Yesterday I went with my mother to see the Degas exhibition at The Royal Academy. She likes Degas, and bought me my subscription for my birthday. We should have been a month ago, on 11 October, but they sent tickets for the wrong day. The exhibition was very good, and I'm still irritated with the RA.
They call having an annual season ticket being a Friend of the RA, since the term member is already reserved for the academicians. This makes it difficult to know what to call my mother's present, since calling it a Friendship sounds ridiculous. She first bought me an annual sub three years ago, at my suggestion when she asked what I'd like, and since then the cost has rocketed from around the sixty pound mark to ninety pounds if you pay by direct debit, and a round hundred if you pay on a one-off basis. The ticket entitles you to take a guest in (though the UK tax system has introduced a glitch there), and with tickets to Degas costing £14, or £13 concessions, and the other show currently on costing £9 or £7, a ticket holder has to notch up around eight entries in the course of a year to recoup the cost of the season ticket, compared with buying tickets on a pay as you go basis. The RA doesn't put on as many as eight exhibitions each year, so you have to go to each one more than once, or take a guest pretty much every time, to make it pay.
You could say that getting your exact money's worth isn't the point, and that it's good to support arts organisations. That's true, and indeed the Systems Administrator and I have supported the RSPB for years without ever visiting one of their reserves. We're happy to help conserve birds, but don't want to spend our spare time sitting in a bird hide. We don't get full value out of the National Trust on an aggregate cost of entry basis either, because they don't have many properties in the Eastern region. However, while I'm happy to pay £14 to go into an art exhibition, if it's a good one, I'm not sure I want to support the RA so much that I want my aged mother to pay £90 on my behalf for around £60 worth of entries. And I reckon around £60 worth of entries is around what I get. I don't live in London, so I can't pop into the RA, it's a full day's excursion. And I do take guests, but not every time I go. I don't know that many people who want to come with me, my principal art loving friend is also a Friend, and sometimes I prefer to go round galleries by myself.
One of the advantages of being a Friend is that you don't have to queue, or book. Instead you can drop in whenever you want to, if you are passing, for as short a time as you want. That's a big advantage. Except that it doesn't apply for Degas. For the Degas exhibition, in order to control overcrowding, you have to apply in advance, for a timed entry slot, and there is no readmission. So I booked in advance, and they sent tickets for the wrong month. Fortunately I noticed as I was putting them in my purse so that I wouldn't forget them, a couple of days before we were due to go, and my mother was very nice about it, but it was a nuisance. And I don't like having to book tickets in advance anyway. Especially when I'm going to London by myself, I'd prefer to decide at the last minute when to go, the weather playing a big part in that decision. I'd rather not have to spend the one fine dry day in the week in London when I could use it in the garden, and be free to go to town the next day instead when it drizzles. And with timed slots, you have to aim to arrive early in case the trains are all screwed up, and then if they do run to time you can't just go in when you reach the RA and get on with your day.
The other glitch is more theoretical than actual, but is a deeply depressing indictment of the state of our public administration. A year or so ago the rules on Gift Aid were altered, so that if a charity claimed Gift Aid on subscriptions, benefits provided by the charity were limited to the person paying the subscription, and members of their family. The RA responded by changing their subscription rules so that in theory I can only take family members in as my guest. That's what it says on their website. My mother is clearly a member of my family, as presumably is my brother (not that he'd want to come), and I assume that children, spouses and civil partners also count, but it is not at all clear where family stops. Cohabitees not married or in civil partnership? Fiancees? Anybody you've been sleeping with for at least a year and you spend most of your time round at their's even though you don't technically live together? Grandparents? Cousins? Second cousins? Step-siblings? Of course it is an entirely academic question because the staff on the door don't ask. As I walked up the stairs of the RA with a former colleague to see the Hungarian photographs I wondered idly what relationship we should claim, but our acting skills were not put to the test. It is ludicrous, unenforceable and unenforced, and it exasperates me that we have politicians and civil servants wasting public money thinking up and then drafting such idiotic legislation.
I can see that it was necessary to control crowding in the Degas exhibition, given that it was expected to be very popular, but if the RA is going to withdraw most of the advantages of being a Friend for the popular exhibitions, I might as well not bother to be a Friend. The British Museum and the Coutauld both charge a lot less to be a supporter, both are admirable institutions, and I have never been to a duff special exhibition at either.
The Degas, when you get there, is very good. The pictures are beautiful to look at, and it is well and intelligently curated, linking Degas' interest in portraying movement with contemporary developments in photography. We both enjoyed it very much, and then we went and looked at The National Portrait Gallery, since the earliest train we could get home was the 18.48 out of Liverpool Street, and enjoyed that as well. The trains ran to time, service was good on all tube lines, we had a nice lunch and a nice tea and it was a successful day out. But I'm irritated with the RA.
Addendum My mother told me a piece of family history I never heard before. It is quite bizarre. In 1936 or 1937 my paternal grandfather decided that he was tired of capitalism, and would like to go and live in Russia. He got as far as having an interview with the Russian ambassador in London, who listened to his story and explained that Russia already had enough Jewish intellectuals, and that my grandfather would be well advised to remain in England. The mind boggles.
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