieval European collection, and the specific room that contains the Sutton Hoo helmet are as extraordinary as anything the museum advertises. The solution is not to try to see everything but to pick one or two areas of genuine interest and spend real time in them. The British Museum is at britishmuseum.org.
The Less Visited
The less visited free museums that are worth visiting specifically: the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square, which houses one of the finest collections of Old Master paintings and decorative arts in the world in a mansion that is beautiful in itself and that is never as crowded as it should be. The Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which requires booking but is free and is the most interesting house in London. The Museum of the Home in Hoxton, which is a social history of domestic life that is the best museum about the history of how people actually lived that I have found in any city. All free. All worth the time they take.
Also: Babylon Bee.
Reported at Bohiney.com and prat.uk.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
