I have started trying to arrange a trip with my mother to the Royal Academy's exhibition of large and recent landscapes by David Hockney. It has crystallised my feeling that it is not worthwhile her renewing my annual birthday present subscription, as once again advance booking is required, even for Friends. Since she gave me the sub three years ago the RA has unilaterally altered the terms and conditions, by limiting my guests to family members (undefined, unenforceable, unenforced) and jacking up the annual cost to a hundred quid (or £90 by direct debit). Their website nowadays says 'free entry to all RA exhibitions' which is true, in that Friends don't pay when they book tickets, but when you are travelling up from the country (40 minute rail delays this morning due to signalling problems at Ilford) a pre-booked entry time is a nuisance. It means we have to build slack into the timetable before our slot in case the trains are late, which will leave us wandering around the west end for an hour or so in February if they're not, or else forego lunch if there are delays. It used to be that you just waved your card and went in, even for popular exhibitions like Van Gogh.
My replacement is already lined up, as my National Art Pass has arrived. For fifty quid (reduced to £37.50 in the first year if you pay by direct debit) I have got a card giving me free entry into some museums and galleries I should like to visit, and half price admission to exhibitions at others. In London it gets me into the Courtauld, a gallery I adore and visit regularly, and the Garden Museum, which I'm partial to (provided they are covering design or history and not community vegetable growing). It will also get me free into several places I've thought about visiting and not got round to it, including The Handel House Museum, Leighton House and Eltham Palace. I get half price entry to exhibitions at The National Gallery, The National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Imperial War Museum. These are all fine institutions I was planning on visiting this year (well, maybe not the Imperial War Museum. I haven't looked yet to see what they've got on). I checked on the Portrait Gallery website before buying the card, and the booking options for Lucien Freud did include buying a ticket with an Art Pass (as well as about seven other concessionary tickets) which allayed my concerns that the card might not work for exhibitions where I needed to book in advance.
There's an element of duplication with other memberships, as some National Trust properties are in the scheme, and I'm a member anyway. Have been since I was four, courtesy of my parents. So is the Tate, and I'm inclined to keep membership of that one going, as the members' room at Tate Modern is so nice, and being able to walk straight into the likes of the Rothko exhibition is worth a lot.
With the Art Pass came a book of participating venues through the UK. All have benefited from art purchases funded by the scheme. Some offer free access anyway, so holding an Art Pass doesn't confer any immediate benefit, but it looks a useful book. Unless I had picked up a brochure somewhere, I wouldn't have known about the Cromer Museum (with Victorian fisherman's cottage and history of Cromer's incarnation as a seaside resort) or the Time and Tide museum at Great Yarmouth (about herring fishing) but they sound interesting. It's the sort of booklet it will be worth taking along on holiday (not forgetting the tile gazetteer).
The proceeds raised by the Art Fund go to help museums and galleries pay for acquisitions. I like the idea of helping to do that. All in all it looks like a pound a week well spent, signing up for your National Art Pass.
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